About a year ago now I acquired a Seiki SE39UY04 37″ 4K TV as a monitor. Despite the 30Hz refresh rate and once or twice a day screen reset for 5 seconds it’s the best monitor I’ve ever worked on. A 4K display is an almost infinite amount of screen real estate. I regularly have 4 files up in vim displaying over 120 lines each. At $400 dollars it was a great way to jump into 4K and wait until the really good 4K monitors show up down the line.
Pros:
- 4 HD screens of stuff, regular have 4 1080P screens up on a single monitor.
- If you’re not gaming the 30Hz refresh rate has much less downside.
- It’s cheap enough that you won’t feel bad when you replace it a year or two down the road.
- It doubles as a 4K TV.
- After a year it hasn’t had any glitches.
- I can remote pair and still have 60-75% of my screen available.
Cons:
- 30 Hz is pretty noticeable at first and for gaming/fast updating.
- To share for pairing you generally need to drop the resolution down from 4K.
- It goes black a few times a day for a few seconds.
- It doesn’t really sleep since it’s not a monitor.
- Picture quality is fine for development work, but not great.
- It’s hard to see co-workers around it.
- If you share screens you’re constantly downsizing the resolution since almost no-one else has 4K yet.