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Dell unveils 8K 32-inch monitor at CES 2017

106 points by dmmalam 10y ago

wbond 10y ago
I feel like 32" at a high PPI is hitting the point of perfection in a display. The 32" size gives a generous amount of space for multiple programs to be visible on the screen at once, without being too large for normal desk usage. Trying to use something like a 47" inch TV results in lots of head movement to scan the entire screen. For anyone who has used a high PPI screen, the smoothness of text and geometric shapes is beautiful. Before this the two compromises were a 32" 4K, which is a normal PPI screen, or a 27" 5K, which doesn't have the same real estate for 4-up viewing. Alas, $5k is clearly a steep price filtering out all but the largest hardware budgets. Considering the price of the 32" 4K Dell dropped by 50% over a few years, hopefully these will be sub-$2k by 2019.
- deleted 10y ago
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- michaelbuckbee 10y ago
  I use a 49" 4K tv as a monitor and you're right. Oddly since I'm using a standing desk it's really helpful (and natural) to lean a bit to see upper left and right areas of the screen. That being said the overall experience is fantastic and a serious productivity boost. I'm on the lookout now for a 55" or larger 4K with a curved screen as I think that would help on both fronts.
  - laurieg 10y ago
    How do you find the brightness an pixel arrangement using a 4k tv? I have been eyeing up a 43 inch tv as a monitor for a while.
    - lrizzo 10y ago
      Of all the problems you can have with this setting, brightness is not one of them. I have been using 4k 40" tvs and monitors with OSX and FreeBSD/linux for over 2 years now and overall I am quite happy with the choice. I wouldn't go much above 40", as it would involve too much head movement (while sitting at least, I find myself comfortably using only 2/3 of the height). One annoying problem especially with older or low end TVs was definitely lag. Even after disabling all "picture enhancements" and setting the equivalent of gaming mode, many TVs in 2014-2015 had high lag, from the 120ms that even Samsung/LG were showing, up to the 300+ms of Seiki and Haier and other no-name TVs. That makes the monitor unusable even for text editing. From personal experience, 2016 Samsung at least are much better, but better try them before buying. Next comes viewing angle and color -- cheap panels have a limited vertical viewing angle, and sometimes even limited color depth. Then you have to fight with OS and applications. For some combinations of OSX and TVs, I had the OS applying non-removable overscan after identifying the screen as a TV. OSX also does antialiasing which results in blurred characters with small fonts in terminals. I haven't found a good bitmapped font to use. Apps also have problems, e.g. chrome on OSX does not refresh well the bottom bar when you move windows between the 4k and the retina screen. Or, some video players fail to go full screen on 4k.
  - phkahler 10y ago
    >> I'm on the lookout now for a 55" or larger 4K with a curved screen as I think that would help on both fronts. Check out the LG OLED55C6P. As the name indicates 55" old Curved. Go to the store and sit right in front of it as though it's on your desk. I really want that at home and at work. Oh, and there's a 65CP6 as well...
- bluedino 10y ago
  27" is as big as I find usable.
  - StavrosK 10y ago
    24" here. A friend gave me a Dell U2711b (and I had an LG 27") and I have to turn my head too much. I got a Dell P2416 and it's the perfect size for me.
    - jacobolus 10y ago
      Try pushing the larger display slightly further away until it covers the same field of view as the smaller display. Getting the display to 4+ feet away from your face will noticeably reduce eye strain. You don’t need your eyes to converge as much, and you don’t need to focus as close, leaving your muscles closer to their relaxed position. For work where you’re constantly changing your gaze from near to far (esp. e.g. working outside) or taking frequent breaks to walk around so your eye muscles are flexing back and forth, it’s not as big a deal, but if you’re in a relatively static position focusing close all day long, the extra distance is nice. (Actually, both those Dell displays you mentioned are pretty low resolution. If you get a chance, try some of the 200+ ppi ones. Makes a huge difference even for text/code.)
      - StavrosK 10y ago
        That needs a really deep desk, although I think I'm already at around 4 ft. About the PPI, I don't know, I'm already having framerate problems with Ubuntu with QHD, doubling the pixels sounds like I'm going to have a terrible time. Not to mention my eyes, good as they are, are probably not going to be able to resolve the difference between 130 ppi and 200ppi.
