Ask HN: What's the best 4K computer display available on the market?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8549287

by jgunaratne • 12 years ago

48 40 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I don't have a specific model to recommend, but keep in mind the three key variables: The pixel density of the monitor versus its physical size versus the PPI settings available in your operating system.

On a Mac, you have 1x and 2x, which means a 27" 4K monitor will either show everything too small at 1x or too big at 2x, so go for a 24", which will be like a Retina version of the older 24" Cinema Display. On Windows 8, you have 1.0x, 1.4x, and 1.8x, so you'll probably be fine with 1.4x on a 27" or 1.8x on a 24".

nuclear_eclipse• 12 years ago

http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-4k-monitor-doesnt-exis...

tl;dr: "we don’t think it’s the right time to buy one."

jamesrom• 12 years ago

I know this doesn't answer your question, but The Wirecutter believes that the best 4K monitor doesn't exist yet.

http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-4k-monitor-doesnt-exis...

encore2097• 12 years ago

Havent seen reviews but its $575. Pixel density seems pretty low @ ~ 157+ ppi vs Apple 27" Retina @ 217+ ppi

28" UHD LED CrystalPro 4K 60Hz DisplayPort, HDMI/MHL, DVI Monitor (Picture In Picture |Picture By Picture) - Black / Aluminum Bezel

http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=113&cp_id=11307&cs_id=...

markbao• 12 years ago

For comparison:

  28" 4K monitor (above) - 157 ppi
  24" 4K monitor         - 184 ppi
  15" MacBook Pro Retina - 221 ppi

Source: http://www.idownloadblog.com/2014/07/26/4k-monitor-retina-ma...

DiabloD3• 12 years ago

There really isn't one. I will suggest, however, that Dell Ultrasharp with the 5k pixels. I have seen one in person, it is a sight to behold.

luxyluxe• 12 years ago

SAMSUNG UE50HU6900 50" (127cm), hdmi2 CHF 777.00

SAMSUNG UE55HU7100 LCD, curved, 55" (140cm), hdmi2 CHF 1'498.00

foolrush• 12 years ago

Best is a comparison, and sadly the information needed to make an estimation is missing from your question.

Generally, if you are seeking color gamut, 99.9% of the consumer displays are nothing short of awful.

The only one that seems to be remotely along the lines of acceptable color reproduction would be the Dell UP3214Q or any other display with the same panel.

eof• 12 years ago

for programming, the seiki 4k displays are great. i have had mine for ~6 months; it is wonky for gaming; wonky for over-scanning in some resolutions; and (related to the gaming) only does 30hz at 4k.

It looks great; at first having a 40inch display is crazy; but (again, for doing work.. programming, graphics, writing) i find the lower pixel density great. i am a bit further from the monitor with it being so large; so the bigger text is fine

dlevine2• 12 years ago

The biggest problem I've seen is that most laptops can't adequately drive a 4K display.

First of all, a lot of them can only drive a 4K display at 30hz (for example, my late-2013 Retina MBP). The currently available HDMI only goes up to 30hz, and DisplayPort 1.2 only supports 60hz with MST enabled. It seems like high-end desktop graphics cards can do this.

Second, native 4K on a 28" screen is too small. I can't read it, and my eyes aren't all that bad. I'm guessing a 32" screen would be a bit better, but probably still too small. Any larger than 32" probably wouldn't be feasible as a computer monitor.

It seems like 4K would be perfect at HiDPI mode on a 24" screen. Unfortunately, my Macbook Pro can't do HiDPI on a 4K display. 1.5X HiDPI mode (effective 1440p) on a 28" would probably also look good, but my Macbook Pro can't do that either.

My guess is that the resolution we really want is 5K @ 27". I was playing around with the Retina iMac at the Apple store, and it was still completely readable at 3200x1800. Unfortunately, Apple apparently had to hack the Displayport spec to get this working, and Displayport 1.3 (which has enough bandwidth for 8K) won't be out for a while.

My guess is that we will have reasonable 4K/5K displays as well as computers that can support them in a year or two.

mirsadm• 12 years ago

I was under the impression that a late-2013 MBP does support HiDPI with 4K displays. Is it a hardware issue or a software one?

dlevine2• 12 years ago

Late-2013 15" MBPs support HiDPI with 4K Displays.

So it looks like you can hack 13-inch Displays to work with 1080p HiDPI at 52hz (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1741440). Since it maxes out at 52hz, I'm guessing the problem is hardware-related (either rendering ability or bandwidth).

