
Dell Ultra Sharp 24" 4K display - seanmcdirmid
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&sku=860-BBCD
======
barrkel
Note that this display has no hardware scaling; if sent a signal that's less
than the native resolution, it's displayed centred and unscaled. Last I
checked, drivers for nVidia at least don't yet support cheap scaling for it.
That means playing GPU-taxing games on it is unfeasible for the moment.

I also expect prices to come down, as 4K TV panels start to create economies
of scale (even though the price isn't extortionate for what it is in the
current market). The panel shouldn't always be a niche like 1920x1200 is. So I
reckon this one is for early adopters.

~~~
cma
Yep, you can already get a 39" 4k TV that can serve as a monitor for $499:

[http://www.amazon.com/Seiki-Digital-SE39UY04-39-Inch-
Ultra/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Seiki-Digital-SE39UY04-39-Inch-
Ultra/dp/B00DOPGO2G/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1388071305&sr=1-1&keywords=seiki+4k+39+inch)

But it can only do 30Hz at 4K due to its limted inputs. You can game on it at
1080p@60Hz (hopefully without any scaling issues since 4K has exactly 4 pixels
for every 1080p pixel).

~~~
riobard
I'm wondering if I don't play games, would 30Hz @ 4K be sufficient for web
browsing, coding, and movies?

~~~
itsameta4
Most people can't tell the difference between 30 and 60Hz, except in certain
situations. Most TV programs are filmed at 30Hz, and until very recently, most
movies were filmed at 24Hz.

You may notice a little bit of stuttering during long, slow pans, but for
everything else, it should work pretty well.

~~~
ChuckMcM
As a long time Amiga user who had a 'flicker fixer' card I can assure you that
some people _can_ and _do_ notice significant degradation of the monitor
experience at 30hz. Now granted part of that was the fact that 30Hz
interleaved had really annoying flicker on single pixel horizontal lines, but
even the 'turn your head and it blinks' stuff was pretty annoying too.

I'd be interested to see this display in action (not quite interested enough
to experiment with $500 though) to see how it affected my vision of things.

~~~
fallous
I'm not sure if you're misremembering the Amiga flicker-fixer but the FF
converted the 15KHz interlaced display of the Amiga to 30KHz (VGA style). It
was the 15KHz interlace flickering that was noticeable, not the upgraded 30KHz
signal from the FF.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I didn't write my comment clearly, with the FF it was not an issue, but
without the FF the display in interlaced mode was painful. I had a long
phosphor monitor which I used to mitigate that but until I got the FF it was
an issue.

That said, the points above about the mechanics of LCD's being different
enough that I might not object are reasonable. I've really not tried using a
30hz LCD display.

------
jtokoph
Does it bother anyone else that we've moved from describing displays by
vertical resolution (1080/720) to horizontal resolution (4K)?

It seems confusing for the semi-informed.

Is there an explanation other than marketing reasons?

~~~
randyrand
Dell might agree. 4K does not appear anywhere on that webpage.

~~~
leoc
AFAICS it doesn't meet all aspects of the TV world's 4K spec, specifically the
new colour regime. (99% of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_RGB_color_space](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_RGB_color_space)
has to be a smaller colour space than
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rec._2020](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rec._2020)
surely.)

~~~
profquail
The article you linked on Rec. 2020 says:

> In coverage of the CIE 1931 color space the Rec. 2020 color space covers
> 75.8%, the digital cinema reference projector color space covers 53.6%, the
> Adobe RGB color space covers 52.1%, and the Rec. 709 color space covers
> 35.9%.

So yes, Adobe RGB covers less of the reference color space than Rec. 2020
(4k/UHD), but more than Rec. 709 (HDTV).

------
Tepix
I have one of those IBM T221 which do 3840x2400 (16:10) on 22.2" (204dpi). See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors)
for details.

