ASUS PQ321Q 4k 32" Monitor first look
anandtech.com
anandtech.com
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BXF7I9M/
One problem with using the Seiki for a PC monitor is a maximum 30Hz refresh rate at that resolution. However you won't notice the difference between a 30Hz display and a 60Hz display unless playing video games. Movies are 24hz and tv shows are 30hz (25hz in the UK). I have a lot of experience using one of those old Viewsonic 3840x2400 monitors (same as IBM T220) which also ran at roughly 30Hz.
I think the Seiki would make a perfect monitor if it were only 40" - I love my 30" + rotated 24" set up now. Apparently a 39" version is due any day now. Model number SE39UY04. MSRP $700.
On a personal note... I've waited a decade for higher dpi monitors to become mainstream. Just in the last year or so I've noticed my near-field eyesight starting to go. Ironic for me that just as these things start to show up, I start to become less able to use them.
This size seems a bit overwhelming for use as a monitor. (I used to have a 30" display but got rid of it because it was too imposing on my desk.). It's still nice to see this as an option. It should be good for visualization of large data sets.
Try moving your mouse around. Try dragging a window around. Then try it on a 120Hz monitor. You will notice the significantly greater fluidity of motion added by each step up in refresh rate, even with bottom-of-the-line USB mice, which report at 125Hz.
Movies are 24hz and tv shows are 30hz (25hz in the UK).
Sports, news, and daytime dramas (yarg) are typically 50Hz or 60Hz, so they will be less fluid on a 30Hz display. Also, watching a 24Hz movie on a 30Hz monitor will make for a terribly juddery experience. The video will appear to "chunk" every 4 input frames/5 output frames, or 6 times per second.
----
All that said, for static design work, coding, writing, etc., 4K at 30Hz would still be very useful if you can put up with the less natural feel to basic system movements.
That they blew such a fundamental spec of the display tells me that it should be much worse in other aspects (color rendition, etc).
An unboxing review of that TV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXBu9nxLN78
Its the law of diminishing returns. When I had 30Hz and 60Hz monitor on the same desktop (as in I could drag windows from one monitor to the other) it was barely noticeable and not at all distracting.
> Sports, news, and daytime dramas (yarg) are typically 50Hz or 60Hz
That's interlaced. So 60 fields per second but only 30 frames per second. You can make an argument that proper de-interlacing requires a 60hz display but in practice its only the kind of thing that videophiles will notice.
> watching a 24Hz movie on a 30Hz monitor will make for a terribly juddery experience.
The seiki also accepts 24hz at 4K, and will even go as high as 120Hz if you feed it the right 1080p signal (the upscaling will look like crap though). You just need to fiddle the PC's display settings as needed.
Maybe different people are more or less sensitive, but after seeing a friend's 120Hz monitor, once I can afford to upgrade my primary display to a nice 120Hz screen I'll never go back. I have a very low tolerance for latency and jitter.
That's interlaced. So 60 fields per second but only 30 frames per second. You can make an argument that proper de-interlacing requires a 60hz display but in practice its only the kind of thing that videophiles will notice.
Not necessarily; AFAIK some stations might still broadcast in 720p60. I think most people will notice that the athletes seem to be "moving slower" if 60i is deinterlaced to 30p, they just won't have the vocabulary to describe it.
Same with me! I just bought the expensive 15" MacBook Pro with retina display, but I ended up using a 17" 1280x1024 external monitor with it to lower the eye strain. I am even more comfortable using a 19" 1280x1024 Dell monitor at work!
This is absolute rubbish. I have an HTPC, and I played with the refresh rate settings on the TV. You can definitely notice the difference between 30Hz and 60Hz. Heck, I could even notice the difference between 50Hz and 60Hz (mouse movement was faster/more fluid).
Incidentally, sitting about 18 inches away from the monitor and you feel like you're in the game.
How is HighDPI support in Linux these days?
