Every so often I get an email from a photographer, blog reader, asking me about the best monitor for photography. I always reply by dragging my feet, saying that it is a very complex subject to explain and that one day I would publish a detailed article focused on the subject.
I give long because I would not like to give an opinion lightly. When I make a recommendation I like to support it with facts, data and arguments. I do not want anyone to buy a monitor x because I say so. If I recommend a photography monitor, I have to explain why.
Well hey, today is the day. In this article I am going to explain what you have to take into account when choosing a monitor for photography, and I am going to give you my personal recommendation, that is, the only monitor for which I would personally put my hand in the fire.
I warn you, however, that this is an article aimed at people who are serious about photography, whether in the professional field, or amateurs for whom photography is not a simple passing whim.
In the article I am going to give you a lot of information and data, in order to share with you the little I know and that you can also decide. If you are in a hurry and want a quick recommendation, this article is not for you.
If you want to understand the subject of photography monitors well, this article is undoubtedly what you were looking for.
What is the best monitor for photography?
Before, as always, clear things:
At BdF we do not work with brands directly, at least not in a paid way. So this is an article written with the strictest sense of objectivity. Although I will give you my personal recommendation (brand and model) later, you will see that I give you the clues so that you can form your own personal criteria and go out and find the best monitor for photography for you (I teach you how to fish, instead of to give you the fish already ready).
In the article I try to be as objective as possible. The monitor model that I recommend below has me and the more than 700 people who have rated it 4.5 out of 5 on Amazon in love with me, but after all, it is still a “personal” recommendation from A server.
I’ll also tell you one thing, I’ve been dedicating myself to photography for more than 11 years. In all this time, many monitors have passed before my eyes, of all kinds, from the typical cheap “generic” monitor, to the most specialized and expensive, of all sizes. I’ve tried HP monitors, LG monitors, Apple iMacs that have it all built in, and many more. TN, VA, IPS type panels. Flat, curved. Full HD, 4K…
So, although you have to be humble in life, I think I know something about monitors for photographers (and I’m still learning, yes 😉 ).
One more thing before getting to the heart of the matter: I am eager to work on these super-detailed guides with which I try to help as many people as possible. If you find this contribution “useful”, and decide by chance to purchase the monitor that I recommend later, by doing so through the link that I leave you below, BdF receives a small commission, very small but that makes us very excited and allows us to cover part of the madness of costs involved in setting up and maintaining a website at the BdF level. Obviously, without commitment. You can buy your monitor elsewhere, but if you do it by following the link below you will be helping us in return.
Come on, let’s get down to business.
What does the best monitor for photography have to have?
When I recommend a product, I like to first “reason” why. I hate the fanaticism that many people show when it comes to defending a certain brand. To hell with brands! When I want to buy a monitor to use it focused on photography, I want the monitor to meet a series of requirements, whatever the name of the brand is.
So, before recommending my favorite model (the one I use on a personal level), I am going to tell you, first, what things you should look for in a monitor if you want to use it, among other things, for photography:
- Inches: the first thing is a basic thing, the monitor should have a size in inches large enough to allow us to see the photos with a sufficient level of detail, and at the same time small enough so that we do not have to turn our eyes from side to side as if we were watching a tennis match. A monitor that is too big would force us to go around turning our neck from one end to the other and believe me, I tried a 38-inch monitor for a while and ended up with a torticollis 😖.
- Resolution: for these times, as you put it, yours would be for the monitor to be 4K. Beware that, right now, there are monitors on the market that are already 8K, so expecting the monitor to be 4K is not an exaggeration.
- Panel Type: There are several types of “panels” on the monitor market. The panel is basically the glass that lights up showing us the image (speaking soon, come on, because it’s not glass). There are several types of panels, but the most popular are TN and IPS. Both types have their pros and cons, but in my opinion IPS have far more pros than cons. IPS panel monitors usually offer a very wide viewing angle, no matter what angle you look at the monitor from, your eyes will see the same colors and shades. They also tend to have a better contrast ratio, with more true-to-life blacks.
Disadvantage of IPS panels? That they have a relatively slow refresh rate and theoretically slow response times, but of course, we are talking about milliseconds. People who are dedicated to video games and the entire gaming world may notice it, but if you want it mainly as a monitor for photography, or even video, it does not affect you at all.