These monitors are old, they have a fan, they require 4x DVI achieve this
resolution and they are limited to 41Hz screen refreshes (not flickering
though). Still, once you get used to truly sharp fonts, you don't want to go
back. Can't wait for more of these new monitors to arrive in different sizes,
with 60Hz refresh (preferably also offering 1920x1080@120Hz) and with HDMI
2.0. I believe 27" is the perfect size for a single desktop monitor.

------
jrockway
Glad to see the pixel count finally increasing. I remember having a
moderately-high-quality CRT when I was in high school that easily did
1600x1200. It was quite a while before LCDs did anything like that. Then
resolution went _backwards_ as companies realized they could sell you a 100"
monitor with a resolution of 1920x1 ("super wide screen true HD!!111!") for
$20. And there we've been stuck for like 5 years, with monitors getting wider
every day but with the vertical resolution decreasing.

I think I'm going to get the 32" 4k variant and replace my TV with it. This is
especially relevant since shows are starting to be released in 4k resolution,
though I worry that 32" is kind of big for computer work and kind of small for
TV. Sigh. Small apartments :(

~~~
flatfilefan
You will love the 32" monitor especially with such high resolution. Finally
one have enough pixel real estate for the monitor to serve as a desktop. Now
you can have your documents arranged on that desktop without having to
maximize their windows to do anything useful.

I love my 2560x1600 30" and will certainly by a 32" with bigger resolution.
However that 30" is just big enough for two a4 documents side to side. So
higher resolution is very welcome.

------
mikevm
It would have been nice if this monitor was 16:10 and not 16:9.

~~~
marshray
Actually I still miss 4:3.

~~~
RexRollman
I personally love my 1280x1024 desktop LCD screen. I am going to hate it when
that thing dies.

------
marshray
I'm still a bit annoyed at how the 16:9 content consumer has kept displays
stuck at 1080p for many years now. But I can't say I don't benefit from those
economies of scale. So I'll just have to wait politely for prices to come
down.

------
gjm11
Price from Dell USA: $1299. Price from Dell UK: £1270. _sigh_

~~~
natch
...and you get free health care. I wouldn't complain.

~~~
nolok
He doesn't get free healthcare, he gets socialized healthcare that he pays for
with taxes. It's not a gift out of magic, it's a political and economical
choice.

~~~
ollysb
That depends on whether or not he's paying taxes ;)

~~~
thomasfedb
If he's not paying the tax then his parents either are or did. Same here in
Australia, it's just a part of the basic standard we are prepared to be taxed
for.

------
overgard
Potentially dumb question, but will this work with a MacBook? (Like with some
sort of thunderbolt adapter )

~~~
Synaesthesia
Only the latest MacBooks with Haswell chips support 4k over Thunderbolt 2

~~~
interpol_p
Do you know if they will they run the screen in a scaled mode? (i.e.,
1920x1080 logical pixels, while using retina scaled assets)

~~~
sliverstorm
This monitor doesn't support scaling. If you push 1080p, it will not fill the
screen.

~~~
jfb
That's not what HiDPI mode does; rather than rely on the (uniformly crappy)
on-board scaling logic on the display, the computer sends a full resolution
picture that it has scaled already. And there's no reason to think that this
won't be available with this display.

------
0x0
I'm almost more excited about 30bit color than the 4k res. No more ugly
banding in gradients!!!

~~~
Andys
10 bits per channel is nothing new, but requires specific openGL application +
driver + video card support, so you don't get access to it in standard photo
viewing/editing apps.

Are you sure the banding you are seeing isn't just because, like most users,
you have a 6 bit panel?

------
awjr
Is the lack of hardware scaling an attempt to keep the costs down or to
'encourage' people to upgrade their PCs?

