What external monitor are you using?

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That's true. I have all my monitors currently set to 120 cd/m2. I do have TCL tv's in my living room but only the biggest (65") support all the nice features with local dimming. I have a smaller TCL in my bedroom and while it's the "next best" series, it lacks the best dimming features. The smaller models still support 4k and HDR but lack many of the higher end features. That said, you do have to turn off most of the advanced features on a 4k tv anyway (like picture smoothing) to get a good image. Backlight local dimming is an important features.

I was hoping another brand would offer quality features in their smaller sets. I was thinking 32 or 38 inch. I currently have a 30" monitor on my desk and would not mind a slightly larger display. Actually I want to get 3 and put them in portrait mode for a combined 16x10 image.

Maybe I'll connect a laptop to one of the TCL's and see how it does on the colorimiter later.

In any event.. sorry for the hijack!
 
Okay, I tried it this morning.

My first impression is that using a 4k TV is going to work out very well.

I'm testing with a TCL 43" "5 series" that normally lives in my bedroom. I'm using an old crappy pc with an nvidia gtx 1050 ti adapter. I'm connected using HDMI.

This is not a high end tv, it's on the higher end for crappy tv's if that makes any sense to you. $300usd at best buy retail store(plus sales tax).
Features
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Advanced technology offers striking contrast for brighter whites and darker blacks.
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iPQ Engine

Precision color performance tailored to deliver accurate color reproduction and optimized DCI-P3 color space coverage.
Roku Smart TV

Roku TV offers access to stream 500,000+ movies and TV episodes from one simple, intuitive interface.
42.5" screen (measured diagonally from corner to corner)

A great size for a living room or mid-sized home theater space.
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Watch 4K movies and TV shows at 4x the resolution of Full HD, and upscale your current HD content to gorgeous, Ultra HD-level picture quality.
Watch high dynamic range (HDR) content on your TV

With an HDR-compatible 4K TV, you can enjoy HDR movies and TV shows, in addition to all your current content.
Smart TV with access to streaming services for countless entertainment options

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LED TVs perform well in all lighting conditions

They also deliver plasma-like deep blacks and rich colors.
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Two 8W main channel speakers.
3 HDMI inputs for the best home theater connection

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1 USB input

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The 5 series is not the best TCL series you can get, but the 6 series is ONLY available in larger displays.

When I plugged the tv into the pc, windows detected it straight away. It set the resolution to 4k automatically, and set the desktop "zoom" to 300%. The zoom prevents stuff from looking tiny on a high resolution display. My eyeballs are somewhere around 18-24 inches from the display. I have not yet calibrated it with my colorimiter.

The first thing I noticed is that everything was way too big. The next thing I noticed was that movement didn't feel right. Especially the mouse.

For some reason, windows detected 30hz as the ideal refresh rate. That was causing the movement issue. I changed the setting to 60hz (still maintained 4k resolution) and the problem was gone. I can't say why windows got this wrong, but it was an easy fix. The mouse movement was corrected by adjusting the acceleration. The cursor has to move almost twice as far to get across the screen, and I don't want to move my hand twice as far.. therefore I changed the setting. 300% was too much zoom. I bumped it down to 200%, and everything looks/feels right to me. Text (such as scubaboard) looks perfect etc.

Brightness: On the default settings, things are too bright. Brightness controls are limited, I changed from "brightest" to "darker" (highest setting to the lowest) and things are much better looking. I also changed the "mode" to game, which reduces input lag while sacrificing some kind of image quality. I can't tell a difference in image quality yet. We're probably talking about a few milliseconds performance difference is my guess.


I think if I use a TV as a pc display in the future I'll definitely want a smaller panel. Ideally I'd like something around 32" but I think I could live with 36 or 38. 43" is just a bit too big given how close I am to the screen. I can get another foot or two as the tv is just sitting in front of my 3 monitors right now. I can't do much better than that without redesigning my whole office (desktops are built into the walls, so they don't move and have a wall behind them at all times).
 
Results after calibration:
I think this panel is going to be just fine for computer use.

The display can get FAR darker than necessary. To get 120cd/m^2 I had to bump the main brightness adjustment to "Bright" and then the brightness slider to 50%, contrast to 50% and backlight to 59%

It's got a slightly more narrow color gamut than my $1000 panel, but only barely. It exceeds sRGB and does not quite hit the full Adobe RGB gamut for green. For Red and Blue, it does meet or exceed AdobeRGB.

and it's 300 bucks!

upload_2019-2-4_15-3-17.pngupload_2019-2-4_15-5-52.png
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

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