Older Models vs New?

[Ginger Penguin]

Hi all,

 

I'm in the market for a new external monitor to make my video editing setup a bit more comfortable. I'm generally a great advocate for buying things used as you can get great deals. But I'm wondering whether that's true here. For instance, I'm looking at an LG monitor from about 5-6 years ago that, according to specs, covers 100% of sRGB and 99.5% of Adobe RGB and is DCI 4K rather than UHD which I wouldn't mind but isn't essential. For about the same price as I've found those models, I could get a new LG or Dell monitor that has the tradeoff of being a 27" rather than 31" but that's fine. These all come with new features like at least some form of HDR, newer HDMI and DP standards etc. but I'm wondering whether in the last few years whether manufacturers have significantly improved things like contrast ratio/black levels and calibration (though I do intend to get a calibrator myself, I'm aware that even after calibration, not all monitors will be capable of producing the same output) because that could mean that buying a monitor from 6 years ago that may have been priced higher may not actually be good value anymore vs a recent one.

 

Of course, I could be talking a load of rubbish but I'd be interested to be told one way or the other! Any advice is greatly appreciated.

[jaslion]

Colour accurate displays from years ago will still be colour accurate now. Those 100% this 99% that numbers don't mean much if you can't find a review on their accuracy as some that are advertised to have colour accurate displays sometimes completely miss the mark on certain spots.

 

The main advantage of buying a new monitor is not much for video editing. For gaming it usually means new features like gsync and freesync highger refresh rates and all that. For colouring work monitors there are people that do professional work that still use their 8 year old eizo or whatever and it's still accurate.

[Ginger Penguin]

Ah, yes. On the pro/enterprise end I would certainly imagine things to hold up but probably less so on the consumer end which is certainly where I'm looking. I only do a very small amount of non-intense gaming so gaming features are not high on my list. I can find reviews from that time for sure but what was considered good value at that time might not be today which is what prompted me to ask the question. That said, there is a video on the monitor I'm looking at now on LTT from February 2015 and unfortunately there's no measured data in that video beyond the calibration report that comes with the monitor but, I don't know, he seemed happy with it!

[Rocketdog2112]

Here's a shot of a 2008 Dell 3007wfp-hc 30" monitor i picked up a couple of days ago. Still great picture quality for a 12 year old monitor...