It's a beautiful piece of kit. I'm guessing any hardware scaling would
seriously impact on the image quality and this type of screen would show up
any imperfection.

~~~
keeperofdakeys
Hardware scaling on this monitor would actually be better than most 1080p
screens, since you have more pixels to approximate the original image with. If
your target resolution was exactly half the pixels on vertical and horizontal,
it would be "perfect" (albeit with pixels four times as large as normal).

------
graycat
Help! I don't understand much about such monitors.

E.g., currently my computer has a dedicated video adapter card and is sending
1024 x 768 pixels to a CRT with a 15.5" diagonal. It appears from Windows >
Start > Control Panel > Display > Settings that the most pixels is 1280 x 960.

For me, 1024 x 768 pixels are plenty, but on my screen with diagonal only
15.5", a lot of text is too small to read, even if I used a magnifying glass.

So, I'd like a bigger screen, but still with only about 1024 x 768 pixels.

That a screen can display more pixels is from useless to me down to a concern:
My guess is that, now that CRTs are out, the current solid state displays have
some actual physical pixels, independent of the signal from the computer, and
that when the computer sends, say, 1024 pixels on a line somehow the display
(or video card?) has to fit the 1024 pixels across the 1200 or whatever the
number of pixels the screen has. Sounds like a good opportunity for some moire
effects.

Also, my old video card may be sending a signal that newer monitors can't use.

So:

Q 1. What should I do to display the 1024 x 768 pixels I want but on a screen
with diagonal longer than 15.5"

Q 2. What about moire effects or other issues from displaying, say, 1024
pixels from my video card on a screen with more than 1024 pixels, say, 1200 or
many more?

Q 3. How can I use the signal from my old video card, or do I need to get a
new video card?

Thanks!

~~~
dragonwriter
> For me, 1024 x 768 pixels are plenty, but on my screen with diagonal only
> 15.5", a lot of text is too small to read, even if I used a magnifying
> glass.

> So, I'd like a bigger screen, but still with only about 1024 x 768 pixels.

Why? You can have bigger _text_ without having bigger pixels (and, at any
given size, readability should be better with more pixels because the lines
making up the characters will have better definition.)

Get a monitor the size you want, with as many pixels as you can (given your
budget), use all of them, and use the text scaling setting in your OS to get
text the size you want. Don't hobble yourself with a low-resolution device (or
low-resolution setting on a high-resolution device) to get bigger text, that's
the worst possible way to do that.

~~~
graycat
If the characters of the alphabet are larger on my screen, then the maximum
number of characters per line is lower which means that at a lot of Web sites
I can't read a full line of text without horizontal scrolling. In that case,
commonly I copy the text to the system clipboard, pull it into my favorite
text editor, 'reflow' the lines, and then read them. Bummer.

But a larger screen with each character taking the same amount of area on the
screen as now would make the maximum number of characters per line larger
letting me see whole lines more often without scrolling and/or let me have
each character take up more screen area without scrolling.

E.g., here at HN I'm seeing 90 characters per line which is way too many. Why
HN wants such long lines I don't know. What does HN want, screens 10 feet
wide? Traditional typing at 10 characters per inch horizontally on 8 1/2 x 11"
paper with 1" margins gives maximum line lengths of 6 1/2" or 65 characters
per line. Newspapers commonly had many fewer characters per line. 90
characters per line is just wacko in several respects -- there's no good
reason for it.

On my Windows XP SP3 system (yes, I recently got a DVD of Windows 7
Professional 64 bit, for my next computer when I finally give up on XP), it
appears that nearly all the text from Microsoft's programs, e.g., essentially
everything that comes from the tree rooted at Start > Control Panel and Start
> My Computer, was designed for a screen with diagonal about my 15.5" but with
640 x 480 pixels. Using the Microsoft software to set the screen _resolution_
down to 640 x 480 makes the old Microsoft software much easier to read but,
then, commonly has too few characters per screen to display all the screen
contents -- e.g., the screen from Start gives a message that some content
could not be displayed. So, keeping my present 1024 x 768 pixels per screen
but having a screen with diagonal larger than 15.5" should basically just
_magnify_ what is shown on the screen, that is, each character would take up
more screen area and be larger and easier to read. But a screen with a
diagonal larger than 15.5" and, say, 1280 x 960 pixels or some, say, 2048 x
1536 would, unless I got a huge screen, say, diagonal 31", make each character
on the screen take up less screen area and, thus, be still more difficult to
read.

Yes, more pixels per character would give nicer looking characters, but
characters with just 10 x 18 pixels are easy enough to read if they take up
enough screen area. That is, for reading text, I don't really need more pixels
per character, as nice as that could be.

E.g., in my Web site development, commonly I am specifying font sizes in terms
of pixels, e.g.,

    
    
         font-size:  25px;
         line-height: 30px;
    

Then, with such a Web page, many more pixels per screen would make each
character take up less screen area and, thus, be still more difficult to read.
Yes, when using a Web browser I can ask for it to magnify the whole image and
commonly do. But other software need not have such magnification, say, nearly
all the software from Microsoft in the tree rooted at Start, so that more
pixels per screen could make the text smaller and still more difficult to
read.

Net, I'd be happy with just my present 1024 x 768 pixels but displayed on a
larger sheet of glass. Or, a larger sheet of glass with, say, 4 times as many
pixels, could be more difficult to read instead of easier. Basically all I
need is just a magnifying glass none of my computer hard/software knows about.