        dpark 10y ago
        > probably not going to be able to resolve the difference between 130 ppi and 200ppi. Probably not if you actually have your monitor 4 feet away.
- emu 10y ago
  I'm a happy owner of a Dell UP2715K 27" 5k monitor, which is around 220ppi. At 2x scaling, I find it to be a very pleasant pixel density for working with code; text looks gorgeous. My only complaint is I wish the monitor was a touch larger. I would be very interested in a 32" 8k display when the price drops a little bit; 4k 32" displays just don't have a high enough pixel density for my taste.
  - lobster_johnson 10y ago
    Looks like a MacBook Pro 2015 or earlier can drive the 5K at full resolution at 60Hz by using both Thunderbolt ports? If so, that's pretty good.
    - _ph_ 10y ago
      Yes, it can. A colleague of mine is driving his 5k Dell Display with the MB Pro.
    - emu 10y ago
      Yes. I use the Dell display with a 2015 Macbook Pro, using dual Displayport cables. It works pretty well. I think you need the model with the AMD M370X GPU to drive an external 5k display. I also use the Dell 5k monitor with a PC with a Geforce 980 GPU; it works surprisingly well in Windows 10. (You can even play some games at 5k ---- Civilization VI is really pretty at 5k!) Linux support is woefully bad, however. I guess this will change as these HiDPI configurations become more common.
pitaj 10y ago
When I heard about the 4k OLED 120Hz Dell monitor from last year, I immediately thought that that was the perfection of display technology for me. OLED seems to have the best of all worlds: - high refresh rates - fast response times - deep blacks - good contrast - wide viewing angles The only issue that I've seen brought up about OLEDs is possible burn-in, but hasn't that issue been solved? Seems like Samsung and LG are confident in their OLED offerings. Why hasn't this technology come to the PC? I know for a fact that the demand exists. Enthusiasts and gamers would absolutely fall over for an OLED display like the Dell UP3017Q.
- jsheard 10y ago
  Sadly the Dell UP3017Q is vaporware - we're still waiting for it to start shipping a full year after it was announced, and Dell haven't given a reason for the delay. I suspect they did run into issues with burn-in. OLED TVs tend to avoid that now, but PC monitors have to deal with a lot more static images for much longer periods.
  - Sephr 10y ago
    LG OLED TVs partially mitigate that by using WOLED (white OLED pixels topped with color filters).
- johncolanduoni 10y ago
  Have they solved color accuracy yet? In the past manufacturers would compensate for varying rates of decay of the materials in the screen for different colors by overdriving some, making color accuracy inconsistent over time. IIRC that was the reason Apple gave for avoiding OLEDs in the past, although whether it was actually that or supply chain issues I'm not sure.
- dghughes 10y ago
  Isn't the OLED problem just the blue pixel degrading? I don't think the red and green are affected.
deleted 10y ago
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shmerl 10y ago
I wish Dell would sell affordable high resolution 16:10 monitors and not limit them to 1920x1200 only.
Sephr 10y ago
For $5000, I'd much rather buy the 4K 120hz HDR 0.1ms response time OLED monitor Dell announced in CES 2016 (the UP3017Q). Unfortunately it seems like it may never come out. Hopefully Dell will try again with microLED in the future. An 8K 60Hz LCD in 32 inches seems like a waste for literally every application I can think of except medical diagnostics (and even then, many doctors might not have the vision to benefit from this over 5K). The only practical uses for 8K are in completely different form factors and using different screen technologies. The sweet spots for every current use case (gaming, content creation & consumption, web browsing, reading, medical diagnostics) that are possible with HDMI 2.1 are probably as follows: Desktop monitor: 27" 5K 165Hz HDR OLED/microLED display VR HMD: 2" 4000x4000 165Hz HDR OLED/microLED displays per-eye AR HMD: 2" 8000px diameter HDR ???Hz fiber scanning displays[1] per-eye [1]: https://gpuofthebrain.com/blog/2016/7/22/how-magic-leap-will-work https://gpuofthebrain.com/blog/2016/7/22/how-magic-leap-will...
- phkahler 10y ago
  I've wanting an LG OLED55C6P for a monitor. It's a 55" 4K curved TV with HDR. I figure it's like 4 27" 1080 monitors without the borders in the middle. It's also vertically taller than one of those monitors in portrait orientation while still having tons of space to the side of said portrait. As I'm old enough to need progressive lenses, I don't really think there's any value in having higher pixel density than 4K at that size.
