21 ms·

Dell 38 inch UltraSharp monitor

207 points by dgelks 9y ago

TheAceOfHearts 9y ago
I apologize if this is an incredibly stupid question, but why do these monitors cost so much? As I understand it, you can buy a good 4k TV for considerably less, so what features of this monitor make it a better deal?
- zyb09 9y ago
  Probably a lot less volume being sold on ultra wide monitor panels. Therefore higher price.
- jrimbault 9y ago
  Related musing: why is it seemingly easier to make very high resolution small screen (phones) than large screens of the same resolution ? Instinctevly I would think smaller leds are harder to make, but it doesn't seem it's the case ?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - easytiger 9y ago
    There is a greater failure rate the larger you make apanel. a great many are discarded from production lines. If the screen is smaller then it is less likely to incur error. Also that cost is hidden in a phone, i'm not sure what the value of screen components would be.
    - nine_k 9y ago
      A large defective panel can be cut down into smaller panels most of which will have no defects. You can sell most of your faulty large panels as small panels, but there is no extra source of large panels.
      - easytiger 9y ago
        Well the point stands that statistically its much easier to make a smaller panel than a larger panel. A larger panel being n times smaller ones.
  - amptorn 9y ago
    I'm going to guess the square law? This monitor has about 75 times the screen area of a typical phone.
    - brianwawok 9y ago
      Right, and a Phone could spend $50 to build that screen on a $700 device (not that they do). Just a raw 75 * $50 is near $4000, which would explain a high price.
      - ricardobeat 9y ago
        The parent's point is that making a larger screen with _the same pixel count_ should be much cheaper, not one with 75x the resolution.
        amptorn 9y ago
        I could be wrong. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
        brianwawok 9y ago
        That is if it is the pixels per unit that lead to cost, vs the size of the display itself. Obviously it is harder to make a 1 inch x 1 inch display with 1 million pixels vs 1000. But maybe the difference from 600ppi to 200ppi is not enough to matter...
  - robotresearcher 9y ago
    The probability of manufacturing a bad pixel is some constant plus a function of the area of that pixel, and not the number of neighbours it has.
- LeifCarrotson 9y ago
  It's designed for graphic design and other display-critical tasks, so it is calibrated to 99% sRGB color space. What it looks like on this monitor will be what it should look like in print and on the best of every other display. Plus, it's the UltraSharp top-end model, so all the mechanical construction will be top notch. TVs, on the other hand, are designed to show the most oversaturated, "vibrant" colors on the demo loop on the show-room wall. And mechanically, they're designed to hang on the wall and never be touched. Plus it's curved.
  - mrkrabo 9y ago
    I have an UltraSharp and it's fucking rubbish. Half of the screen has a yellow tint, and it has dark corners. Obviously support says it's "within spec".
    - kutkloon7 9y ago
      Not sure why this is getting downvoted... Seems relevant information to me.
      - justin66 9y ago
        He doesn't mention the model number, plus it's a new account, so there's little trust that what he's saying is true. (I didn't downvote)
  - kuschku 9y ago
    > so it is calibrated to 99% sRGB color space. What it looks like on this monitor will be what it should look like in print and on the best of every other display. That’s completely useless for graphic design. sRGB is defined as the lowest common denominator of CRTs on the market in the early 90s. Actual monitors for graphic design purposes, every TV released in 2017, and most new gaming monitors use instead AdobeRGB or DCI-P3 colorspace or even Rec.2020, which is what is also used in cinemas. For comparison, this is 100% sRGB (what you claimed is "for graphic design" vs. 100% Rec.2020 "what most new TVs and gaming monitors support"): https://dotcolordotcom.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/rec2020-vs-rec709-001.png https://dotcolordotcom.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/rec2020-v...
- melling 9y ago
  I Googled a good answer for you: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xsaaw/eli5_why_are_computer_monitors_so_much_more/ https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xsaaw/e...
- muzani 9y ago
  Monitors are designed to be viewed at close range, from multiple near angles. TVs are designed to be viewed several meters away, at roughly the same angle. TVs play content of the same frame rate, so there's no reason for them to be any more precise. Monitors can go at very high frame rate as the content can be very fast paced, especially gaming monitors. Freesync/gsync also integrates with the graphics card to reduce lag. This is the most expensive part of these monitors.
  - the8472 9y ago
    This is not a gaming monitor, it only does 60Hz. And it does not have freesync. The article mentions both facts.
    - muzani 9y ago
      Oh I skimmed it to the stats. It was showing a competitor monitor's stats. Still the same principle.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- fsloth 9y ago
  Internet is full of opinions. A recent positive: https://www.techspot.com/article/1439-using-4k-tv-as-desktop-pc-monitor/ https://www.techspot.com/article/1439-using-4k-tv-as-desktop... A negative from 2014: http://www.itworld.com/article/2832687/consumerization/don-t-buy-the-hype-on-using-a-4k-tv-as-a-computer-monitor.html http://www.itworld.com/article/2832687/consumerization/don-t... and some discussion: http://www.avsforum.com/forum/166-lcd-flat-panel-displays/2866881-4k-tv-pc-monitor.html#/topics/2866881 http://www.avsforum.com/forum/166-lcd-flat-panel-displays/28... The main headache seems to be blurry fonts which probably mean a lack of 4:4:4 chroma support or the inability to enable it.
- thinkloop 9y ago
  It's like how megapixels are a bad measure of camera quality. This is a pro monitor with accurate color reproduction, low fading on the edges, minimal dead pixels, etc.
- sudosushi 9y ago
  Several reasons: - TV's are generally low framerate, as much as they'd like to claim 240FPS, it's mostly all 30FPS, with software interpolation to increase the frames. - Bulk. TV's are solid in higher numbers, justifying the lower price - Distance from face. Your 60" TV can be two smaller panels "glued" together. Not noticeable from watching distance, but having a monitor so close to your face, you're more likely to notice the millisecond tearing.
  - LeoNatan25 9y ago
    "- TV's are generally low framerate, as much as they'd like to claim 240FPS, it's mostly all 30FPS, with software interpolation to increase the frames." That makes absolutely no sense. If the panel is incapable of 240 refreshes per second, how does software interpolation "increase the frames"? You are confusing content and panel.
    - deleted 9y ago
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    - Kubuxu 9y ago
      5min video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sxvu7qf6rDw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sxvu7qf6rDw Mainly it is that for more than 60fps you need dual-link DVI, display port or HDMI 2.0 and you won't find many TVs with either of those. So even though the screen can do more than 60fps the input and processor can't take it.
      - LeoNatan25 9y ago
        That’s not what was said in the comment. Obviously, the point of a interpolation is to take a signal with little samples and increase those. What the comment said was that the hardware (panel) was not capable, so the software somehow was able to do it. It makes no sense.
        Dylan16807 9y ago
        > What the comment said was that the hardware (panel) was not capable The word 'panel' is not in that part of the comment. The hardware is incapable of getting high fps signals through most of the pipeline.
- vesak 9y ago
  Also, incidentally, I'd happily pay a bit of premium for a TV / Monitor that has good image quality but no other features. Perhaps not 2x as much, but 20% might be doable.
- dhd415 9y ago
  I've been using a Samsung 40" 4k TV as my main monitor for development work for about 8 months and it's been great for me. A couple caveats -- Because I don't game or do graphics work, I don't know or care about color reproduction. I made sure to get a TV, graphics card, and cable that supported 4k@60hz with 4:4:4 chroma so the text is perfectly sharp and the refresh is not obtrusive. It's not hard to find a Samsung TV around $350 that supports that, but as far as I could tell, I had to go up to a GTX1050 graphics card to get that. I sit between 24 and 28" away from the monitor so the text is readable to me at full resolution. At that distance, I do have to turn my head to comfortably read text in the corners of the TV, especially the upper corners. In practice, that means I keep monitoring-type applications such as CPU charts, Datadog graphs, etc., in one of those corners for quick reference. While I still have two 1920x1080 monitors on either side of the TV, it's quite nice to be able to open up on my main monitor a huge IDE window and, when necessary, put 3-4 normal-sized windows next to each other for comparison work.
  - ianai 9y ago
    Does 60 hz keep windows from lagging when moved?
    - dhd415 9y ago
      I detect no lag when moving windows around. It might not (or might -- I simply don't know) be good enough for gamers, but it's definitely smooth enough for development, document, or web browsing (aka productivity) tasks.
      - LiquidFlux 9y ago
        144Hz monitors do produce a very noticeable difference for gaming if you can rival the refresh rate with in-game FPS, outside of gaming I've only found it noticeable when moving windows about. For productivity I'd go for the 40" 2160p over a lower resolution higher refresh panel.
    - slantyyz 9y ago
      You might be thinking of the issue early adopters had with TVs that only did 4K/30 over HDMI. At 60Hz, it's like any other computer monitor.