~~~
dragonwriter
> On my Windows XP SP3 system (yes, I recently got a DVD of Windows 7
> Professional 64 bit, for my next computer when I finally give up on XP), it
> appears that nearly all the text from Microsoft's programs, e.g.,
> essentially everything that comes from the tree rooted at Start > Control
> Panel and Start > My Computer, was designed for a screen with diagonal about
> my 15.5" but with 640 x 480 pixels.

IIRC -- and its been a while since I used the display settings on XP since all
my regularly-used Windows systems are on either 7 or 8.1 now -- you can change
this by adjusting the DPI setting for your display in the control panel in
WinXP. Win7 brings scaling more to the front and actually makes it the primary
setting on the Display control panel.

~~~
graycat
Yes, with the suggestions from you expert guys here, I went to

Start > Control Panel > Display > Settings > Advanced > DPI Setting > Custom

which looks nice. So, converting their 100% to 150% gives characters much
easier to read. I don't know just what software would honor such a setting.
And to get the setting I got a message that had to install the fonts and
reboot Windows. Gee, once my HP laser printer died and I got a Brother
printer, the Brother was not fully compatible with the old HP/GL commands so
that for one of my favorite DIY printer utilities, e.g., just to do a nice job
printing flat ASCII files, I wrote some Windows GPI code -- a real pain. If
the font changes from reinstalling fonts would change the spacing in that
program, then I'd have to revise that program -- bummer.

It looks like 'scaling' has been work in progress for the industry for a long
time. The easy approach to scaling for me is just a larger piece of glass with
the same number of pixels, filling the glass, and with my hard/software not
knowing about the change.

------
tmikaeld
I have a 2560x1440 27" monitor, with higher resolution than that and a 3"
smaller screen wouldn't it be too small pixels?

~~~
barrkel
It's chicken and egg. The software is set up for bigger pixels, especially on
Windows. Higher DPI can mean higher fidelity font rendering in particular. But
someone needs to come out with these monitors so that developers can adjust
their rendering. MS should possibly even consider pixel-doubling apps, with
perhaps some hacks to keep fonts hi-res.

~~~
NickNameNick
The DPI adjustment in windows has worked since XP, worked well since vista, at
least for my purposes, and in 8 its a per monitor setting.

~~~
barrkel
The DPI adjustment doesn't affect everything. For example, from what I've read
things like Photoshop don't scale well, as the toolbar buttons remain the same
size even if the menu etc. scales up.