  - Sephr 10y ago
    The input lag on all LG OLED HDR TVs (including the latest gen) is atrocious if you plan on gaming. Current gen was only down to 60ms in "game mode" when it was first released, and is still at least 34ms with all of the latest updates. I still haven't had a reason to replace my 27" 1440p 120hz IPS (with 5ms input lag) that I bought in 2012 for $500. I've been waiting for OLED/microLED for quite a while.
    - brianwawok 10y ago
      I gave up PC gaming to spend time out of my office. 4k TVs seem pretty sweet for coding and terms.
pi-rat 10y ago
Can the current generation macbook pro drive one of these?
- Sephr 10y ago
  It only supports DisplayPort 1.2 (x2 on some Thunderbolt 3 ports), so not without using multiple DisplayPort links. HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4 (found on modern GPUs) can both drive this though.
  - visarga 10y ago
    > HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4 (found on modern GPUs) That's what should make Tim Cook feel ashamed when reading. His laptops are so obsolete that "modern" doesn't apply. Even for the current gen.
Sophistifunk 10y ago
I've just replaced a 32" 4K (4096x) LG with a pair of 28" UHD displays on my main workstation, and I could definitely see benefits to upgrading to 5k at this size, but 8k is just nuts. My dream is get the PPI somewhere around 5k at 27/28", but use all that bandwidth for an ultrawide display, so you don't need it to be so tall and don't have the issues you get with 2x displays, such as a bevel in the middle and no real ideal layout.
- losvedir 10y ago
  > use all that bandwidth for an ultrawide display Responding from my Dell u3417w, I have to agree that ultrawide is a great form factor for a monitor. The PPI of my monitor is about that of an Apple Thunderbolt display, so I do miss the "retina" experience of my Macbook Pro driving the monitor, but overall having so much horizontal real estate is glorious. I think my dream, too, would be a monitor with these dimensions but a higher PPI.
  - Sophistifunk 10y ago
    Even after months with the glorious panel in the LG and using the 15" retina as second display, going back to big ole' country pixels was almost a price I was willing to pay for ultrawide. I think the 2 x 28"s is the right choice for me, but only by a gnat's dick. If I could have beaten my Mac into driving the LG at a non-2x scale, I'd have kept with it, it's such a nice panel. But now it's on my Win 10 box, which supports it perfectly; that was a very pleasant surprise.
    - evadne 10y ago
      http://resxtreme.com http://resxtreme.com or http://displaymenu.milchimgemuesefach.de http://displaymenu.milchimgemuesefach.de can help your use case
  - lobster_johnson 10y ago
    I have that Dell at work. It's... interesting. I am not happy about its brightness level -- it's noticeably dimmer than an Apple Cinema Display, and turning brightness/contrast up just gives you a washed-out image. The other thing is that the width, for me, doesn't add much utility. I like my windows centered so I am looking straight ahead at what I am working on, and keeping certain things (like log outputs and dashboards) in the periphery of my vision is just distracting. I know some people enjoy tiled window arrangements and vertically-split editor windows, but that stuff just doesn't do anything for me. So I am not using the horizontal space very efficiently. The best use of the width is being able to read wide diffs or other things that go side by side. I also couldn't get it to work as a USB hub, not sure why. Thunderbolt would have been better, at any rate -- then you'd only need two cables instead of three. I am considering replacing my home monitor, a Cinema Display, with the Dell 27-inch 4K, but it's just so damn ugly. It's got the thick bezel instead of the "infinity edge" one or the black glass of the 5K (which I can't buy since it requires two DisplayPort connections).
filereaper 10y ago
"4K ought to be enough for anyone."
- nimchimpsky 10y ago
  But in this case, as the eye can't discern any difference (at reasonable distances) - it really is ? I don't get why there is this push - pixels sell I guess.
  - Matthias247 10y ago
    On Desktop monitors you can still see the difference. I have an 28" UHD screen. It's really nice, and text looks a lot better than on the old FHD screen it replaced. However it still looks a little bit worse than my MacBook Pro Retina screen. Which also makes sense when you compare 155dpi to 230dpi. Whether 8k now is necessary or 6k would be totally sufficient - don't know. But I guess it's easier to sell the double resolution.
    - nimchimpsky 10y ago