- danmaz74 9y ago
  I think that the 24:10 aspect ratio alone will cause higher prices because of much lower economies of scale for the panel...
  - deleted 9y ago
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- sampl 9y ago
  The pricing is so odd. For $300 more, you can get a monitor with _much_ better resolution (5120x2880), though in a smaller screen size. It's called an iMac. https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/imac/27-inch https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/imac/27-inch
  - blattimwind 9y ago
    5K 27" displays are much less than this.
    - LeoNatan25 9y ago
      5K 27” with wide color gamut and good calibration? Please post links here.
      - nine_k 9y ago
        For photo / graphics work, wide gamut and calibration are important. For text editing, less so. High DPI is important for me, though.
      - irq 9y ago
        LG 5K 27" display. 100% coverage of P3 gamut. $1299. https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HKN62/lg-ultrafine-5k-display?fnode=4c https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HKN62/lg-ultrafine-5k-dis...
        LeoNatan25 9y ago
        This is a good display, and price has gone down. But anyway to connect it to a Windows 10 / nVidia PC and get the full 5K resolution? No GPU that I’m familiar with has support for USB-C.
        irq 9y ago
        MSI NVIDIA GTX1080Ti GPU with USB-C: http://www.tweaktown.com/news/57725/msi-first-graphics-card-usb-type-port/index.html http://www.tweaktown.com/news/57725/msi-first-graphics-card-...
- olegkikin 9y ago
  And it double-sucks, because here in Italy we have to pay "TV tax", even if you don't have the TV service hooked up. Modern LCD/OLED TVs are perfectly fine for most tasks, except maybe high-end FPS gaming. The colors are good, the refresh rates are decent.
  - J_cst 9y ago
    That's an ownership tax on tv's as there's an ownership tax on cars. The fact that the proceedings of the Tv ownership tax pay for the public (national) tv service is just a side factor. As very few people were actually paying it, the Tv ownership tax has been embedded on the electricity bill. _Italians, good people_
  - walterstucco 9y ago
    E basta co sta storia del canone! È una tassa, pagatela e smettetela di lamentarvi.
    - J_cst 9y ago
      I was just saying that above, it's an ownership tax. A lot more people are paying it as it's now embedded on the electricity bill, so it's useless to recommend to pay it as it's now been basically enforced. I believe you should comment in english if you wish to be understood.
- terminalcommand 9y ago
  I cannot speak for 4K TVs, but as I was making a research for my own purchase I found the following differences between monitors and TVs. TVs are said to be configured to display the best-looking colors, monitors try to stay true to the real color. TVs have an immensely higher refresh rate, 50hz/60hz usually suffice for a TV. But on monitors we speak of milliseconds. The refresh rate makes a lot of difference, if you intend to game on your computer/monitor. An e-sport professional Redittor claims he had improved his playing performance multiple-folds after switching to a monitor instead of TV. (https://www.reddit.com/r/FIFA/comments/5whb9v/did_the_change_from_tv_to_monitor_here_are_my/ https://www.reddit.com/r/FIFA/comments/5whb9v/did_the_change...) Other than these differences and the occasional overscan/underscan problems on older televisions, I personally see no reason to prefer a Monitor over a TV, if there is huge price difference. If the price difference is minor, I'd opt for a monitor.
  - deleted 9y ago
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  - jacoblambda 9y ago
    Refresh rate and response time are different. Refresh rate is how often a new frame is displayed, i.e. 50/60/144Hz. Response time is the amount of time it takes for the display to process a frame and display it, i.e. 1/2/4/16ms.
    - terminalcommand 9y ago
      I stand corrected. >>Over a decade has passed since the LCD monitor unceremoniously ousted the boxy CRT monitor into obsolescence, but with that ousting came a small problem: CRT monitors redrew every frame from scratch, and this was baked into the fundamentals of how PCs sent information to the screen. Monitors redrew the screen with a refresh rate of 100 Hz, (100 times a second), and they were silky smooth. >>LCD monitors don’t have this problem, because the pixels don’t need to be refreshed. Instead, they update individual pixels with new colors, and each of those updates takes a certain amount of time depending on what the change is. The response time refers to how long this change takes. LCDs started with a 60-Hz refresh rate but a response time of about 15 milliseconds (ms). For more information on the subject: https://www.tomsguide.com/us/refresh-rates-vs-response-times,news-24345.html https://www.tomsguide.com/us/refresh-rates-vs-response-times...
- hocuspocus 9y ago
  High-end monitors are niche products. 40" TVs aren't. HDMI 2.0 is a pain compared to DP, other than that, there's almost no reason not to buy a TV if you just care about office use. I've been using a Samsung UHD TV for almost two years.
- prodmerc 9y ago
  Honestly, it just looks like price gouging. You can get a 40 inch LG IPS 4K TV for half the price. And this Dell isn't even 10 bit IPS, which is what monitors for professional graphics use, it's the standard 8bit IPS, very likely made by LG. It's curved though.
- rwallace 9y ago
  I know someone who uses a 1080p TV as a monitor for his gaming PC. The picture quality is poor; it's too blurry to be tolerable for work. That's okay in this particular case, since he uses a different PC for work, but that one needs a proper monitor. Granted that's 1080p, but it wouldn't surprise me if the same thing is true of 4k.
SideburnsOfDoom 9y ago
I suspect that in a few years a hololens / google glass style device will become cheaper and work as well as a big bank of monitors, and at that point it is going to rapidly replace physical monitors - and then economy of scale and iteration of the product will do the usual to the price/performance ratio of head-mounted devices, then screens go the way of CRT monitors when flat screens came along. I'm not saying that a head-mounted device and virtual screens will necessarily be better than a bank of monitors - in fact it's time to asses drawbacks - but once it's cheaper and seems "just as good" then business will want to switch over, for better or worse.
- melling 9y ago
  Will I still need to be sitting at a desk with a keyboard and mouse?
  - keldaris 9y ago
    "Need" is a strong word, but you'll probably want to if you're trying to be productive. VR/AR won't replace the tactile feedback of a good keyboard, etc. Then again, as someone who can't even use current VR/AR offerings (high myopia, don't use contact lenses) and is only following all of this as a fairly disinterested spectactor, it looks to me like the initial craze is already blowing over and people are taking a better look at the disadvantages and limitations of the current products. I don't see VR/AR taking over monitors or much of anything else, though I'm sure AR will find productivity applications in specific fields soon enough.
    - manquer 9y ago
      perhaps with gestures and voice input integrated into good software applications , the keyboard will altogether be eliminated..
      - jsjohnst 9y ago
        There isn't a voice input in existence that I'd be interested in using while writing code or doing photo/video editing. Even dictating code to another human who is as fluent as you are in the language of choice is a non-starter, so I don't see any machine based way of doing it catching up soon.
fsloth 9y ago
Only 60 hz. Sigh - I hope mainstream moves to 100+Hz monitors soon. I love the fluency of my far-too-expensive 'gaming' IPS 144hz monitor despite I don't play that much. Just the fact that web pages and mouse pointers don't lag is a noticeable improvement.
- scarlac 9y ago
  I agree. 60hz is fine but having tried +100hz CRT monitors back in 199X I am still waiting for them to be mainstream. Perhaps Apple will take the iPad's "ProMotion" 120hz to the mainstream crowd in a not-too-expensive display package.
- jrockway 9y ago
  Yeah, 60Hz looks like a slideshow after using 144Hz for a while. It does get rapidly better after 60, though. I think I can stop telling a difference at around 80. So there is some hope that we can have 4k@better-than-60 in the near future.
  - brianwawok 9y ago
    Using text, I am fine with 5fps if it is not blinking like a CRT did. My kindle I think does 0fps when not changing pages and it is 100x better than a monitor. I have found the 300fps thing a bit silly for computers meant for text (which is my use case, not claiming it is the ONLY use case).
- LeoNatan25 9y ago
  I rather we invest in PPI rather than refresh rate. Not that the two are mutually exclusive, but as I look at my use cases, most of the time the screen is static, so a higher refresh rate would be wasted, whereas higher PPI screens improve readability and legibility (when they work on Windows).
  - fsloth 9y ago
    You mean 4k on a desktop is not dense enough for you?
hultner 9y ago
I'd much rather see one with higher resolution. The DPI is quite low with today's standard.
- LeoNatan25 9y ago