However, this means that you are just running at 1080p effective resolution. It seems like 1440p HiDPI mode is what we really want, and I don't believe this is possible (I couldn't get it to work, and the information I found on the web said the same). Hopefully the next-gen 13" MBP (Broadwell) will have DP 1.3 and more GPU rendering power, which will enable 5K displays.

alialkhatib2• 12 years ago

I'll state at the outset that, provided you have the ability to output using DisplayPort 1.2, you should consider the Dell UP2414Q, which I'm using and really like. Otherwise (and even in this case), you might be happier waiting it out.

There were a few caveats that prevented The Wire Cutter from recommending any monitor, but some of those don't seem to apply as readily now as they did at the time of last edit.

I got the Dell UP2414Q - a 24" ~4k monitor, making it around 183 ppi. The primary issues The Wire Cutter brought up in their rundown (of this display and generally) seemed to be the following:

- price (in this case $1100)

- the resolution being too high for the screen space

- poor refresh rates (30Hz in this case)

On the first point, you can now get it for around $750, maybe less, in the US. The second point was somewhat platform-specific, but on OS X you can tell it to display in HiDPI mode and it'll deal with the resolution in pretty much the same way that it deals with a retina Macbook Pro's 2880x1800 display. Namely, it'll scale everything at 2x. This is idyllic. If you have an rMBP, imagine that kind of sharpness across a 24" display and you're in the right ballpark.

The last point, about refresh rates, is trickier. My understanding is that this display has no trouble displaying at 60Hz once you enable it, but I have this display hooked up to a hackintosh, so myriad driver quirks make it impossible for me to say definitively whether the video card, the monitor, or the whole universe is conspiring against my success in trying to get it to display at 4k@60Hz. I think it's the buggy nature of the solution I came upon, which I could only describe as "not working in varying degrees". I'm still looking around, but I'm not optimistic for a real fix to get 60Hz for another month or two, if I'm lucky.

If I had a 2013 or later rMBP, I understand I could test it since that supports the DisplayPort 1.2 standard, but mine is from 2012. So I'm stuck testing with a desktop that shouldn't really even exist, heh.

So bringing it full circle, I recommend that you give waiting a chance. The Dell monitor I have has been fantastic, but not without its frustrations. If you can wait 6 months (or better yet, a year) I emphatically believe that the long term solutions to these kinds of displays will have shaken out by then. DP 1.2 and HDMI 2.0 will almost certainly be ubiquitous in video cards and probably in most laptops. It'll just be a lot easier to get things up and running.

That being said, if you're willing to put in some work and get frustrated a couple of times along the way, the reward is quite nice.

frontier• 12 years ago

I have the Dell UP2414Q and it is the best display I have ever used!

The colors are fantastic as each unit is individually calibrated and checked at the factory.

The size of the screen at 24 inches is just right - any bigger and I don't think it would be comfortable for me to use. (for coding primarily) This was the smallest 4k display I could find available at the time.

There is only 1 slight problem, the monitor needs to be in DisplayPort 1.2 mode in order to run at 60 hz @ 4k resolution - and 60 hz is required, otherwise the mouse will feel jerky, even though I have a i7 4790 CPU and GTX 780 TI graphics card.

The problem is when in DP 1.2 mode and you run a game that uses a lower resolution, the image won't scale to fill the screen. It took a long time (and a lot of frustration) to figure it out, but you need to drop down to DP 1.1 mode - which drops your 4k Windows desktop refresh rate to 30 hz - and then the lower res will scale to fit the screen.

It is annoying that you need to do this, but at least it can be done on the fly, ie. about to play a game, then go into the monitor menu and disable DP 1.2, then run the game, no need to reset the computer.

Once you are in DP 1.1 mode, games will run full screen at lower resolutions up to 60 hz. Obviously this monitor isn't targeted at gamers.

alialkhatib2• 12 years ago

Very true. You've summed a lot of the compromises that one has to make to enjoy the UP2414Q (or indeed pretty much any 4k monitor these days), and I really think that someday soon we'll get this right. Until then, these are the pains of being an early adopter. But I don't regret it :)

seanmcdirmid• 12 years ago

Apple set the bar with the iMac 5K. We have to wait for the display manufacturers to catch up to it; as well as a new display port standard to actually use these. So my advice is to wait it out.

FireBeyond2• 12 years ago

The display manufacturers (or at least one of them, I’m guessing Sharp?) are the ones that supplied Apple with the 5K display for the iMac. I wonder if there was some kind of exclusivity deal / contract signed for some period of time?

jrockway2• 12 years ago

So: HDMI and DisplayPort can't do 4k@60Hz without hacks.

HDMI 2 is OK, but there are no video cards that do HDMI 2.

