Tong Family

OK, this is a painful one, but our trusty Benq BL3200 which five years ago was an amazing 2550p monitor has been rained on (roof leak, argh!) and now has a failure in one of the vertical pixels which is pretty annoying, so time to check out rtings.com and get a replacement before the whole thing dies.

In our other locations, we have 42″, 2 x 27″ and even a 55″ monitor but this space really only works with a 32″ monitor at maximum because we need to access a printer and scanner next to it. So what’s the best 32″ monitor to get that is:

1. Is not more than 28″ wide which is the 32″ monitor that is currently there.
2. 4K although a 2.5K works pretty well at this size.
3. Much truer colors for photo editing. We do use a color calibrator, but having a true HDR screen for video editing would be nice. It is a pretty bright spot, but I just love the colors in an OLED or equivalent system.
4. Higher frame rates because you never know when I’ll get back into gaming.
5. High reliability of course

Some choices

So given this screen what can we look at:

1. Dell AW3223DWF. This is a wide QD-OLED display that is 36″ wide so narrower than the LG C3 43 which I favor if you have space as this is 37″ wide, but still not close to 28″. In fact if you have room for the Dell, then you should strongly consider the 43″ TV which is a great monitor and a great TV at the same time.
2. LG C3. Any 43″ OLED TV is going to be really, really good and has a nice price. Most of these are huge starting at 55″, but LG C3 is 43″ so a great size if you have the space.
3. Gigabyte M32u. I’ve had my eye on this one for a while because it doesn’t seem to have the reliability problems of the Samsung G8, but the problem is the HDR performance is not that great. At $700 or so on Amazon, its also not too expensive. What it does well is gaming (better than HDR).
4. The Dell UP3221Q and the ASUS ProArt PA32UCX at $3,700 on Dell and $3,200 on Amazon respecitively. These are miniLED and support 1K peak nits so not as much as Apple but with mini-LED FALD with 2K zones, you will get less blooming. These like the Apple are 60 Hertz monitors and the Dell at least on Amazon has some bad reviews and the ASUS is loud and also have product problems, so YMMV.
5. Apple Pro Display XDR. This is the monitor I really want but can’t figure out how to justiyf. It’s 32″, but it has incredible peak brightness at 1600 nits for 39% of the screen and 1000 nits across the entire screen. These are crazy good stats. Our LG B9, CX and C1 are really great but top out at 400 nits or so. Yes it is not OLED but does use a 10-bit panel with FALD (Full-area Local Dimming) but it is 6K and a whopping $5K to buy.

But of course Apple might introduce something this coming year that is a true OLED. We are waiting and hoping the 32″ doesn’t die. But I’m thinking waiting a bit and seeing when the Pro Display XDR updates is a good idea. But if something happens in the short term, the Gigabyte or even the Apple Studio Display is not a bad idea (even though this is not HDR).