  Sadly, outside of macOS, the support for high PPI display is dodgy at best. On Linux, it is becoming better, but still a lot more to improve. On Windows, it's a real shitshow. Windows 10, for the most part, is OK (still a lot of inconsistencies and lack of polish when scale > 100%), but application support is just terrible, be it blur, tiny scale, inconsistent elements (some small, some large) or plain crashing. Really, any vendor that makes such display is taking a risk that people will complain and a sizeable portion of the customers that purchase such a display will not understand the technical difficulties.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    On Linux, it just depends on your desktop environment. If you use KDE or any other Qt based one, HiDPI works perfectly at any scale, even in heterogenous environments – a landscape 4K 144ppi and a portrait 70ppi monitor right next to each other will work fine, and when moving applications they automatically rescale. On X11 and Wayland. The scale is set via the environmental variable QT_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTORS=DisplayPort-2=1.61;HDMI-A-0=1.08; It’s GNOME and GTK which have almost no HiDPI support at all – they only support 96 and 192dpi (only integer scaling), and just added a feature for all other resolutions to just scale the windows down with blur. GTK2 still supported proper HiDPI, but with GTK3 they decided to abandon that and instead build apps that rely on pixels always being the same size. Considering how young GTK3 is this decision may sound a bit short-sighted, but the GNOME devs always refer to macOS as an example where this worked (while ignoring Android and Windows 10, which use fractional scaling, and ignoring the fact that with Gnome’s solution a game such as Minecraft on a 4K 144dpi screen is rendered at 6K and then half the resolution gets thrown away during the downscaling, because there is no option to avoid this) The result is obviously completely broken.
    - mixmastamyk 9y ago
eps 9y ago
PSA - don't get tempted by UltraSharp reviews and recommendations, like I did. Just pick an Eizo instead. UltraSharps are widely recommended for coding with glorious reviews and endorsements. Got one and no matter how I adjusted it, it was still too... eye-piercing, if you will, for longer coding sessions. Got mild headaches, tired eyes and general feeling of discomfort when working on hem even for shorter periods. Then switched to FlexScan and it's a completely different ballgame - softer, more gentle feel, incomparably more comfortable. The best monitor I've had a pleasure of staring at in my 20 years of programming. However the interesting part here is that both monitors use the same panel (!), so the panel itself is only part of the recipe, which is something that many reciews tend to either downplay or not mention at all.
- IdontRememberIt 9y ago
  I suspect it is the AG (anti-glare) coating. Dell keeps using a cheap version (3H)...
- noinsight 9y ago
  Definitely. I made the mistake of buying an UltraSharp U2713HM which actually buzzed with lots of text on the screen (apparently it's a feature, just google the model). I tried swapping my new display and they sent me a refurbished one with dead pixels that buzzed also. I'm never buying Dell again. This time around I did the right thing and went the more expensive route and got an Eizo and it's just absolutely perfect.
  - eppsilon 9y ago
    I had the same experience with the same model. Never again, Dell.
- wmf 9y ago
  Does Eizo have anything in the 38"-40" range? I don't see it on their site.
roselan 9y ago
Last time I tried such giant screen, I ended up extremely frustrated with the screen splitter feature, I prefer triple monitors for this reason. Had there been significant progress in this field the last few years?
- slantyyz 9y ago
  Have you ever tried DisplayFusion? -- edit, DisplayFusion is for windows. When I used to use Mac, I used Moom.
- phideauxrocks 9y ago
  Try Virtual Display Manager. It can easily split the screen into various configurations.
sundvor 9y ago
I bought the U3415W when it first came out. At first it was for games (coming from 3x U2412Ms) however I quickly realised how incredibly good the 21:9 3440x1440 resolution is for programming. No DPI scaling needs be involved, so I'm looking at Visual Studio experience where even with NCrunch unit test runners and the Solution overview, I have plenty of room for two main code editing windows. Brilliant. I ended up buying an extra Acer X34 for home (surrounded by 2x U2412Ms on an Ergotech stand) and brought the U3415W to work as a personal device. The 38" could potentially be even better, however I'm rather happy with the 34" as is. It's a bit of a shame they didn't add Freesync to it.
- Clubber 9y ago
  I ended up getting 2 Dell 43" monitors and are very happy with them for coding. I actually have 3, but the 3rd is too much (I never thought I'd see the day). They aren't perfect, and the "old" version is buggy, so if you want these, get them straight from Dell. Resellers still have the old version that drops connection. Also, the HDMI is only 30Hz while the DP and mDP are both 60. Finally, they stretch a few pixels past the border, so you will need to shrink the picture slightly with the video card driver. If you can deal with all that, they are incredible. Dell has a window manager that allows you to assign a grid and windows will snap to their respective cells once dropped into it. http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&cs=04&l=en&sku=210-AHSQ http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&c...
  - kjhughes 9y ago
    Thank you for posting this. I've recently been considering buying one (Dell 43 Ultra HD 4k Multi Client Monitor P4317Q, right?) However, this negative review is holding me back. Is there any merit to its claim? This monitor has glorious resolution made totally useless because the backlight uses PWM Pulse Width Modulation to adjust the backlight brightness. This leads to eye fatigue and, in some cases, severe headaches. One would be hard pressed to find other monitors in Dell's lineup with this outdated technology since it has almost entirely been removed from all modern monitors. As a business monitor, it is expected to have "Comfort View" aka "low blue light" mode to reduce eye stress during a long day of use. Fix these problems and you will sell more of these than you could make. http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-43-ultra-hd-4k-multi-client-monitor-p4317q/apd/210-ahsq/monitors-monitor-accessories http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-43-ultra-hd-4k-multi-cli... I'd be hooking one or two up to my late 2013 MacBook Pro Retina 15, btw, which has a miniDP, so I believe I'll be able to get full resolution at 60Hz.
IdontRememberIt 9y ago
Low DPI, certainly Dell's traditional low quality anti-glare filter (3h). When will they wake up and build monitors for people who work with letters and numbers (vs video or image) and favor quality over price? For a few years I think I will still have to switch every programms to dark theme as a work around to hide the poor quality and defaults of the monitors... sad. :(
callumlocke 9y ago
Is 110 ppi considered ultra sharp?
- mamon 9y ago
  I think UltraSharp name is refering to the fact that those are IPS panels with: 1) wide color gamut, compared to TN screens 2) Better contrast ratio, again, compared to cheap TN panels.
bitL 9y ago
I wish it were available in HiDPI version, i.e. twice the resolution - it would make it way better to look at, as seeing pixels while editing video or producing audio in Live is no longer acceptable.
- greggyb 9y ago
  Honest question: why does it matter if you see pixels while producing audio?
  - jeremiep 9y ago
    I'm guessing it has to do with how the waveform is rendered. More pixels means a more precise waveform view.
  - bitL 9y ago
    I have 3x 4k displays, one of them 30" DCI 4k, one 55" UHD, plus a rMBP and an ultrabook with 3200x1800. I simply can't go back to see pixels again. Once you get used to better, you dislike a downgrade.
    - greggyb 9y ago
      I get that, but it's a general point. You specifically called out producing audio, and I was curious if there were specific visual features that are necessary in producing audio. I get it for video editing. I also understand the general "I like high resolution" case. I am wondering if there is something I am unaware of about the combination of high resolution and audio that made you call that out as a specific use case.
      - bitL 9y ago
        Beside nicer fonts you have "sub-pixel" resolution in e.g. your piano roll/channel list, so you can zoom out a bit more while still able to distinguish stuff there. That is handy if you work with a very large number of channels.
- 9y ago
80211 9y ago
Why is the vertical resolution so poor?
- flurdy 9y ago
  It is not. Is is a very wide screen. 24:10 aspect. A UHD/4k pixel density that you would find in a 16:9 display would mean a lot more horizontal pixels. Though I would like to see one that is 5184x2160 or 5760x2160 pixels. I expect that is just too expensive and niche atm. And pushing gfx cards and display ports to its limits.
bhouston 9y ago
At the office we have a dozen QNIX 4K 32 inches monitors. They are not quite IPS, although it says it is, and they are $399 USD from eBay. Hard to beat that price. They are bright and they have DP & HDMI 2 ports.
- lobster_johnson 9y ago
  They're $399 on Amazon, too.
tannhaeuser 9y ago
Beware if you're somewhat of a messy, like me, you're going to have hundreds of (terminal) windows and another hundreds of browser tabs open simultaneously on these, until you can't find your current stuff on your desktop anymore at which point you have to spend half an hour to sort out what you want to close. I actually sold my fat 27" and went back to 24" (and to 13" notebooks). A special window manager is a requisite on the big screen, but which one? I like the original Expose feature on Mac OS <= 10.6 while the remade 10.7 version just doesn't blend from/into full desktop view as spatially recognizable as the original for me. Ubuntu's Unity does an ok job, too, but it's going away ([1]). [1]: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14043631> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14043631>
- shoover 9y ago
  The built in Win+Tab command works well for the closing windows problem on Windows 10 on a 34" screen. I'm using a combination of built in commands and WindowSpace commands I learned with two monitors. Keyboard shortcuts to throw a window to the left or right half of the screen go a long way, but I could use a small step up in tiling features.
- Eridrus 9y ago
  Tabli solves the problem of losing tabs by letting me search for them: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabli/igeehkedfibbnhbfponhjjplpkeomghi https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabli/igeehkedfibb...