      From the article "A 4K panel of the same physical size is retina at 25 inches. An 8K panel hits that mark at the one-foot mark, but precious few people use a 32-inch display while sitting just 12 inches from the screen."
  - userbinator 10y ago
    Personally, I don't really want such a high DPI monitor either, since I use pixel fonts like xterm 6x13 a lot, especially for coding, and they become either unreadably small or blurrily scaled. All antialiasing looks blurry to me, and much of what made me upgrade to an LCD from a CRT many years ago was because they were so sharp you could actually see the corners on the pixels.
rch 10y ago
Great to see. I think the previous high-water mark was the IBM T221 IPS Display (3840x2400), sold between 2001 and 2005, which was also fairly expensive as I recall.
- huxley 10y ago
  Really? LG has 5K monitors at the Apple Store with 5120x2880 res, the same that's been available for a couple of years on the 27" iMac
  - rch 10y ago
    I stand corrected - thanks!
starseeker 10y ago
When I was in a hardware store last year, I had a chance to compare a 4k and 5k iMac side by side. IIRC, the size was the same and it came down to PPI. For casual use 4k was plenty, but where 5k really proved itself for me was small terminal text. I was able to take the font size in terminals down noticeably smaller on the 5k while still having readable text. That's why the 8k interests me - when doing programming, my particular work-flow usually ends up with lots of open terminals, documents, and web pages as information and source code are woven together into a program. The smaller the readable text, the more I can fit on the screen at once and see at the same time. With 275 PPI and large screen size all in one, this sounds like it might be the dream coding monitor...
- cududa 10y ago
  It always baffles me when people say "There doesn't need to be any higher PPI! We've already maxed out on the human eye perceiving pixels!" Sure that's lovely, but that doesn't mean graphics and text won't gain more fidelity/ use cases from higher PPI. Just because you can't focus on individual pixels and pick them out doesn't mean your brain caps out at percieving more than 225 PPI..
yarg 10y ago
If it really is super retina resolution, it can also be used in a manner which simulates a (much) higher colour depth. Although given the fact that it already covers the entire colour gamut of several different specifications, that probably won't be too useful. I imagine you could also use it to simulate HDR - but I'd suspect that sources capable of pushing 8K already support it. All in all, not much point to this comment.
- spitfire 10y ago
  Flashbacks to writing fake mode routines for mode-Q back in the DOS days. Good times. Please don't actually do this for real though. The tech will catch up so fast it isn't worth the effort.
  - yarg 10y ago
    I'd do it for the fun, rather than the value. There'd also be the possibility for some rather interesting complex simulated modes. Hexagonal pixels, for example.
WalterBright 10y ago
I'd like a picture window sized (or even wall sized!) display I could hang on the wall. I'd love to be able to select a "view" from any live camera in the world.
aceperry 10y ago
Dell is really pushing the envelope when it comes to monitors. I was tempted to get a 4K monitor during the holiday season, but decided not to when I found out that I had to upgrade all of my graphics cards and laptops.
SimeVidas 10y ago
Who else here would rather have a HiDPI 21:9 monitor than a 8K one? Afaik, we still have to choose between HiDPI and 21:9.
TwoBit 10y ago
I'll take HDR over 8K.
allenleein 10y ago
Now i just need to upgrade my eyes, and possibly my brain, to take in all those pixels.
cowardlydragon 10y ago
What the hell, the ideal size for 4k resolution scaled from a 30" 2560x1600 is about 40". What is with these small 8k/4k monitors? Useless. I just buy TVs with HDMI 2.0. 50" 4k tvs are, what, $400 these days? I get more pixels can be nice, and 8k is probably where that comes into play, but if I have 8,192 lines of resolution, I want some screen real estate too.
- _ph_ 10y ago
  Having switched from a 30" 2560 to a 27" 5k display, I do sometimes miss the screen estate, but the increased resolution is really nice. Text rendering become much better, and it gets really stunning, if you display large images (> 15 megapixel) full screen.
gomijacogeo 10y ago
Perhaps, at some point, we can declare victory on the PPI axis and turn some of that spatial resolution into a wider gamut with a couple more primaries?
ksec 10y ago
May be it is just me, the ~220PPI on 4K / 5K iMac looks a little fizzy when zoomed. i.e The "larger text" option on OSX. May be 8K will help? I dont understand why an 4/5K monitor will still look fizzy.