Note that both nVidia and AMD support MST on their major products, including AMD APUs if the motherboard has displayport.
If Intel GPUs can drive a screen that large, then I strongly suspect that Linux will as well. Intel support in Linux appears to be more or less on par with Intel support elsewhere.
So you have nothing to worry about regarding DPI; every Linux distro I've tried works fine on this kind of pixel density.
The only question would be the sheer number of pixels on the screen.
Which on Linux is a big, big question. My experience is that a 2x2 array of 2560x1440 displays is simply not reliable under Linux. The same worked fine with Windows. The total number of pixels is one factor that seems to trip up Xorg (or something); the above setup had a total resolution of 5120x2880, yet a 1x3 array totalling 4320x2560 worked fine. This was last year, on multiple machines with various graphics cards (but just one card in a given machine).
So I don't know why, but it seems that somewhere between 4320 and 5120 linear pixels, or between 11 and 15 total megapixels, Xorg or some other part of Linux (but probably Xorg) has problems. This Asus screen is 3840x2160 which means two of them together (16.5 MP) will likely not work (there's a chance if they're oriented vertically so the max linear resolution is 4320), and three in any configuration is very likely to fail.
Using many displays and getting very high resolution on Linux has been a bad situation for a long time now. Some hardware configurations just won't work (but are fine with Windows); others will hard-lock sometimes; still others will mostly be OK but once in two weeks freak out and spew artifacts everywhere. It's a real mess, and nobody seems to "own" fixing it.
For any given pixel density a 32-inch panel will be much more expensive than a 13-inch panel, so it doesn't make much sense to compare a laptop screen to a desktop. A better Apple product to compare with is the Cinema Display, which has a 2560x1440 resolution at 27 inches and is priced the same as any other equivalently specced monitor.
[1] The 13-inch MBA has not had a screen refresh in years.
1) a solid state drive and 2) a display with Apple-level pixel density
for substantially less than a Mac? Closest I've gotten is configuring the ThinkPad T430 online up to $930, in which case we're not talking about that much cost savings.
I agree with you that any modern laptop should exceed its pixel density. But take a look at your local Best Buy. Even the 15" displays are usually 1366x768. Some of the most expensive Ultrabooks might be 1080p, but those prices are Apple-level anyway.
I'm between HS and college right now, so people are asking me for laptop recommendations. Most of them oppose Macs because they believe they'd be paying extra just for prestige, and I have a hard time finding them similar quality Windows hardware for any cheaper. Which leads me to conclude that Mac users are not just paying for prestige.
> Is there a consumer Windows laptop available at Best Buy or similar
> Most of them oppose Macs because they believe they'd
> be paying extra just for prestige
If you want a laptop with a decent screen and solid-state disk, there's a hard price floor imposed by the component manufacturing costs. Your best option if price is a strong constraint is to keep an eye on the manufacturers' sites for refurbished devices. See http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/mac or http://outlet.lenovo.com/ as examples.
[1] Excluding accessories such as RAM, which are often marked up by 200-300% compared to high-quality third party products.
Refurbs are a good point that I had forgotten about. Often, though, only higher-end machines are available (for the same price as a new low-end machine) and the base-level models don't come down in price much.
Edit: To those downvoting me, why? It is 13", it is also a Mac, it is similarly priced. Why downvote?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-QNIX-QX2710-LED-Evolution-27-256...
What exactly was your problem, completely dead panel or massive backlight bleeding?
B)You can spend an extra ~$30 for a "pixel perfect" unit.
But I'm paid to look at text, not watch movies.
It's nice to have real estate, but my eyes are crappy and I would dearly love resolutions to start getting denser again so I can use smaller font sizes without going crosseyed.
It used to be that monitor resolutions trickled down from the top. Now, thanks largely to Apple, they're trickling up from the bottom. But this is movement at the high end. In a few years I can imagine buying a 4k ~27-30" monitor to replace my current 30" monitors.