- edcoffin 9y ago
  For macOS window control via keyboard I recommend Spectacle (https://github.com/eczarny/spectacle https://github.com/eczarny/spectacle). Among other options, the app can position windows by thirds which really shines for this class of screen - think three windows side-by-side each using 1280px.
- flurdy 9y ago
  If you mean tiling window managers: Macos: https://ianyh.com/amethyst/ https://ianyh.com/amethyst/ Linux: http://xmonad.org http://xmonad.org or https://i3wm.org https://i3wm.org
snvzz 9y ago
No FreeSync in $currentyear, not even worth considering.
- wmf 9y ago
  If you RTFA, the competing Acer model has FreeSync with a lower price.
RX14 9y ago
Off-topic but I wish 16:10 hadn't died with the move to 4k. I have an old 1200p dell ultrasharp in 16:10 and it's sublime compared to my other 16:9. You'd think it doesn't make much of a difference, but it really does. Especially when you have it vertically oriented, but otherwise too.
- zanny 9y ago
  Golden ratio strikes again! Historians in a millennia will probably look back at us as heathens for deviating from using the perfect rectangle to construct our screens.
  - colbyh 9y ago
    hopefully in a millennia mathemeticians will have finally convinced the world that the golden ratio really isn't special.
    - tedunangst 9y ago
      Nor does it make sense for a monitor. I can't remember ever wanting to arrange a bunch of windows as a square, a smaller square, a smaller square, etc.
      - dijit 9y ago
        You must not use a tiling window manager.
        tedunangst 9y ago
        I must not want my wm to give me a geometric series of ever shrinking squares.
        OJFord 9y ago
        What else does it default to, if you open a new window?
ianai 9y ago
"Dell has managed to increase maximum brightness of its U3818DW to 350 nits (from 300 nits on competing monitors)" Bah, why does everyone seem to love blinding themselves? Am I the only one who doesn't like a bright screen? (Ergonomically, we're supposed to have the monitor's backlight match the brightness of a white sheet of paper in the same lighting conditions.)
- DamnInteresting 9y ago
  It's sometimes nice to have the option for high brightness, as the situation calls for it. But there's no need to run it at full blast at all times.
  - ianai 9y ago
    My problem with the brightness is that it pulls up the minimum brightness available. Most of my devices are too bright for me at their minimum settings at night time.
    - rhizome 9y ago
      That's unusual.
      - mixmastamyk 9y ago
        Not at all.
    - kshitijl 9y ago
      Can't you always lower the brightness in software, at the OS/driver level? Unless you're saying that this compresses the dynamic range of brightnesses too much, to the point where you can't distinguish shades that you need to be able to for your work.
      - Moru 9y ago
        Most cheaper monitors have always on backlights that can't change brightness.
nickjj 9y ago
I'd rather stick with 2x 25" Dell UltraSharp U2515H 2560x1440 monitors[0]. 2 of those are nearly 3x cheaper than the 1x 38" curved display and for tasks that require a lot of horizontal space (video editing, etc.) 5120 is WAY wider than 3840. Also a curved display is pretty questionable for professional image editing (it distorts pixels). I run the 25" here for development and video editing. Probably the best development environment upgrade I've made in 5 years. If anyone wants to read a deep dive on how to pick a solid monitor for development, I put together a detailed blog post[1] that covers why I picked that 25" Dell specifically. [0]: http://amzn.to/2jF3WHp http://amzn.to/2jF3WHp [1]: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-pick-a-good-monitor-for-software-development https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-pick-a-good-monitor-fo...
- slantyyz 9y ago
  >> 2 of those are nearly 3x cheaper than the 1x 38" curved display For about the same price as the 38", you can get a pair 27" Dell P2715Q 4K monitors which will give you more than double the resolution of that 38" monitor. I have a pair of P2715Q's mounted side by side in a "v" shape (not as good as curved, but does the trick) and it works fairly well. Of course, having no bezels in the middle where the monitors touch would be nice. The main drawback of the P2715Q's is that they don't have HDMI 2.0 inputs, which means your system needs two DP outs that can support 4k/60.
  - fnl 9y ago
    To me, it's the ability to put my current "focus window" exactly center what makes the curved screens so attractive, with the 32-38" size range always feeling just about right to me. My neck starts aching if I have two screens, making me end up using one as the focus screen and the other as support. While three 27"s in a row seem slightly excessive "screen wall" to me, but some like that...
    - slantyyz 9y ago
      I guess it really depends on your workflow. My own preference is to use my left monitor for source code and shell windows and my right monitor for browser testing. That does mean I tend to spend a significant amount of time looking to my left.
Stratoscope 9y ago
It's interesting to see the variety of monitors people are using - and especially the variety of pixel densities, all the way down to 69 pixels per inch on a 32" 1080p panel. For anyone who is curious to compare the pixel density of a variety of monitors and televisions, I have a spreadsheet with about 120 different display sizes and resolutions and their pixel densities: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K4bCgr-VjMmeCjHf6UdyR6Hg4rRz7aKz-BOz8U2tF0o/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K4bCgr-VjMmeCjHf6Udy... Email me at the address in my profile or use the chat box in the spreadsheet (to avoid cluttering this thread) if you have any other displays you'd like to add.
- slantyyz 9y ago
  For the past few years, I've been using this tool to give me information on pixel densities: https://www.sven.de/dpi/ https://www.sven.de/dpi/
gesman 9y ago
3840x1600? My new Laptop (Lenovo Yoga 910) does 3840x2160 Hence: Acer ProDesigner BM320
pault 9y ago
Ugh, I bought the 34" a few months ago and replaced it with a 42" 16:9 yesterday. The ultra wide format is really awkward for everything except gaming and media, and those have tons of software issues with the aspect ratio.
altano 9y ago
I can't read the article because of this horrible ad that takes over the whole screen: https://imgur.com/gallery/tBeOG https://imgur.com/gallery/tBeOG
nsxwolf 9y ago
Super happy with the return of 1600 line displays even if they had to go ultrawide to get there.
mixmastamyk 9y ago
Not for me. Resolution/DPI too low for work at desk, too small to use in the living room. Who's this for? Only good use cases I can think of are Excel jocks and folks who like to watch movies at their desk.
trustworthy 9y ago
Pretty interested in this as I'm not a fan of 21:9, I'm wondering how I'll feel about looking at 24:10. As stated I wish it was a way higher refresh (120 I feel should be the new norm now?)
- nadim 9y ago
  144. Low refresh rate is a deal breaker on this.
- Stratoscope 9y ago
  I'm guessing you don't like 21:9 because it's too wide relative to its height, or put another way it's not tall enough relative to its width. If that's the case, 24:10 would be even worse. Don't be misled by the :9 vs. :10 part - that is meaningless. Reduce them both to a single number for a fair comparison: 21:9 and 24:10 are 2.333:1 and 2.4:1 respectively.
kbenson 9y ago
And here I am with a Vizio 40" 4k[1] that I got for less than $500. It's not perfect, and the refresh rate is only 60Hz for 4k (which is the same as this Dell offering), but it's served me well for the last six months at a fraction of the cost and with more pixels. 1: http://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/vizio/d-series-4k-2016 http://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/vizio/d-series-4k-2016
- nikanj 9y ago
  Have you been extremely annoyed by software that detects a 4k resolution and scales everything to HUGE? I had trouble with this when I got my 40"/4k, and in the end did unspeakable things to the registry to force Windows to always scale 1:1.
  - kbenson 9y ago
    No, actually. I don't think I've experienced that at all. The biggest problem I have is that it's actually a docking station setup, and when I pull the laptop out, and have to scale back down Chrome's zoom from 130%, and change PuTTY's font. I may have googled and turned off that in the beginning, but I definitely didn't need a registry hack, at least for Windows 10.
    - ido 9y ago
      In my experience (routinely using both a 4K iMac and high resolution dell xps with win 10) the mac is still better at doing the "right thing" on its own, resolution-correction wise.
- elliotf 9y ago
  Agreed. I bought a Samsung (UN40JU6700) 4k60p curved monitor for ~$800 and it works reasonably well. There are some quirks using a TV as a monitor and I was a little nervous about the screen quality, but it's worked well so far. Also, it's a TV. edit: I especially like that the DPI is the same as a 27" 2560x1440 monitor.
  - 9y ago
myrandomcomment 9y ago
This is based off a monitor from LG that is over a year old and is not 4K. I have a 34 inch flat LG thunderbolt screen right now on my 3 year old MacBook Pro. Great screen I plan to swap the computer to the MacBook and get a LG 32ud99-w when they finally ship (4K, USB-C from MacBook). I fly 100K a year so I want the smaller laptop. I hate giving up on the thunderbolt. I have been waiting for a decent USB-C monitor.
WhitneyLand 9y ago
This is a difficult time to commit $1500 to a monitor. For that kind of money I would really want better support for new color standards. But the standards are still settling, and you can actually end up worse off with better color if the stars are not aligned with your operating system and applications.
PhrosTT 9y ago
I'm pretty sure the 38" Acer ultrawide is cooler - same resolution, better refresh rate, $1200. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N6S1P2D https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N6S1P2D