Edit: here's some screenshots

[https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B7re6a9_3U2nOFhZNU1N...](https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B7re6a9_3U2nOFhZNU1NQWFlblU&usp=sharing)

from:

[http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/52771357](http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/52771357)

Download full resolution and view full-screen on a 24" monitor to approximate
the experience.

Don't get me wrong, I think this is an awesome monitor, and my current
secondary monitor is on the fritz so I've been researching replacements for
the past few days. But even though I have the need, and I can easily afford
it, I've not yet made the leap to buy.

------
joubert
If you're shopping for a 4K display to do professional video editing, I
suspect this Sharp 32" might be preferable:
[http://store.apple.com/us/product/HD971LL/A/sharp-32-pn-k321...](http://store.apple.com/us/product/HD971LL/A/sharp-32-pn-k321-4k-ultra-
hd-led-monitor?fnode=53)

------
Pxtl
I'm excited to see Dell trying to break new ground in the high-end. The race
to the bottom of the pit of cheap plastic crap is tired and boring, and Apple
is really starting to kick the crap out of the competition in the mid-range
after having thoroughly dominated the high-end.

------
aabalkan
Isn't going to be a 27" 4K from Dell? Rumors were saying so IIRC.

~~~
jeroen
[http://www.legitreviews.com/dell-announces-
new-32-inch-24-in...](http://www.legitreviews.com/dell-announces-
new-32-inch-24-inch-4k-ultra-hd-monitors_129832)

Dell announced the one discussed here ($1399) and a 32" version ($3499). A 28"
consumer model for under $1000 is to be available in early 2014. All "Ultra
HD", which is 3840 x 2160.

------
patman81
24" with 3840x2160 should work perfect in HiDPI mode.

Although I'm waiting for an OS X Mavericks Update to support 4k at 60Hz via
Thunderbolt 2 (i.e. Display Port 1.2).

------
ppoint32
Shame the design looks so cheap and ugly. If I'm paying $1,299.99 for a
display I expect more than this.

Why is Apple the only company producing beautiful computers still?

~~~
prewett
It's a Dell, why are you surprised? All the Dell products I've seen have the
same amount of design sense as the Windows XP Fisher-Price UI. Dell is a
company that assembles computers. If you want fine architecture, you don't get
a prefab house.

Sadly, none of the major computer manufacturers besides Apple seem to have any
sense of design. The old ThinkPads (when they were still IBM) are the nearest
competitor; at least they were solid, square, and black looking. Stylish, not
so much, but at least they looked professional. (I guess Microsoft gave it a
good try with the surface; the hardware at least looks kind of cool)

~~~
aryastark
I disagree. I have an old IBM ThinkPad from the era when IBM still made PCs.
Dell is pretty close.

Their laptops are on the shitty Toshiba-ish side of things, granted (although
higher quality build). But their monitors and keyboards are top notch. Simple,
black, non-glossy bezel. USB ports on the side. Swivel, portrait, _and_ height
base adjustments. Their keyboards remain consistent with the 1980s standard PC
arrow/home/numpad configuration and not that weird Microsoft/Logitech shit of
putting tiny arrow keys in random locations, or F-lock.

------
msoad
I'm not gonna pay for this but it feels good to know in 2 years my office will
sport these sharp monitors

------
easy_rider
Happy and sticking with my 27" LG IPS for 1/5th the price. Honestly my vision
is too poor for 4k 24" screens.

------
rplnt
That's not 4k. It's like sticking HD on phones with 720p.

~~~
EpicEng
Dell never actually uses the term "4k" on the page, it's just in the title.

~~~
tiemand
What are you talking about? It says "Ultra HD" in the description, which is
the marketing name for 4K

~~~
EpicEng
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_high_definition_televisio...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_high_definition_television)

    
    
        "Ultra HD", would be used for displays that have an aspect ratio of at least 
        16:9 and at least one digital input capable of carrying and presenting native 
        video at a minimum resolution of 3,840 × 2,160 pixels.
    

This display fits those criteria.

