Probably like a lot of HN’ers, I spend 10h+/day in front of the laptop looking at text (coding, email, browsing...). I’d like to make it easier for my eyes and get an external monitor. What should I look for?<p>Some notes from what I already googled:<p>* I prefer larger fonts, so I’m aiming for a 27” size<p>* somebody mentioned “I've found is that I get the least eye strain by using a large (37"+) 1080p TV as a monitor”. What is your experience?<p>* pivotable display, in order to see more lines of code<p>* IPS panels seem to be the best, however others mention they aren’t so great for text: “every IPS has the same sparkle effect” (http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1466914)<p>Thanks and a Happy New Year with great eyesight :-)
On Windows the higher the resolution the smaller the text and the more eye-strain. Windows only supports 125% text size without breaking stuff. "Large" (150%) is totally broken in most applications.<p>So if you go high resolution in Windows then expect to be manually altering the size of the text in every program you use (Chrome, Visual Studio, Word, etc).<p>In my personal opinion LED causes less eye-strain than LCD (less "flicker" with LED). I haven't noticed an improvement between IPS and TN panels, but I also look at the screen straight on (and most of IPS's perks are in things that don't help text anyway).<p>I strongly recommend that whatever you wind up getting turn the brightness down. I took mine from 100% (default) to 25%. The default brightnesses are for displaying them in stores (in the "brightness wars") and have no place being that high when in use.<p>If you're using a Mac then you're fortunate as Apple support 2560×1600 displayed as 1280x800 which means much higher resolution fonts and no need to mess with the sizes of things (ala Windows).
I have a Lenovo x220 (matte, 12" IPS) and two Dell 2311h's (matte, 23" IPS's, can rotate to portrait) - I don't have any complaints, and I don't think I'll ever buy a TN display in the future. I'm not sure what the sparkle effect is; it seems like something that that particular guy is more sensitive to.<p>It sounds like you're looking for one of these: <a href="http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/07/the-ips-lcd-revolution.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/07/the-ips-lcd-revolut...</a>
The 27" Mac monitor is expensive but amazing (and not pivotable). I have found it worth the money. I have one at home. At work I go to a really crappy ViewSonic 24". The smaller size is a slight problem, but what I really dislike is how dark it is. And there are dead pixels.