207 points by dgelks 9y ago

I apologize if this is an incredibly stupid question, but why do these monitors cost so much? As I understand it, you can buy a good 4k TV for considerably less, so what features of this monitor make it a better deal?

zyb09 9y ago
Probably a lot less volume being sold on ultra wide monitor panels. Therefore higher price.
jrimbault 9y ago
Related musing: why is it seemingly easier to make very high resolution small screen (phones) than large screens of the same resolution ? Instinctevly I would think smaller leds are harder to make, but it doesn't seem it's the case ?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- easytiger 9y ago
  There is a greater failure rate the larger you make apanel. a great many are discarded from production lines. If the screen is smaller then it is less likely to incur error. Also that cost is hidden in a phone, i'm not sure what the value of screen components would be.
  - nine_k 9y ago
    A large defective panel can be cut down into smaller panels most of which will have no defects. You can sell most of your faulty large panels as small panels, but there is no extra source of large panels.
    - easytiger 9y ago
      Well the point stands that statistically its much easier to make a smaller panel than a larger panel. A larger panel being n times smaller ones.
- amptorn 9y ago
  I'm going to guess the square law? This monitor has about 75 times the screen area of a typical phone.
  - brianwawok 9y ago
    Right, and a Phone could spend $50 to build that screen on a $700 device (not that they do). Just a raw 75 * $50 is near $4000, which would explain a high price.
    - ricardobeat 9y ago
      The parent's point is that making a larger screen with _the same pixel count_ should be much cheaper, not one with 75x the resolution.
      - amptorn 9y ago
        I could be wrong. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
      - brianwawok 9y ago
        That is if it is the pixels per unit that lead to cost, vs the size of the display itself. Obviously it is harder to make a 1 inch x 1 inch display with 1 million pixels vs 1000. But maybe the difference from 600ppi to 200ppi is not enough to matter...
- robotresearcher 9y ago
  The probability of manufacturing a bad pixel is some constant plus a function of the area of that pixel, and not the number of neighbours it has.
LeifCarrotson 9y ago
It's designed for graphic design and other display-critical tasks, so it is calibrated to 99% sRGB color space. What it looks like on this monitor will be what it should look like in print and on the best of every other display. Plus, it's the UltraSharp top-end model, so all the mechanical construction will be top notch. TVs, on the other hand, are designed to show the most oversaturated, "vibrant" colors on the demo loop on the show-room wall. And mechanically, they're designed to hang on the wall and never be touched. Plus it's curved.
- mrkrabo 9y ago
  I have an UltraSharp and it's fucking rubbish. Half of the screen has a yellow tint, and it has dark corners. Obviously support says it's "within spec".
  - kutkloon7 9y ago
    Not sure why this is getting downvoted... Seems relevant information to me.
    - justin66 9y ago
      He doesn't mention the model number, plus it's a new account, so there's little trust that what he's saying is true. (I didn't downvote)
- kuschku 9y ago
  > so it is calibrated to 99% sRGB color space. What it looks like on this monitor will be what it should look like in print and on the best of every other display. That’s completely useless for graphic design. sRGB is defined as the lowest common denominator of CRTs on the market in the early 90s. Actual monitors for graphic design purposes, every TV released in 2017, and most new gaming monitors use instead AdobeRGB or DCI-P3 colorspace or even Rec.2020, which is what is also used in cinemas. For comparison, this is 100% sRGB (what you claimed is "for graphic design" vs. 100% Rec.2020 "what most new TVs and gaming monitors support"): https://dotcolordotcom.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/rec2020-vs-rec709-001.png https://dotcolordotcom.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/rec2020-v...
melling 9y ago
I Googled a good answer for you: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xsaaw/eli5_why_are_computer_monitors_so_much_more/ https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xsaaw/e...
muzani 9y ago
Monitors are designed to be viewed at close range, from multiple near angles. TVs are designed to be viewed several meters away, at roughly the same angle. TVs play content of the same frame rate, so there's no reason for them to be any more precise. Monitors can go at very high frame rate as the content can be very fast paced, especially gaming monitors. Freesync/gsync also integrates with the graphics card to reduce lag. This is the most expensive part of these monitors.
- the8472 9y ago
  This is not a gaming monitor, it only does 60Hz. And it does not have freesync. The article mentions both facts.
  - muzani 9y ago
    Oh I skimmed it to the stats. It was showing a competitor monitor's stats. Still the same principle.
deleted 9y ago
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fsloth 9y ago
Internet is full of opinions. A recent positive: https://www.techspot.com/article/1439-using-4k-tv-as-desktop-pc-monitor/ https://www.techspot.com/article/1439-using-4k-tv-as-desktop... A negative from 2014: http://www.itworld.com/article/2832687/consumerization/don-t-buy-the-hype-on-using-a-4k-tv-as-a-computer-monitor.html http://www.itworld.com/article/2832687/consumerization/don-t... and some discussion: http://www.avsforum.com/forum/166-lcd-flat-panel-displays/2866881-4k-tv-pc-monitor.html#/topics/2866881 http://www.avsforum.com/forum/166-lcd-flat-panel-displays/28... The main headache seems to be blurry fonts which probably mean a lack of 4:4:4 chroma support or the inability to enable it.
thinkloop 9y ago
It's like how megapixels are a bad measure of camera quality. This is a pro monitor with accurate color reproduction, low fading on the edges, minimal dead pixels, etc.
sudosushi 9y ago
Several reasons: - TV's are generally low framerate, as much as they'd like to claim 240FPS, it's mostly all 30FPS, with software interpolation to increase the frames. - Bulk. TV's are solid in higher numbers, justifying the lower price - Distance from face. Your 60" TV can be two smaller panels "glued" together. Not noticeable from watching distance, but having a monitor so close to your face, you're more likely to notice the millisecond tearing.
- LeoNatan25 9y ago
  "- TV's are generally low framerate, as much as they'd like to claim 240FPS, it's mostly all 30FPS, with software interpolation to increase the frames." That makes absolutely no sense. If the panel is incapable of 240 refreshes per second, how does software interpolation "increase the frames"? You are confusing content and panel.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - Kubuxu 9y ago
    5min video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sxvu7qf6rDw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sxvu7qf6rDw Mainly it is that for more than 60fps you need dual-link DVI, display port or HDMI 2.0 and you won't find many TVs with either of those. So even though the screen can do more than 60fps the input and processor can't take it.
    - LeoNatan25 9y ago
      That’s not what was said in the comment. Obviously, the point of a interpolation is to take a signal with little samples and increase those. What the comment said was that the hardware (panel) was not capable, so the software somehow was able to do it. It makes no sense.
      - Dylan16807 9y ago
        > What the comment said was that the hardware (panel) was not capable The word 'panel' is not in that part of the comment. The hardware is incapable of getting high fps signals through most of the pipeline.
vesak 9y ago
Also, incidentally, I'd happily pay a bit of premium for a TV / Monitor that has good image quality but no other features. Perhaps not 2x as much, but 20% might be doable.
dhd415 9y ago
I've been using a Samsung 40" 4k TV as my main monitor for development work for about 8 months and it's been great for me. A couple caveats -- Because I don't game or do graphics work, I don't know or care about color reproduction. I made sure to get a TV, graphics card, and cable that supported 4k@60hz with 4:4:4 chroma so the text is perfectly sharp and the refresh is not obtrusive. It's not hard to find a Samsung TV around $350 that supports that, but as far as I could tell, I had to go up to a GTX1050 graphics card to get that. I sit between 24 and 28" away from the monitor so the text is readable to me at full resolution. At that distance, I do have to turn my head to comfortably read text in the corners of the TV, especially the upper corners. In practice, that means I keep monitoring-type applications such as CPU charts, Datadog graphs, etc., in one of those corners for quick reference. While I still have two 1920x1080 monitors on either side of the TV, it's quite nice to be able to open up on my main monitor a huge IDE window and, when necessary, put 3-4 normal-sized windows next to each other for comparison work.
- ianai 9y ago
  Does 60 hz keep windows from lagging when moved?
  - dhd415 9y ago
    I detect no lag when moving windows around. It might not (or might -- I simply don't know) be good enough for gamers, but it's definitely smooth enough for development, document, or web browsing (aka productivity) tasks.
    - LiquidFlux 9y ago
      144Hz monitors do produce a very noticeable difference for gaming if you can rival the refresh rate with in-game FPS, outside of gaming I've only found it noticeable when moving windows about. For productivity I'd go for the 40" 2160p over a lower resolution higher refresh panel.
  - slantyyz 9y ago
    You might be thinking of the issue early adopters had with TVs that only did 4K/30 over HDMI. At 60Hz, it's like any other computer monitor.
danmaz74 9y ago
I think that the 24:10 aspect ratio alone will cause higher prices because of much lower economies of scale for the panel...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
sampl 9y ago
The pricing is so odd. For $300 more, you can get a monitor with _much_ better resolution (5120x2880), though in a smaller screen size. It's called an iMac. https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/imac/27-inch https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/imac/27-inch
- blattimwind 9y ago
  5K 27" displays are much less than this.
  - LeoNatan25 9y ago
    5K 27” with wide color gamut and good calibration? Please post links here.
    - nine_k 9y ago
      For photo / graphics work, wide gamut and calibration are important. For text editing, less so. High DPI is important for me, though.
    - irq 9y ago
      LG 5K 27" display. 100% coverage of P3 gamut. $1299. https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HKN62/lg-ultrafine-5k-display?fnode=4c https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HKN62/lg-ultrafine-5k-dis...
      - LeoNatan25 9y ago
        This is a good display, and price has gone down. But anyway to connect it to a Windows 10 / nVidia PC and get the full 5K resolution? No GPU that I’m familiar with has support for USB-C.
        irq 9y ago
        MSI NVIDIA GTX1080Ti GPU with USB-C: http://www.tweaktown.com/news/57725/msi-first-graphics-card-usb-type-port/index.html http://www.tweaktown.com/news/57725/msi-first-graphics-card-...
olegkikin 9y ago
And it double-sucks, because here in Italy we have to pay "TV tax", even if you don't have the TV service hooked up. Modern LCD/OLED TVs are perfectly fine for most tasks, except maybe high-end FPS gaming. The colors are good, the refresh rates are decent.
- J_cst 9y ago
  That's an ownership tax on tv's as there's an ownership tax on cars. The fact that the proceedings of the Tv ownership tax pay for the public (national) tv service is just a side factor. As very few people were actually paying it, the Tv ownership tax has been embedded on the electricity bill. _Italians, good people_
- walterstucco 9y ago
  E basta co sta storia del canone! È una tassa, pagatela e smettetela di lamentarvi.
  - J_cst 9y ago
    I was just saying that above, it's an ownership tax. A lot more people are paying it as it's now embedded on the electricity bill, so it's useless to recommend to pay it as it's now been basically enforced. I believe you should comment in english if you wish to be understood.
terminalcommand 9y ago
I cannot speak for 4K TVs, but as I was making a research for my own purchase I found the following differences between monitors and TVs. TVs are said to be configured to display the best-looking colors, monitors try to stay true to the real color. TVs have an immensely higher refresh rate, 50hz/60hz usually suffice for a TV. But on monitors we speak of milliseconds. The refresh rate makes a lot of difference, if you intend to game on your computer/monitor. An e-sport professional Redittor claims he had improved his playing performance multiple-folds after switching to a monitor instead of TV. (https://www.reddit.com/r/FIFA/comments/5whb9v/did_the_change_from_tv_to_monitor_here_are_my/ https://www.reddit.com/r/FIFA/comments/5whb9v/did_the_change...) Other than these differences and the occasional overscan/underscan problems on older televisions, I personally see no reason to prefer a Monitor over a TV, if there is huge price difference. If the price difference is minor, I'd opt for a monitor.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- jacoblambda 9y ago
  Refresh rate and response time are different. Refresh rate is how often a new frame is displayed, i.e. 50/60/144Hz. Response time is the amount of time it takes for the display to process a frame and display it, i.e. 1/2/4/16ms.
  - terminalcommand 9y ago
    I stand corrected. >>Over a decade has passed since the LCD monitor unceremoniously ousted the boxy CRT monitor into obsolescence, but with that ousting came a small problem: CRT monitors redrew every frame from scratch, and this was baked into the fundamentals of how PCs sent information to the screen. Monitors redrew the screen with a refresh rate of 100 Hz, (100 times a second), and they were silky smooth. >>LCD monitors don’t have this problem, because the pixels don’t need to be refreshed. Instead, they update individual pixels with new colors, and each of those updates takes a certain amount of time depending on what the change is. The response time refers to how long this change takes. LCDs started with a 60-Hz refresh rate but a response time of about 15 milliseconds (ms). For more information on the subject: https://www.tomsguide.com/us/refresh-rates-vs-response-times,news-24345.html https://www.tomsguide.com/us/refresh-rates-vs-response-times...
hocuspocus 9y ago
High-end monitors are niche products. 40" TVs aren't. HDMI 2.0 is a pain compared to DP, other than that, there's almost no reason not to buy a TV if you just care about office use. I've been using a Samsung UHD TV for almost two years.
prodmerc 9y ago
Honestly, it just looks like price gouging. You can get a 40 inch LG IPS 4K TV for half the price. And this Dell isn't even 10 bit IPS, which is what monitors for professional graphics use, it's the standard 8bit IPS, very likely made by LG. It's curved though.
rwallace 9y ago
I know someone who uses a 1080p TV as a monitor for his gaming PC. The picture quality is poor; it's too blurry to be tolerable for work. That's okay in this particular case, since he uses a different PC for work, but that one needs a proper monitor. Granted that's 1080p, but it wouldn't surprise me if the same thing is true of 4k.