106 points by dmmalam 10y ago

wbond 10y ago

I feel like 32" at a high PPI is hitting the point of perfection in a display. The 32" size gives a generous amount of space for multiple programs to be visible on the screen at once, without being too large for normal desk usage. Trying to use something like a 47" inch TV results in lots of head movement to scan the entire screen. For anyone who has used a high PPI screen, the smoothness of text and geometric shapes is beautiful. Before this the two compromises were a 32" 4K, which is a normal PPI screen, or a 27" 5K, which doesn't have the same real estate for 4-up viewing. Alas, $5k is clearly a steep price filtering out all but the largest hardware budgets. Considering the price of the 32" 4K Dell dropped by 50% over a few years, hopefully these will be sub-$2k by 2019.

deleted 10y ago
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michaelbuckbee 10y ago
I use a 49" 4K tv as a monitor and you're right. Oddly since I'm using a standing desk it's really helpful (and natural) to lean a bit to see upper left and right areas of the screen. That being said the overall experience is fantastic and a serious productivity boost. I'm on the lookout now for a 55" or larger 4K with a curved screen as I think that would help on both fronts.
- laurieg 10y ago
  How do you find the brightness an pixel arrangement using a 4k tv? I have been eyeing up a 43 inch tv as a monitor for a while.
  - lrizzo 10y ago
    Of all the problems you can have with this setting, brightness is not one of them. I have been using 4k 40" tvs and monitors with OSX and FreeBSD/linux for over 2 years now and overall I am quite happy with the choice. I wouldn't go much above 40", as it would involve too much head movement (while sitting at least, I find myself comfortably using only 2/3 of the height). One annoying problem especially with older or low end TVs was definitely lag. Even after disabling all "picture enhancements" and setting the equivalent of gaming mode, many TVs in 2014-2015 had high lag, from the 120ms that even Samsung/LG were showing, up to the 300+ms of Seiki and Haier and other no-name TVs. That makes the monitor unusable even for text editing. From personal experience, 2016 Samsung at least are much better, but better try them before buying. Next comes viewing angle and color -- cheap panels have a limited vertical viewing angle, and sometimes even limited color depth. Then you have to fight with OS and applications. For some combinations of OSX and TVs, I had the OS applying non-removable overscan after identifying the screen as a TV. OSX also does antialiasing which results in blurred characters with small fonts in terminals. I haven't found a good bitmapped font to use. Apps also have problems, e.g. chrome on OSX does not refresh well the bottom bar when you move windows between the 4k and the retina screen. Or, some video players fail to go full screen on 4k.
- phkahler 10y ago
  >> I'm on the lookout now for a 55" or larger 4K with a curved screen as I think that would help on both fronts. Check out the LG OLED55C6P. As the name indicates 55" old Curved. Go to the store and sit right in front of it as though it's on your desk. I really want that at home and at work. Oh, and there's a 65CP6 as well...
bluedino 10y ago
27" is as big as I find usable.
- StavrosK 10y ago
  24" here. A friend gave me a Dell U2711b (and I had an LG 27") and I have to turn my head too much. I got a Dell P2416 and it's the perfect size for me.
  - jacobolus 10y ago
    Try pushing the larger display slightly further away until it covers the same field of view as the smaller display. Getting the display to 4+ feet away from your face will noticeably reduce eye strain. You don’t need your eyes to converge as much, and you don’t need to focus as close, leaving your muscles closer to their relaxed position. For work where you’re constantly changing your gaze from near to far (esp. e.g. working outside) or taking frequent breaks to walk around so your eye muscles are flexing back and forth, it’s not as big a deal, but if you’re in a relatively static position focusing close all day long, the extra distance is nice. (Actually, both those Dell displays you mentioned are pretty low resolution. If you get a chance, try some of the 200+ ppi ones. Makes a huge difference even for text/code.)
    - StavrosK 10y ago
      That needs a really deep desk, although I think I'm already at around 4 ft. About the PPI, I don't know, I'm already having framerate problems with Ubuntu with QHD, doubling the pixels sounds like I'm going to have a terrible time. Not to mention my eyes, good as they are, are probably not going to be able to resolve the difference between 130 ppi and 200ppi.
      - dpark 10y ago
        > probably not going to be able to resolve the difference between 130 ppi and 200ppi. Probably not if you actually have your monitor 4 feet away.
emu 10y ago
I'm a happy owner of a Dell UP2715K 27" 5k monitor, which is around 220ppi. At 2x scaling, I find it to be a very pleasant pixel density for working with code; text looks gorgeous. My only complaint is I wish the monitor was a touch larger. I would be very interested in a 32" 8k display when the price drops a little bit; 4k 32" displays just don't have a high enough pixel density for my taste.
- lobster_johnson 10y ago
  Looks like a MacBook Pro 2015 or earlier can drive the 5K at full resolution at 60Hz by using both Thunderbolt ports? If so, that's pretty good.
  - _ph_ 10y ago
    Yes, it can. A colleague of mine is driving his 5k Dell Display with the MB Pro.
  - emu 10y ago
    Yes. I use the Dell display with a 2015 Macbook Pro, using dual Displayport cables. It works pretty well. I think you need the model with the AMD M370X GPU to drive an external 5k display. I also use the Dell 5k monitor with a PC with a Geforce 980 GPU; it works surprisingly well in Windows 10. (You can even play some games at 5k ---- Civilization VI is really pretty at 5k!) Linux support is woefully bad, however. I guess this will change as these HiDPI configurations become more common.

