Seiki SE39UY04 39″ Class 4K Ultra HD 120Hz LED TV (Used as Monitor)
Lightning Review
Pros: Ultra cheap, 4K display
Cons: Tricky to get working right, bit of input lag, 30 Hz refresh rate maximum
Overall: Recommended for coders, not recommended for games or anything requiring higher framerates (e.g. video editing)
Where to Get It
- Amazon.com ($483.69 at the time of writing)
- Recommended add-on: active Minidisplay to HDMI adapter ($28.33 at time of writing)
Full Review
What my desktop looks like on the 4K monitor
To be clear, this review is specifically for using this TV as a monitor for a Macbook Pro Retina 2012.
Having a large 4K display gives you tons of space to work with. For a devops guy like myself, this is incredibly convenient. I can have my IDE, web browser, database interface, SSH sessions, and Skype all open and visible at the same time without having to tab through them all. In fact, when I first set this up, it seemed like too much room, if you can believe that.
However, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. The very first thing I noticed was that text was very blurry and hard to read. To correct this I had to turn the sharpness down on the TV to zero. That may seem counter-intuitive, but sharpness basically has edge detection that tries to make edges more visible from far away, and is not at all made for things as small and already-sharp as text. Essentially, you want the TV to just output things exactly as the computer gives it, without any post-processing.
The other immediate issue was getting the color balance correct. After tweaking it for a long time, I never managed to get it very good, but it was at least passable. I had to choose between either washed-out blacks, or not being able to tell the difference between blacks and dark greys. No matter what combination of brightness and contrast I used, nothing came out well.
However, the biggest problem was the input lag. It was really, really horrendous, to the point of making it unusable for me. I tried for two days, but that input lag slowed me down so much any time I needed to click on anything, that it really put a notable dent in my productivity. Not to mention being incredibly aggravating. So I put the display into storage, until I came across an article from a guy having similar problems who suggested an active Thunderbolt to HDMI adapter. I’d already tried a passive adapter, to no avail, but I figured $30 was a price worth paying if it worked. I also found this forum post with some other suggestions (which are more system-level and require going to the command line).
So, after doing all of that, the lag became bearable (though still noticeable). Here’s a video showing the lag after setting all of that up:
Conclusion
If you are in the market for a budget 4K monitor, this is absolutely your best bet. In terms of bang for your buck, it absolutely cannot be beat. However, be aware of the downsides and limitations.