SideburnsOfDoom 9y ago

I suspect that in a few years a hololens / google glass style device will become cheaper and work as well as a big bank of monitors, and at that point it is going to rapidly replace physical monitors - and then economy of scale and iteration of the product will do the usual to the price/performance ratio of head-mounted devices, then screens go the way of CRT monitors when flat screens came along. I'm not saying that a head-mounted device and virtual screens will necessarily be better than a bank of monitors - in fact it's time to asses drawbacks - but once it's cheaper and seems "just as good" then business will want to switch over, for better or worse.

melling 9y ago
Will I still need to be sitting at a desk with a keyboard and mouse?
- keldaris 9y ago
  "Need" is a strong word, but you'll probably want to if you're trying to be productive. VR/AR won't replace the tactile feedback of a good keyboard, etc. Then again, as someone who can't even use current VR/AR offerings (high myopia, don't use contact lenses) and is only following all of this as a fairly disinterested spectactor, it looks to me like the initial craze is already blowing over and people are taking a better look at the disadvantages and limitations of the current products. I don't see VR/AR taking over monitors or much of anything else, though I'm sure AR will find productivity applications in specific fields soon enough.
  - manquer 9y ago
    perhaps with gestures and voice input integrated into good software applications , the keyboard will altogether be eliminated..
    - jsjohnst 9y ago
      There isn't a voice input in existence that I'd be interested in using while writing code or doing photo/video editing. Even dictating code to another human who is as fluent as you are in the language of choice is a non-starter, so I don't see any machine based way of doing it catching up soon.

fsloth 9y ago

Only 60 hz. Sigh - I hope mainstream moves to 100+Hz monitors soon. I love the fluency of my far-too-expensive 'gaming' IPS 144hz monitor despite I don't play that much. Just the fact that web pages and mouse pointers don't lag is a noticeable improvement.

scarlac 9y ago
I agree. 60hz is fine but having tried +100hz CRT monitors back in 199X I am still waiting for them to be mainstream. Perhaps Apple will take the iPad's "ProMotion" 120hz to the mainstream crowd in a not-too-expensive display package.
jrockway 9y ago
Yeah, 60Hz looks like a slideshow after using 144Hz for a while. It does get rapidly better after 60, though. I think I can stop telling a difference at around 80. So there is some hope that we can have 4k@better-than-60 in the near future.
- brianwawok 9y ago
  Using text, I am fine with 5fps if it is not blinking like a CRT did. My kindle I think does 0fps when not changing pages and it is 100x better than a monitor. I have found the 300fps thing a bit silly for computers meant for text (which is my use case, not claiming it is the ONLY use case).
LeoNatan25 9y ago
I rather we invest in PPI rather than refresh rate. Not that the two are mutually exclusive, but as I look at my use cases, most of the time the screen is static, so a higher refresh rate would be wasted, whereas higher PPI screens improve readability and legibility (when they work on Windows).
- fsloth 9y ago
  You mean 4k on a desktop is not dense enough for you?

hultner 9y ago

I'd much rather see one with higher resolution. The DPI is quite low with today's standard.

