Really strange aspect ratio LG monitor

Are we slowly heading back towards more “square” monitors?

I’m totally intrigued but at the same time puzzled - maybe it’s just how huge the monitor is but I’m curious what the use case is - unless LG have been reading @darkmagistric’s posts

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Wish it had touch/pen support.

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It pivots, too (I think?). Kind of reminds of…

The 1991 Radius Pivot with which @Desertlap might have been involved if it was when he was at Radius.

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I was indeed on the engineering team. A product that was more than a bit ahead of its time, for better or worse.

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Maybe no tilt after all. Yes, it spins to any orientation.

As the guy in the video discovers, it’s very good for web design. And if I was still editing novel manuscripts in Word I would buy one in a hot second. The folks at LG surely identified other potential markets as well.

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We’ve heard that some of the engineers that worked on the LG wing now work for the display and laptop (gram specifically) groups. Hopefully we’ll see more innovation in other areas. And I haven’t seen one in the flesh yet, but I like the ideas behind this display, though I suspect it’s a niche market

Before I watched the video, I questioned this response. I like having a normal sized aspect ratio to test what the user will see, but I see that he is using it for the code writing and design software, and still uses his MBP as the screen to test what it will actual render as for the user. This is exactly how I use my 27" monitor with my MBP. If I had the budget for a monitor like this, it would be awesome for my workflow.

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I would love that monitor. As someone who has used many 21:9 aspect ratio monitors in portrait mode, the problem is its always too narrow. That square size is kind of perfect for portrait mode since its wide enough but still very portrait focused. And it should be easy enough with LG’s included software to slip the monitor essentially into 2 landscape monitors just vertically stacked upon one another. (of which I have a few of those too)

Another company Mobile Pixels is even putting our a similar monitor to the above LG, but as a single dual monitor rig.

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The bottom one should have a Wacom layer.

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That’s the conundrum right there. Last I heard, Wacom only made 16:9 panels now. But for creativity a more square design is better. Yet I also don’t want to shell out a bunch of money for a squarish creative monitor that doesn’t support pen.

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First "official " review I’ve seen. TLDR not for everyone, but if you need/want what it does well, a very good choice.

I’m still hoping we will get one submitted for test as I’m curious to see how some usage scenarios I have would actually work on this.

BTW: we’ve heard anecdotally that if you buy one, make sure it’s from a company that has a decent return policy since at the moment it apparently doesn’t play all that well with a lot of discrete graphic cards. Though apparently Intel’s integrated graphics ,including XE mostly work

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Neat. So this is a 16:18 monitor, meaning all they did is not slice it down into two 16:9 subpanels in the factory. That’s a cost-effective way to float a trial balloon for the viability of non-widescreen monitors in the market.

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So coincidentally, I was at a customer yesterday that actually purchased a couple of these for their lead writer and lead web designer respectively.

First off, the overall build quality is exceptional, even more so given it’s relatively low price point and the total size. Performance wise it’s excellent and is accurate out of the box. About the only thing I’d ding it for is that it could be a bit brighter, in other words fine in a cozy internal office , but possibly not in an open plan space with lots of natural lighting.

Second, the fact that it rotates is also surprisingly useful, at least for some of my work scenarios.

OTOH, while Windows is far better at display management generally than it used to be, like LGs ultrawide displays I think it could benefit from some custom window app management tools to take full advantage of it’s unique character.

@dstrauss at least for now, don’t even think about trying to use it with an M1 iPad with IOS 16. When I connected it to my iPad, it blinked both the LG and the internal display multiple times for “giving up” and going dark on both displays. OTOH it worked properly with an M2 MacBook Air, though MacOS window management is arguably a couple of steps back from Windows with “non standard” display size and aspect ratios.

LG DualUp Monitor Review: The 16:18 monitor you didn’t know you needed (xda-developers.com)

PS: The display comes with LG’s ergo display stand which is not a free standing stand but requires a permanent attachment to a desk or table. Though the stand is overbuilt in itself, it feels like you could hammer in tent stakes with it.

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One more comment. This display seems almost custom made for someone that does a lot of document comparisons. The writer I mentioned at the customer spends virtually all day every day with side-by-side comparisons of documents as she does with their highly technical and stylized customer documentation.

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That confirms my first impression. As I wrote then, if I was still doing freelance novel manuscript editing I would buy this in a hot second. It’s perfect. :smile_cat:

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My first thought was can I get Captain Kangaroo on it

Thought about it a lot more - this screen could be really useful as a second screen to view a comic or graphic novel page while you work on a dedicated smaller wacom enabled screen to produce the drawings and artwork.
My zbook and S8 tablet are great for doing individual panels on but the aspect ratio is horrible (for me) when I do a full page view.

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I’m a little at a loss as to why this would be better than their 43” monitor we’ve discussed around here before - they should just relabel it the “Quad Up” and keep trucking:

Keep in mind that this display as well as some of LG’s other higher end ultra wide displays have firmware that with a compatible (and compliant spec wise) host system allows things like appearing to the host OS as two separate displays.

That allows for instance a bit less hassle in trying to run multiple apps without futzing with things like Windows “snap to” which good as it generally is, is optimized for more standard display resolutions and aspect ratios. In this monitors specific case, older intel integrated graphic chipsets such as those in core I 10th gen.

OTOH, the “custom” functions can also confuse especially non Windows systems , which is likely why iPad Pro/IOS 16/Stage Manager seems to be a no go at present. However we’ve heard unofficially that LG is working on an IOS app to manage some of their more esoteric displays with an iPad, something that wasn’t possible prior to IOS16.

PS: Why it works on Windows is related to device enumeration (aka plug and play/pray) which on IOS is new save for support several common display aspect ratios and resolutions such as Full HD (1920x1080).

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