43" 4k TV to replace dual 24" 1080p monitors

[CA_Steve]

I've been thinking about this for a long time but never pulled the trigger. Now, Vizio's new M series with Quantum dots, a bit of local dimming, 400 nits and a M437-G0 43" version is going to be released (it's bigger brethren went on sale last week). HDR and Wide Gamut for $400..oh my. The only thing missing is VESA Adaptive Sync.

Upsides:
- I'd lose ~ 7" of width, so less head turning.
- I'd gain ~ 10" of height. so less website/doc scrolling. woo!
- Huge improvement in image quality over my almost 10 yr old Dell G2410's.
- Big enough to run windowed games at 1080p or 1440p and still have a side webpage open.

Downsides:
- While the Dells' are old and faded, they still only use 15W ea. So, a bump up in power use (nothing published, yet. But, 43" class TVs are 40 to 80W).
- Abula will start pestering me to buy a 2160p class video card...

Unknowns:
- compatibility of games in Windowed mode (for display profile, etc..). On the other hand, it's currently just WoW and some Steam stuff like Civ).

[Abula]

- Abula will start pestering me to buy a 2160p class video card...

Its about time my friend, Navi is going half consumption... i feel a 3090 on the horizon, or a RTX2060/GTX1660Ti. Only these gpus will give you the ability to do gsync with freesync or freesync pure, either way its all good =P

Now back on the main subject, i don't like TVs as main monitors, i always feel like something is missing, its different. But there are now a days 43'' 4k monitors that can give you a good experience, LG 43UD79-B 4K -- Size does matter... Long Term Review of the LG 43UD79-B 4K. Btw if you have the space you could still keep you 24'' and put them on portrait mode so you can still have multiple monitors, i still prefer ability to maximize on another screen without the need for windows to resize or i manually doing it.

[CA_Steve]

Thanks for the LG reference, but it doesn't support HDR or Wide Gamut.

You know me - I'm not the first buyer of a new release..I'll wait for reviews of the Vizio (and other potentials) to come in. Hopefully, rtings.com will review it. The biggest concern will be the VA panel edge from 3ft away...offset viewing angle issue.

[CA_Steve]

So, the 43" finally came on the market last month and after waiting for some early adopter feedback at AVS Forum I picked one up. $350 at Best Buy.

What a pita to set up

Because it's just an HDMI 2.0(b) input on the Vizio, you can't get 10-bit 2160p/60Hz 4:4:4. I couldn't get 10-bit 2160p/60Hz 4:4:2 either with my GTX 1050 Ti card, just 2160p/60Hz 4:4:0 which led to crappy text or 2160p/30Hz 4:4:2 (aka no gaming). Then, my 1050 Ti's HDMI port died. As the GTX 1660 Super is rumored to come out in 3 weeks I didn't want to get a new card now. So, I picked up a Club 3D active Displayport to HDMI adapter. Still no 10-bit 2160p/60Hz 4:4:2.

So, I fell back to having Nvidia stfu, set it to 2160p/60Hz using Windows 10 default settings, and the TV set as follows:
Picture: Computer mode, black detail low, Active Full Array medium, Game latency low, Gamma 2.1
Input: Full UHD color off

With this, the Vizio comes up as "HDR10" when connected to the PC.

Text is clear to me without apparent compression artifacts (with the caveat my eyes are heading toward decrepitude and I tend to zoom browser windows a bit).

Gaming: I've been gaming in WoW and haven't noticed any user side latency issues. The ol' 1050 Ti can crank out 60Hz with quad sampling of 1080p onto the full screen 2160p, but this takes the TV out of it's HDR10 mode into some other mode (possibly letting the game determine color settings) and frankly, it's oversaturated crap. Going to Windowed mode puts the TV back into HDR10 mode and the game colors/brightness/etc looks great. I know a lot of folks like the game to be in their faces, but I found I'd prefer playing at 1440p native centered and overlapping a browser window on the left third of the screen. Easy clicking between the two.

Power use: all over the map.
- sleep: 0W (4VA)
- Netflix: 55-95W (depends on white levels)
- WoW: 95W (in 1440p with some other browser windows and Win10 background as well as full screen)
- full screen browser while typing this: 91W (a lot of off-white)

One downside of using this TV as a monitor is no instant "no signal therefore I shall go to sleep" mode - you can set it for wait 10 minutes or always on.