LeoNatan25 9y ago
Sadly, outside of macOS, the support for high PPI display is dodgy at best. On Linux, it is becoming better, but still a lot more to improve. On Windows, it's a real shitshow. Windows 10, for the most part, is OK (still a lot of inconsistencies and lack of polish when scale > 100%), but application support is just terrible, be it blur, tiny scale, inconsistent elements (some small, some large) or plain crashing. Really, any vendor that makes such display is taking a risk that people will complain and a sizeable portion of the customers that purchase such a display will not understand the technical difficulties.
- kuschku 9y ago
  On Linux, it just depends on your desktop environment. If you use KDE or any other Qt based one, HiDPI works perfectly at any scale, even in heterogenous environments – a landscape 4K 144ppi and a portrait 70ppi monitor right next to each other will work fine, and when moving applications they automatically rescale. On X11 and Wayland. The scale is set via the environmental variable QT_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTORS=DisplayPort-2=1.61;HDMI-A-0=1.08; It’s GNOME and GTK which have almost no HiDPI support at all – they only support 96 and 192dpi (only integer scaling), and just added a feature for all other resolutions to just scale the windows down with blur. GTK2 still supported proper HiDPI, but with GTK3 they decided to abandon that and instead build apps that rely on pixels always being the same size. Considering how young GTK3 is this decision may sound a bit short-sighted, but the GNOME devs always refer to macOS as an example where this worked (while ignoring Android and Windows 10, which use fractional scaling, and ignoring the fact that with Gnome’s solution a game such as Minecraft on a 4K 144dpi screen is rendered at 6K and then half the resolution gets thrown away during the downscaling, because there is no option to avoid this) The result is obviously completely broken.
  - mixmastamyk 9y ago

eps 9y ago

PSA - don't get tempted by UltraSharp reviews and recommendations, like I did. Just pick an Eizo instead. UltraSharps are widely recommended for coding with glorious reviews and endorsements. Got one and no matter how I adjusted it, it was still too... eye-piercing, if you will, for longer coding sessions. Got mild headaches, tired eyes and general feeling of discomfort when working on hem even for shorter periods. Then switched to FlexScan and it's a completely different ballgame - softer, more gentle feel, incomparably more comfortable. The best monitor I've had a pleasure of staring at in my 20 years of programming. However the interesting part here is that both monitors use the same panel (!), so the panel itself is only part of the recipe, which is something that many reciews tend to either downplay or not mention at all.

IdontRememberIt 9y ago
I suspect it is the AG (anti-glare) coating. Dell keeps using a cheap version (3H)...
noinsight 9y ago
Definitely. I made the mistake of buying an UltraSharp U2713HM which actually buzzed with lots of text on the screen (apparently it's a feature, just google the model). I tried swapping my new display and they sent me a refurbished one with dead pixels that buzzed also. I'm never buying Dell again. This time around I did the right thing and went the more expensive route and got an Eizo and it's just absolutely perfect.
- eppsilon 9y ago
  I had the same experience with the same model. Never again, Dell.
wmf 9y ago
Does Eizo have anything in the 38"-40" range? I don't see it on their site.

roselan 9y ago

Last time I tried such giant screen, I ended up extremely frustrated with the screen splitter feature, I prefer triple monitors for this reason. Had there been significant progress in this field the last few years?

slantyyz 9y ago
Have you ever tried DisplayFusion? -- edit, DisplayFusion is for windows. When I used to use Mac, I used Moom.
phideauxrocks 9y ago
Try Virtual Display Manager. It can easily split the screen into various configurations.

sundvor 9y ago

I bought the U3415W when it first came out. At first it was for games (coming from 3x U2412Ms) however I quickly realised how incredibly good the 21:9 3440x1440 resolution is for programming. No DPI scaling needs be involved, so I'm looking at Visual Studio experience where even with NCrunch unit test runners and the Solution overview, I have plenty of room for two main code editing windows. Brilliant. I ended up buying an extra Acer X34 for home (surrounded by 2x U2412Ms on an Ergotech stand) and brought the U3415W to work as a personal device. The 38" could potentially be even better, however I'm rather happy with the 34" as is. It's a bit of a shame they didn't add Freesync to it.

Clubber 9y ago
I ended up getting 2 Dell 43" monitors and are very happy with them for coding. I actually have 3, but the 3rd is too much (I never thought I'd see the day). They aren't perfect, and the "old" version is buggy, so if you want these, get them straight from Dell. Resellers still have the old version that drops connection. Also, the HDMI is only 30Hz while the DP and mDP are both 60. Finally, they stretch a few pixels past the border, so you will need to shrink the picture slightly with the video card driver. If you can deal with all that, they are incredible. Dell has a window manager that allows you to assign a grid and windows will snap to their respective cells once dropped into it. http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&cs=04&l=en&sku=210-AHSQ http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&c...
- kjhughes 9y ago
  Thank you for posting this. I've recently been considering buying one (Dell 43 Ultra HD 4k Multi Client Monitor P4317Q, right?) However, this negative review is holding me back. Is there any merit to its claim? This monitor has glorious resolution made totally useless because the backlight uses PWM Pulse Width Modulation to adjust the backlight brightness. This leads to eye fatigue and, in some cases, severe headaches. One would be hard pressed to find other monitors in Dell's lineup with this outdated technology since it has almost entirely been removed from all modern monitors. As a business monitor, it is expected to have "Comfort View" aka "low blue light" mode to reduce eye stress during a long day of use. Fix these problems and you will sell more of these than you could make. http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-43-ultra-hd-4k-multi-client-monitor-p4317q/apd/210-ahsq/monitors-monitor-accessories http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-43-ultra-hd-4k-multi-cli... I'd be hooking one or two up to my late 2013 MacBook Pro Retina 15, btw, which has a miniDP, so I believe I'll be able to get full resolution at 60Hz.

IdontRememberIt 9y ago

Low DPI, certainly Dell's traditional low quality anti-glare filter (3h). When will they wake up and build monitors for people who work with letters and numbers (vs video or image) and favor quality over price? For a few years I think I will still have to switch every programms to dark theme as a work around to hide the poor quality and defaults of the monitors... sad. :(

callumlocke 9y ago

Is 110 ppi considered ultra sharp?

mamon 9y ago
I think UltraSharp name is refering to the fact that those are IPS panels with: 1) wide color gamut, compared to TN screens 2) Better contrast ratio, again, compared to cheap TN panels.

bitL 9y ago

I wish it were available in HiDPI version, i.e. twice the resolution - it would make it way better to look at, as seeing pixels while editing video or producing audio in Live is no longer acceptable.

greggyb 9y ago
Honest question: why does it matter if you see pixels while producing audio?
- jeremiep 9y ago
  I'm guessing it has to do with how the waveform is rendered. More pixels means a more precise waveform view.
- bitL 9y ago
  I have 3x 4k displays, one of them 30" DCI 4k, one 55" UHD, plus a rMBP and an ultrabook with 3200x1800. I simply can't go back to see pixels again. Once you get used to better, you dislike a downgrade.
  - greggyb 9y ago
    I get that, but it's a general point. You specifically called out producing audio, and I was curious if there were specific visual features that are necessary in producing audio. I get it for video editing. I also understand the general "I like high resolution" case. I am wondering if there is something I am unaware of about the combination of high resolution and audio that made you call that out as a specific use case.
    - bitL 9y ago
      Beside nicer fonts you have "sub-pixel" resolution in e.g. your piano roll/channel list, so you can zoom out a bit more while still able to distinguish stuff there. That is handy if you work with a very large number of channels.
9y ago

80211 9y ago

Why is the vertical resolution so poor?

flurdy 9y ago
It is not. Is is a very wide screen. 24:10 aspect. A UHD/4k pixel density that you would find in a 16:9 display would mean a lot more horizontal pixels. Though I would like to see one that is 5184x2160 or 5760x2160 pixels. I expect that is just too expensive and niche atm. And pushing gfx cards and display ports to its limits.

bhouston 9y ago

At the office we have a dozen QNIX 4K 32 inches monitors. They are not quite IPS, although it says it is, and they are $399 USD from eBay. Hard to beat that price. They are bright and they have DP & HDMI 2 ports.

lobster_johnson 9y ago
They're $399 on Amazon, too.

tannhaeuser 9y ago

Beware if you're somewhat of a messy, like me, you're going to have hundreds of (terminal) windows and another hundreds of browser tabs open simultaneously on these, until you can't find your current stuff on your desktop anymore at which point you have to spend half an hour to sort out what you want to close. I actually sold my fat 27" and went back to 24" (and to 13" notebooks). A special window manager is a requisite on the big screen, but which one? I like the original Expose feature on Mac OS <= 10.6 while the remade 10.7 version just doesn't blend from/into full desktop view as spatially recognizable as the original for me. Ubuntu's Unity does an ok job, too, but it's going away ([1]). [1]: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14043631> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14043631>

shoover 9y ago
The built in Win+Tab command works well for the closing windows problem on Windows 10 on a 34" screen. I'm using a combination of built in commands and WindowSpace commands I learned with two monitors. Keyboard shortcuts to throw a window to the left or right half of the screen go a long way, but I could use a small step up in tiling features.
Eridrus 9y ago
Tabli solves the problem of losing tabs by letting me search for them: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabli/igeehkedfibbnhbfponhjjplpkeomghi https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabli/igeehkedfibb...
edcoffin 9y ago
For macOS window control via keyboard I recommend Spectacle (https://github.com/eczarny/spectacle https://github.com/eczarny/spectacle). Among other options, the app can position windows by thirds which really shines for this class of screen - think three windows side-by-side each using 1280px.
flurdy 9y ago
If you mean tiling window managers: Macos: https://ianyh.com/amethyst/ https://ianyh.com/amethyst/ Linux: http://xmonad.org http://xmonad.org or https://i3wm.org https://i3wm.org

snvzz 9y ago

No FreeSync in $currentyear, not even worth considering.

wmf 9y ago
If you RTFA, the competing Acer model has FreeSync with a lower price.

