I will not change my monitor unless the old one is broken. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened few weeks back. Half of the screen suddenly showed reddish lines and the color balance becomes strange. I can still do some work using it, but it’s certainly not comfortable, especially when doing anything with Photoshop.

Started the search to replace my Full HD monitor (1080p) with 4K monitor, hoping I could get retina resolution powered by my Late 2012 Mac mini. Apparently I was hoping too much. My Late 2012 Mac mini can only produce 60Hz refresh rate on 2K monitor. There is hack to make 4K monitor works, but the refresh rate would be far below 60Hz, hence I decided to get 2K (Quad High Definition) monitor instead.

After a bit of research, I decided on Lenovo ThinkVision P24q-10. It is a bit bigger than my old HP Pavilion 23fi, but I think my desk can still handle it without any problem.

If 4K monitor provides 4x pixels of Full HD 1080p, 2K provides 4x pixels of HD 720p resolution. Hence, my new Lenovo monitor can display QHD (2560 x 1440) resolution, or I can set my Mac mini to show 720p in retina. I tried the retina resolution. It looked beautiful, but I ended up not having enough working space. I changed it to 1440p and everything looks rather small. After a bit of disappointment, I decided to set my 2K monitor to simply ignore its full power and give me 1080p instead.

From specs perspective, Lenovo ThinkVision P24q-10 is an IPS monitor with 300 cd/m2 brightness, 4 ms refresh time and 1000:1 contrast ratio. It can accept connection using HDMI 1.4 or DisplayPort 1.2, I use the later. The stand allows me to easily adjust the height of this monitor, as well as adjust the tilt. This monitor connects directly to power outlet without the need of external power brick. Three cables are included in the box: mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort, USB 3.0 and power cable.

The build quality of this monitor is solid. There’s around 5 mm of bezels on the left, top and right side of the monitor. Some people who plan to use P24q-10 in multiple displays setup might get disappointed with the 1cm gap between their monitors (5 mm from each), but for me it’s not a big deal.

Overall, I’m quite happy with this monitor and will continue to use it for my main computer at home. Even though I ended up not using the QHD resolution for daily use, I still get to use it occasionally to test some web pages that need hiDPI images, so it’s still occasionally used to its fullest specifications.