pitaj 10y ago

When I heard about the 4k OLED 120Hz Dell monitor from last year, I immediately thought that that was the perfection of display technology for me. OLED seems to have the best of all worlds: - high refresh rates - fast response times - deep blacks - good contrast - wide viewing angles The only issue that I've seen brought up about OLEDs is possible burn-in, but hasn't that issue been solved? Seems like Samsung and LG are confident in their OLED offerings. Why hasn't this technology come to the PC? I know for a fact that the demand exists. Enthusiasts and gamers would absolutely fall over for an OLED display like the Dell UP3017Q.

jsheard 10y ago
Sadly the Dell UP3017Q is vaporware - we're still waiting for it to start shipping a full year after it was announced, and Dell haven't given a reason for the delay. I suspect they did run into issues with burn-in. OLED TVs tend to avoid that now, but PC monitors have to deal with a lot more static images for much longer periods.
- Sephr 10y ago
  LG OLED TVs partially mitigate that by using WOLED (white OLED pixels topped with color filters).
johncolanduoni 10y ago
Have they solved color accuracy yet? In the past manufacturers would compensate for varying rates of decay of the materials in the screen for different colors by overdriving some, making color accuracy inconsistent over time. IIRC that was the reason Apple gave for avoiding OLEDs in the past, although whether it was actually that or supply chain issues I'm not sure.
dghughes 10y ago
Isn't the OLED problem just the blue pixel degrading? I don't think the red and green are affected.

deleted 10y ago

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shmerl 10y ago

I wish Dell would sell affordable high resolution 16:10 monitors and not limit them to 1920x1200 only.

Sephr 10y ago

For $5000, I'd much rather buy the 4K 120hz HDR 0.1ms response time OLED monitor Dell announced in CES 2016 (the UP3017Q). Unfortunately it seems like it may never come out. Hopefully Dell will try again with microLED in the future. An 8K 60Hz LCD in 32 inches seems like a waste for literally every application I can think of except medical diagnostics (and even then, many doctors might not have the vision to benefit from this over 5K). The only practical uses for 8K are in completely different form factors and using different screen technologies. The sweet spots for every current use case (gaming, content creation & consumption, web browsing, reading, medical diagnostics) that are possible with HDMI 2.1 are probably as follows: Desktop monitor: 27" 5K 165Hz HDR OLED/microLED display VR HMD: 2" 4000x4000 165Hz HDR OLED/microLED displays per-eye AR HMD: 2" 8000px diameter HDR ???Hz fiber scanning displays[1] per-eye [1]: https://gpuofthebrain.com/blog/2016/7/22/how-magic-leap-will-work https://gpuofthebrain.com/blog/2016/7/22/how-magic-leap-will...