DisplayPort 1.3 is also OK, but there are no monitors or video cards that use it.

DisplayPort 1.2 can do 4k by pretending the monitor is two 1920x2160 monitors and using two DisplayPort streams. How this interacts with your video card depends on how many hacks your driver vendor has implemented. Linux with XRandr treats one monitor as two, leading to much frustration. The Nvidia Linux driver has a bug where if you turn on Xinerama, it breaks both Xrandr and Xinerama, leaving you with one big monitor, which is nice. The Nvidia driver on Windows works correctly by special-casing known 4k monitors. ChromeOS does not do any hacks, and so you get two screens, and windows can't span screens, making it unusable. (It also doesn't ship with HiDPI assets on most platforms, so if you were hoping to run at 2x, some icons are ugly. I have a bug open for this, though.)

HDMI 1.4 can do half of 4k, so if your monitor supports two HDMI inputs, one for each half of the screen, a computer can drive it that way. I did that for a while and it works fine; video cards have long been able to sync vblank between multiple monitors, so there are no weird artifacts. Obviously the same driver hacks must exist to convince the OS that two "monitors" are actually one.

If you were hoping to just plug in the monitor and have it work, too bad. (You may also have to deal with your BIOS not detecting the monitor, and then the machine not booting as a result!)

That said, if you're happy with 30Hz, which is usable but introduces noticeable keyboard latency, 4k works fine with current versions of HDMI and DisplayPort, so you should get a plug-and-play experience. This is especially acceptable if you're just going to play back video, which is all 23.976, 25, or 30Hz anyway. (But there is almost no 4k content available, so just get an HDTV and use the $5000 you saved to crowd-fund some 4k content.)

Now that you have a signal being supplied to your monitor, you need to get the applications to work correctly. Windows zoom feature is awful, or was when I tested it 6 months ago. Avoid. Linux has nothing. Chrome OS has 2x support (at least as of very recent dev channel releases on Panther, the Asus Chromebox), which works quite nicely. Many applications can be zoomed to good effect, like terminal emulators and Chrome. (If you set Chrome to higher than 100% it fetches the "2x" assets from the webserver and displays them correctly; Google Maps looks especially nice at 200% zoom, but so does any site designed by someone with a retina Mac.)

As for hardware... I have the Asus PQ321. It's fine. It is not retina density, of course. I set Chrome to 150%, bump up the fonts in my terminal and Emacs, and leave everything else at the normal settings. Some things are too small, but not unusably so.

4k is not dense enough to turn off font anti-aliasing for most reasonable screen sizes. What we really want is 8k.

While you're waiting for 8k, I'd just save yourself the money and stress and buy a 30" monitor. Every OS handles those perfectly, and the pixels are still pretty small. I have an HP ZR30w monitor; it's nice. The Asus PQ321 is also nice, of course, but are 1.5 extra inches worth the driver pain and $2000?

e12e• 12 years ago

Thanks for this fantastic comment. It appears things are actually (a little) worse than I thought.

[edit: related -- I just found this:

http://www.dcglug.org.uk/archive/2014/08/msg00180.html

No mention of refresh rate... no real 10bit support with the r290 under Linux doesn't sound good either :-/ ]

lmz• 12 years ago

The new Nvidia 970 / 980 seem to be able to do HDMI 2: https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/776257/geforce-900-... (read the last post in the thread).

arthurfm• 12 years ago

HDMI 2 is OK, but there are no video cards that do HDMI 2.

There are:

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-980...

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-970...

zamalek• 12 years ago

Brilliant comment. A 144Hz monitor is also an option here, I find it significantly less eye straining to look at - which is great if you are in front of it all day (which most of us are). 6220800 pixels ought to be enough for anyone.

michaelbuckbee• 12 years ago

If your are using it as a monitor for development, web browsing and other standard desktop stuff the Seiki 32" 4k TV (only $350!) and a rMBP is great.

WRT the lag, etc. there's some minor screen tearing, but definitely no keyboard lag. It is necessary to turn off all the TV motion items and play with the colors a little but for the price it's great.

jrockway2• 12 years ago

I switch between 30Hz and 60Hz displays, and the 30Hz always feels slow, including when typing. Probably depends on the person as to whether or not they notice it.

The smoothness of 60Hz is not to be underestimated.

FireBeyond2• 12 years ago

I'd just save yourself the money and stress and buy a 30" monitor.