Therefore, in my case, after having tried panels of various types, for photography I recommend and I will stick with IPS without a doubt. - Homogeneity: Some monitor models offer a non-uniform level of brightness and colors. Depending on whether you are looking at the center of the panel, or at the corners, you see one color and one lighting level or another. Whoever dedicates the monitor to watch movies, series on Netflix (what series are you guys following right now? Leave me a recommendation in the comments below), or YouTube videos, will not mind noticing a certain lack of homogeneity throughout the panel. , but those of us who spend a lot of time developing and editing our photos, need to have a “window” from which to see our photography as faithful to reality as possible.
So, an essential requirement: the ideal monitor should offer an impeccable level of homogeneity. - Color depth: many people get confused with this concept, because it is always explained fatally. I like to explain it with a very simple analogy: imagine that I place you in front of a beautiful landscape full of colors, and I ask you to paint it for me. In front I leave you a clean canvas, and a palette with only 2 colors. You will paint the landscape for me as best you can, but let’s be realistic, no matter how talented you are, it will be difficult for your painting to reflect the “richness” of the color of the landscape in front of you.
Come on, how about I double the amount of colors for you? This time I’m going to put in the palette 4 different colors, and a new canvas so you can paint that colorful landscape again. Although far from being able to capture the variety of colors in the landscape, this time your painting will be somewhat closer to reality, since I am leaving you not just 2, but 4 colors to combine.
And we could continue like this…
Let’s just say that the more colors you have in your color palette, the more accurately you can represent that colorful landscape.
This analogy, taken to the field of monitors, is called “Bits”. The more “Bits” the monitor has, the more faithfully it will reproduce the photographs. The fewer bits, the fewer tones it will have.
To show it to you in a slightly more graphic way, I leave you this illustration that I borrow from B&H.
But how many colors are inside each “Bit”?
See, an 8-bit monitor would offer 16.7 million shades of color. You’ll say “Wow! That’s pretty cool isn’t it?”
So get this: a 10-bit monitor would offer a billion colors.
I don’t know if you’re following me, but going from 8-bit to 10-bit means going from a gamut of 16 million colors to a gamut of ONE BILLION colors.
8 against 10.
16 against a thousand.
🤯
Even my head explodes, but stick with this idea: the more bits, the better color representation.
Come on, let’s continue with our list of important features that the best photography monitor should have.
- Reproduction of Color Space: I do not want to extend myself here in excess, if you do not know what Color Space is, I recommend you take a look at our article here.
The important thing here is that we need a Color Space rendering level as high as possible in the Adobe RGB standard, close to 100% if possible.
There are other standards like sRGB, but Adobe RGB is more demanding so if a monitor has 100% or close to that percentage in the sRGB standard, well, it’s not bad, but if it gives me those 100% in the standard Adobe RGB, then it’s milk.
- That it can be calibrated: if we were talking about any monitor, this would not be very important, but to develop and edit photos on the computer, you need the monitor to interpret the colors as faithfully as possible to reality and, in addition, to do so throughout its life cycle.
The point is that most monitors come with factory settings that do not always have to match the color calibration that we need. Also, over time, the settings of most monitors will change due to the passage of time.
The solution?
That the monitor allows calibration.
A good monitor for photography should allow it to be calibrated.
- Connections: the more diverse the ports offered by the monitor, the better connection possibilities it will allow us. HDMI, DisplayPort, USB ports, etc.
- Specialized brand: I have left this factor for last. It has a relative importance, but it does. When I buy a monitor as a photographer, I like the monitor to be made by a brand that specializes in the subject. A monitor designed by engineers specialized in monitors and panels is not the same as a monitor made by a brand that makes refrigerators, microwaves, air conditioners or… I don’t know… blenders!
This is relatively unimportant, okay? We are not going to tear our hair out either, but all things being equal, I prefer to buy a monitor from a brand that is as “specialized” as possible.
As you can see, this list of “requirements” is very long, but you will have noticed that I have not touched on an important point: the price.
What about the price?
How much does a monitor cost for photographers?
Let’s first talk about a generic monitor, and then we move on to…