phkahler 10y ago
I've wanting an LG OLED55C6P for a monitor. It's a 55" 4K curved TV with HDR. I figure it's like 4 27" 1080 monitors without the borders in the middle. It's also vertically taller than one of those monitors in portrait orientation while still having tons of space to the side of said portrait. As I'm old enough to need progressive lenses, I don't really think there's any value in having higher pixel density than 4K at that size.
- Sephr 10y ago
  The input lag on all LG OLED HDR TVs (including the latest gen) is atrocious if you plan on gaming. Current gen was only down to 60ms in "game mode" when it was first released, and is still at least 34ms with all of the latest updates. I still haven't had a reason to replace my 27" 1440p 120hz IPS (with 5ms input lag) that I bought in 2012 for $500. I've been waiting for OLED/microLED for quite a while.
  - brianwawok 10y ago
    I gave up PC gaming to spend time out of my office. 4k TVs seem pretty sweet for coding and terms.

pi-rat 10y ago

Can the current generation macbook pro drive one of these?

Sephr 10y ago
It only supports DisplayPort 1.2 (x2 on some Thunderbolt 3 ports), so not without using multiple DisplayPort links. HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4 (found on modern GPUs) can both drive this though.
- visarga 10y ago
  > HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4 (found on modern GPUs) That's what should make Tim Cook feel ashamed when reading. His laptops are so obsolete that "modern" doesn't apply. Even for the current gen.

Sophistifunk 10y ago

I've just replaced a 32" 4K (4096x) LG with a pair of 28" UHD displays on my main workstation, and I could definitely see benefits to upgrading to 5k at this size, but 8k is just nuts. My dream is get the PPI somewhere around 5k at 27/28", but use all that bandwidth for an ultrawide display, so you don't need it to be so tall and don't have the issues you get with 2x displays, such as a bevel in the middle and no real ideal layout.

losvedir 10y ago
> use all that bandwidth for an ultrawide display Responding from my Dell u3417w, I have to agree that ultrawide is a great form factor for a monitor. The PPI of my monitor is about that of an Apple Thunderbolt display, so I do miss the "retina" experience of my Macbook Pro driving the monitor, but overall having so much horizontal real estate is glorious. I think my dream, too, would be a monitor with these dimensions but a higher PPI.
- Sophistifunk 10y ago
  Even after months with the glorious panel in the LG and using the 15" retina as second display, going back to big ole' country pixels was almost a price I was willing to pay for ultrawide. I think the 2 x 28"s is the right choice for me, but only by a gnat's dick. If I could have beaten my Mac into driving the LG at a non-2x scale, I'd have kept with it, it's such a nice panel. But now it's on my Win 10 box, which supports it perfectly; that was a very pleasant surprise.
  - evadne 10y ago
    http://resxtreme.com http://resxtreme.com or http://displaymenu.milchimgemuesefach.de http://displaymenu.milchimgemuesefach.de can help your use case
- lobster_johnson 10y ago
  I have that Dell at work. It's... interesting. I am not happy about its brightness level -- it's noticeably dimmer than an Apple Cinema Display, and turning brightness/contrast up just gives you a washed-out image. The other thing is that the width, for me, doesn't add much utility. I like my windows centered so I am looking straight ahead at what I am working on, and keeping certain things (like log outputs and dashboards) in the periphery of my vision is just distracting. I know some people enjoy tiled window arrangements and vertically-split editor windows, but that stuff just doesn't do anything for me. So I am not using the horizontal space very efficiently. The best use of the width is being able to read wide diffs or other things that go side by side. I also couldn't get it to work as a USB hub, not sure why. Thunderbolt would have been better, at any rate -- then you'd only need two cables instead of three. I am considering replacing my home monitor, a Cinema Display, with the Dell 27-inch 4K, but it's just so damn ugly. It's got the thick bezel instead of the "infinity edge" one or the black glass of the 5K (which I can't buy since it requires two DisplayPort connections).

filereaper 10y ago

"4K ought to be enough for anyone."

nimchimpsky 10y ago
But in this case, as the eye can't discern any difference (at reasonable distances) - it really is ? I don't get why there is this push - pixels sell I guess.
- Matthias247 10y ago
  On Desktop monitors you can still see the difference. I have an 28" UHD screen. It's really nice, and text looks a lot better than on the old FHD screen it replaced. However it still looks a little bit worse than my MacBook Pro Retina screen. Which also makes sense when you compare 155dpi to 230dpi. Whether 8k now is necessary or 6k would be totally sufficient - don't know. But I guess it's easier to sell the double resolution.
  - nimchimpsky 10y ago
    From the article "A 4K panel of the same physical size is retina at 25 inches. An 8K panel hits that mark at the one-foot mark, but precious few people use a 32-inch display while sitting just 12 inches from the screen."
- userbinator 10y ago
  Personally, I don't really want such a high DPI monitor either, since I use pixel fonts like xterm 6x13 a lot, especially for coding, and they become either unreadably small or blurrily scaled. All antialiasing looks blurry to me, and much of what made me upgrade to an LCD from a CRT many years ago was because they were so sharp you could actually see the corners on the pixels.