RX14 9y ago

Off-topic but I wish 16:10 hadn't died with the move to 4k. I have an old 1200p dell ultrasharp in 16:10 and it's sublime compared to my other 16:9. You'd think it doesn't make much of a difference, but it really does. Especially when you have it vertically oriented, but otherwise too.

zanny 9y ago
Golden ratio strikes again! Historians in a millennia will probably look back at us as heathens for deviating from using the perfect rectangle to construct our screens.
- colbyh 9y ago
  hopefully in a millennia mathemeticians will have finally convinced the world that the golden ratio really isn't special.
  - tedunangst 9y ago
    Nor does it make sense for a monitor. I can't remember ever wanting to arrange a bunch of windows as a square, a smaller square, a smaller square, etc.
    - dijit 9y ago
      You must not use a tiling window manager.
      - tedunangst 9y ago
        I must not want my wm to give me a geometric series of ever shrinking squares.
        OJFord 9y ago
        What else does it default to, if you open a new window?

ianai 9y ago

"Dell has managed to increase maximum brightness of its U3818DW to 350 nits (from 300 nits on competing monitors)" Bah, why does everyone seem to love blinding themselves? Am I the only one who doesn't like a bright screen? (Ergonomically, we're supposed to have the monitor's backlight match the brightness of a white sheet of paper in the same lighting conditions.)

DamnInteresting 9y ago
It's sometimes nice to have the option for high brightness, as the situation calls for it. But there's no need to run it at full blast at all times.
- ianai 9y ago
  My problem with the brightness is that it pulls up the minimum brightness available. Most of my devices are too bright for me at their minimum settings at night time.
  - rhizome 9y ago
    That's unusual.
    - mixmastamyk 9y ago
      Not at all.
  - kshitijl 9y ago
    Can't you always lower the brightness in software, at the OS/driver level? Unless you're saying that this compresses the dynamic range of brightnesses too much, to the point where you can't distinguish shades that you need to be able to for your work.
    - Moru 9y ago
      Most cheaper monitors have always on backlights that can't change brightness.

nickjj 9y ago

I'd rather stick with 2x 25" Dell UltraSharp U2515H 2560x1440 monitors[0]. 2 of those are nearly 3x cheaper than the 1x 38" curved display and for tasks that require a lot of horizontal space (video editing, etc.) 5120 is WAY wider than 3840. Also a curved display is pretty questionable for professional image editing (it distorts pixels). I run the 25" here for development and video editing. Probably the best development environment upgrade I've made in 5 years. If anyone wants to read a deep dive on how to pick a solid monitor for development, I put together a detailed blog post[1] that covers why I picked that 25" Dell specifically. [0]: http://amzn.to/2jF3WHp http://amzn.to/2jF3WHp [1]: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-pick-a-good-monitor-for-software-development https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-pick-a-good-monitor-fo...

slantyyz 9y ago
>> 2 of those are nearly 3x cheaper than the 1x 38" curved display For about the same price as the 38", you can get a pair 27" Dell P2715Q 4K monitors which will give you more than double the resolution of that 38" monitor. I have a pair of P2715Q's mounted side by side in a "v" shape (not as good as curved, but does the trick) and it works fairly well. Of course, having no bezels in the middle where the monitors touch would be nice. The main drawback of the P2715Q's is that they don't have HDMI 2.0 inputs, which means your system needs two DP outs that can support 4k/60.
- fnl 9y ago
  To me, it's the ability to put my current "focus window" exactly center what makes the curved screens so attractive, with the 32-38" size range always feeling just about right to me. My neck starts aching if I have two screens, making me end up using one as the focus screen and the other as support. While three 27"s in a row seem slightly excessive "screen wall" to me, but some like that...
  - slantyyz 9y ago
    I guess it really depends on your workflow. My own preference is to use my left monitor for source code and shell windows and my right monitor for browser testing. That does mean I tend to spend a significant amount of time looking to my left.

Stratoscope 9y ago

It's interesting to see the variety of monitors people are using - and especially the variety of pixel densities, all the way down to 69 pixels per inch on a 32" 1080p panel. For anyone who is curious to compare the pixel density of a variety of monitors and televisions, I have a spreadsheet with about 120 different display sizes and resolutions and their pixel densities: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K4bCgr-VjMmeCjHf6UdyR6Hg4rRz7aKz-BOz8U2tF0o/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K4bCgr-VjMmeCjHf6Udy... Email me at the address in my profile or use the chat box in the spreadsheet (to avoid cluttering this thread) if you have any other displays you'd like to add.

slantyyz 9y ago
For the past few years, I've been using this tool to give me information on pixel densities: https://www.sven.de/dpi/ https://www.sven.de/dpi/

gesman 9y ago

3840x1600? My new Laptop (Lenovo Yoga 910) does 3840x2160 Hence: Acer ProDesigner BM320

pault 9y ago

Ugh, I bought the 34" a few months ago and replaced it with a 42" 16:9 yesterday. The ultra wide format is really awkward for everything except gaming and media, and those have tons of software issues with the aspect ratio.

altano 9y ago

I can't read the article because of this horrible ad that takes over the whole screen: https://imgur.com/gallery/tBeOG https://imgur.com/gallery/tBeOG

nsxwolf 9y ago

Super happy with the return of 1600 line displays even if they had to go ultrawide to get there.

mixmastamyk 9y ago

Not for me. Resolution/DPI too low for work at desk, too small to use in the living room. Who's this for? Only good use cases I can think of are Excel jocks and folks who like to watch movies at their desk.

trustworthy 9y ago

Pretty interested in this as I'm not a fan of 21:9, I'm wondering how I'll feel about looking at 24:10. As stated I wish it was a way higher refresh (120 I feel should be the new norm now?)

nadim 9y ago
144. Low refresh rate is a deal breaker on this.
Stratoscope 9y ago
I'm guessing you don't like 21:9 because it's too wide relative to its height, or put another way it's not tall enough relative to its width. If that's the case, 24:10 would be even worse. Don't be misled by the :9 vs. :10 part - that is meaningless. Reduce them both to a single number for a fair comparison: 21:9 and 24:10 are 2.333:1 and 2.4:1 respectively.

kbenson 9y ago

And here I am with a Vizio 40" 4k[1] that I got for less than $500. It's not perfect, and the refresh rate is only 60Hz for 4k (which is the same as this Dell offering), but it's served me well for the last six months at a fraction of the cost and with more pixels. 1: http://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/vizio/d-series-4k-2016 http://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/vizio/d-series-4k-2016

nikanj 9y ago
Have you been extremely annoyed by software that detects a 4k resolution and scales everything to HUGE? I had trouble with this when I got my 40"/4k, and in the end did unspeakable things to the registry to force Windows to always scale 1:1.
- kbenson 9y ago
  No, actually. I don't think I've experienced that at all. The biggest problem I have is that it's actually a docking station setup, and when I pull the laptop out, and have to scale back down Chrome's zoom from 130%, and change PuTTY's font. I may have googled and turned off that in the beginning, but I definitely didn't need a registry hack, at least for Windows 10.
  - ido 9y ago
    In my experience (routinely using both a 4K iMac and high resolution dell xps with win 10) the mac is still better at doing the "right thing" on its own, resolution-correction wise.
elliotf 9y ago
Agreed. I bought a Samsung (UN40JU6700) 4k60p curved monitor for ~$800 and it works reasonably well. There are some quirks using a TV as a monitor and I was a little nervous about the screen quality, but it's worked well so far. Also, it's a TV. edit: I especially like that the DPI is the same as a 27" 2560x1440 monitor.
- 9y ago

myrandomcomment 9y ago

This is based off a monitor from LG that is over a year old and is not 4K. I have a 34 inch flat LG thunderbolt screen right now on my 3 year old MacBook Pro. Great screen I plan to swap the computer to the MacBook and get a LG 32ud99-w when they finally ship (4K, USB-C from MacBook). I fly 100K a year so I want the smaller laptop. I hate giving up on the thunderbolt. I have been waiting for a decent USB-C monitor.

WhitneyLand 9y ago

This is a difficult time to commit $1500 to a monitor. For that kind of money I would really want better support for new color standards. But the standards are still settling, and you can actually end up worse off with better color if the stars are not aligned with your operating system and applications.

PhrosTT 9y ago

I'm pretty sure the 38" Acer ultrawide is cooler - same resolution, better refresh rate, $1200. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N6S1P2D https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N6S1P2D