What are typical prices for monitors?

I have a Lenovo t540p with the 3K res screen. I do like to have a dual monitor setup, however, and I'm thinking of buying another monitor.

What's the price of a good monitor? Particularly one that would match the one on this laptop.

 

Doesn´t that only have an Intel HD GPU?

I´d be surprised if you got any less than totally sucky performance out of running 2x 3k monitors with that.

 

Here are a few things to consider:

1) You're not going to find a desktop 3K monitor. That is a pretty unusual resolution that just started appearing in the past few months, and will only be found on laptops.

2) With your laptop, you're only going to be running productivity applications and video playback. Playing graphically-intense games on your laptop is going to be out of the question. But I assume you already know that, since your laptop is a business-oriented laptop to begin with.

3) Next, you need to select screen size (24" or 27") and resolution (1080p, 1440p, or 4K (2160p)). For reference, your current laptop is 3K (about 1620p).

4) You can go with many different manufacturers, that all offer monitors that have slight differences between each other. If you just want a quick-and-dirty easy answer, look at Dell Ultrasharp monitors. For reference:

Dell Ultrasharp 24" 1080p monitor: About $280.
Dell Ultrasharp 27" 1440p monitor: About $600.

You can find other monitors from other manufacturers that can be cheaper / more expensive. Or have more / fewer options. Or have slightly better / worse image quality. If you want to do that research, there are plenty of resources and review sites out there on the internet to help you.

But if you just want a quick-and-dirty answer, that doesn't require a lot of research, and gives you the assurances taht you're buying a high-quality product with great value for the price, it's hard to go wrong with a Dell Ultrasharp monitor.





P.S. Do not buy a 4K display (3840x2160 resolution). You'll find them out there, ranging anywhere from $700 - $2000 for 24", 27", and 30" sizes. Don't do it. No matter how tempted you are, no matter what advice other people give you... don't buy 4K right now.

It's an immature technology. Outputting to a 4K display is currently buggy, depending on your hardware and driver configuration. Windows does not scale fonts well to 4K resolutions, so text and icons will look tiny / weird / distorted. Plus, there isn't any 4K content. The only real practical use for 4K resolutions on computers right now is computer gaming, which you will not be able to do with your laptop.

Just trust me on this one. Under no circumstances should you buy a 4K display right now.

 

kent1146's answer is pretty good. As a reference, a TN 24" monitor (which will have poorer viewing angles compared to the UltraSharps) will cost circa $170. The quality of a decent one of those will be similar to a decent traditional laptop display. TN displays can be "good", but the IPS technology in the UltraSharps is generally considered to be better.

In the end it really depends on what you consider "good" and what you want to do with it. You'll generally pay more if you want a better viewing angle and better color accuracy, as well as a bigger screen and higher resolution. The "soft" features such as being able to tilt the display, rotate it to be taller rather than wider, and having a plethora of input options also tends to cost a little bit extra.

 

It will depend on the size and features, I have an Asus 21.5" 1080p IPS display that I pays ~170$ for. It's not the most feature rich, but the viewing angles are good and it still does ~99% sRGB and ~75% NTSC in terms of color reproduction. I have a cheaper TN LG of the same size beside it which cost 50$ less, but viewing angles and color reproduction aren't as good. I could pull the data on it when I get back home. Anyways, in my opinions, don't go cheap, but don't go super expensive either. You can find IPS panels that aren't too expensive and will give you decent color reproduction. I agree with the ultrasharp recommendation by the way.

One thing to note though: you may see differences on the same images between your two monitors without calibrating them, especially if you go cheap on one of the monitors.

I would select the display size based on how far from the monitor you'll be.

My monitor is an Asus VH229 by the way.