rch 10y ago

Great to see. I think the previous high-water mark was the IBM T221 IPS Display (3840x2400), sold between 2001 and 2005, which was also fairly expensive as I recall.

huxley 10y ago
Really? LG has 5K monitors at the Apple Store with 5120x2880 res, the same that's been available for a couple of years on the 27" iMac
- rch 10y ago
  I stand corrected - thanks!

starseeker 10y ago

When I was in a hardware store last year, I had a chance to compare a 4k and 5k iMac side by side. IIRC, the size was the same and it came down to PPI. For casual use 4k was plenty, but where 5k really proved itself for me was small terminal text. I was able to take the font size in terminals down noticeably smaller on the 5k while still having readable text. That's why the 8k interests me - when doing programming, my particular work-flow usually ends up with lots of open terminals, documents, and web pages as information and source code are woven together into a program. The smaller the readable text, the more I can fit on the screen at once and see at the same time. With 275 PPI and large screen size all in one, this sounds like it might be the dream coding monitor...

cududa 10y ago
It always baffles me when people say "There doesn't need to be any higher PPI! We've already maxed out on the human eye perceiving pixels!" Sure that's lovely, but that doesn't mean graphics and text won't gain more fidelity/ use cases from higher PPI. Just because you can't focus on individual pixels and pick them out doesn't mean your brain caps out at percieving more than 225 PPI..

yarg 10y ago

If it really is super retina resolution, it can also be used in a manner which simulates a (much) higher colour depth. Although given the fact that it already covers the entire colour gamut of several different specifications, that probably won't be too useful. I imagine you could also use it to simulate HDR - but I'd suspect that sources capable of pushing 8K already support it. All in all, not much point to this comment.

spitfire 10y ago
Flashbacks to writing fake mode routines for mode-Q back in the DOS days. Good times. Please don't actually do this for real though. The tech will catch up so fast it isn't worth the effort.
- yarg 10y ago
  I'd do it for the fun, rather than the value. There'd also be the possibility for some rather interesting complex simulated modes. Hexagonal pixels, for example.

WalterBright 10y ago

I'd like a picture window sized (or even wall sized!) display I could hang on the wall. I'd love to be able to select a "view" from any live camera in the world.

aceperry 10y ago

Dell is really pushing the envelope when it comes to monitors. I was tempted to get a 4K monitor during the holiday season, but decided not to when I found out that I had to upgrade all of my graphics cards and laptops.

SimeVidas 10y ago

Who else here would rather have a HiDPI 21:9 monitor than a 8K one? Afaik, we still have to choose between HiDPI and 21:9.

TwoBit 10y ago

I'll take HDR over 8K.

allenleein 10y ago

Now i just need to upgrade my eyes, and possibly my brain, to take in all those pixels.

cowardlydragon 10y ago

What the hell, the ideal size for 4k resolution scaled from a 30" 2560x1600 is about 40". What is with these small 8k/4k monitors? Useless. I just buy TVs with HDMI 2.0. 50" 4k tvs are, what, $400 these days? I get more pixels can be nice, and 8k is probably where that comes into play, but if I have 8,192 lines of resolution, I want some screen real estate too.

_ph_ 10y ago
Having switched from a 30" 2560 to a 27" 5k display, I do sometimes miss the screen estate, but the increased resolution is really nice. Text rendering become much better, and it gets really stunning, if you display large images (> 15 megapixel) full screen.

gomijacogeo 10y ago

Perhaps, at some point, we can declare victory on the PPI axis and turn some of that spatial resolution into a wider gamut with a couple more primaries?

ksec 10y ago

May be it is just me, the ~220PPI on 4K / 5K iMac looks a little fizzy when zoomed. i.e The "larger text" option on OSX. May be 8K will help? I dont understand why an 4/5K monitor will still look fizzy.