If you’re looking for a reasonable balance of resolution, PPI, then I’d go for a 2560x1600 27” monitor. (I got rid of my Dell 3007WFP-HC for an iMac 27” + 27” TB display - still vastly disappointed at the lack of Retina TB display, though I understand the logistics).

zaphoyd• 12 years ago

DisplayPort 1.2 can do a single stream 4k@60Hz display. The first batch of 4k displays to market used the tiling hack to get around some other limitations but these have been resolved in the most recent display iterations. ASUS PB287Q and Samsung U28D590D are both single stream 4K/60Hz using DisplayPort 1.2

mclenithan• 12 years ago

Got the PB287Q here, it does do 4K/60Hz on windows but still waiting for support on Linux. Max is 30Hz on Linux as of date, (pretty sure, I googled like a mad man).

veidr• 12 years ago

The Dell UP2414Q. 24" turns out to be the maximum size that looks decent at 4K. I tried 28" and 30" 4K monitors, and you could still totally see the pixels.

daurnimator• 12 years ago

Consider instead a LG 34UM94, see review at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnrxNfxRK_4

mikehc2• 12 years ago

I bought this a Samsung 40" UHD TV (UN40HU7000F) a few months ago. In this page somebody ask if the TV has support for HDMI 2.0. As far as I can tell (using a poor translation by Google) it support said version of HDMI by changing the the HDMI Color Mode.

Can anyone with fluid Korean can confirm?

http://www.samsungsvc.co.kr/online/faqView.do?domainId=NODE0...

kijin• 12 years ago

Korean here. The TV is configured to use HDMI 1.4 by default, but you can turn on HDMI 2.0 mode by changing a setting called "HDMI UHD Color".

mikehc2• 12 years ago

Thanks a lot! =D

aunty_helen2• 12 years ago

I use a Samsung U28D590D via Displayport 1.2 powered with an R9 R290. Running on Win 8.1 and at 60Hz.

Looks great, can play games at full res and most programs suit the dpi. No major problems.

However,

Linux is a completely different story. I had a hell of a time getting the drivers to work and after about a week of crashes, reinstalling and trying to tweak the size of things so they were visible I gave up and went back to M$.

So if you can bear Win 8.1 and have a powerful gpu, the reasonably priced Samsung is a good bet.

sp3n• 12 years ago

I use the same monitor via Displayport 1.2 powered by a GTX780 running on Windows 8. 4k resolution at 60hz. No complaints at all, great for desktop space and great for games.

However my late 2011 Macbook Pro or 2013 Macbook Air will not power that monitor at all, at any resolution.

jgunaratne• 12 years ago

I'm not a big fan of Windows 8. I do development on my desktop Linux box or Mac laptop. What Linux distro did you have trouble with using 4K? Any idea if Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn released this month) addresses any of the 4K driver issues?

aunty_helen2• 12 years ago

I'm not a big fan of Windows 8 either.

Linux mint was the the distro I was using for their HiDpi support. I'm not sure if it matters that much as it's really the drivers that let it down. I also tried the latest Fedora but that failed to even boot on my machine... (probably wasn't monitor related).

To be honest you could probably get it to work with perseverance and Linux nohow. One of the problems I was having was that whenever I would wake the screen from sleep it wouldn't give me a login dialog and would require a hard reset. When I searched the problem I got the open-source blame shift, "it's their implementation that's broken. We're not changing our code" so I ragequit and went back to Bill.

ychdwbc• 12 years ago

The best 4k monitor right now is LG 31MU97 It is True 4k (4096x2160) and can do both 99.5% Adobe RGB and 97% DCI and factory calibrated. It's main target has artist in hollywood studios but anyone looking for best technology right now , can not find anything better than this:

http://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-31MU97-B-4k-led-monitor

http://www.engadget.com/2014/10/29/lg-digital-cinema-4k-moni...

ajolly• 12 years ago

There is a fantastic AOC monitor. 28 inch, 4k, shows up as one monitor, 60hz, about ~550. I don't have the model number on hand, but I adore mine, one of the best purchases I've made. I run it at 100%dpi.

quovadis123• 12 years ago

Guys, I have a pc with two Titan cards, and use 3 x 144 hz Asus monitors side by side. I wanted to transition to 4k. But am really confused. I know the Titans output 60hz through the display port, but only 30hz through the HDMI out. To make matters worse I have a 4k tv (Sony XBR900A) in the sitting room and have never been able to watch any 4k on it.

Here are my questions. If i used a central monitor at 4k (the samsung U28D590D) and used 2 x 144 hz Asus on either side, would that work with windows 8.1? Basically one Titan would be hooked up to the 4k monitor via display port, and the two Asus 144hz would be hooked normally to the second Titan card via DVI.

OR another solution would be to do away with all these 27" or 28" monitors and use one larger TV as a 4k monitor? Tv's do not have display port in do they? How about these vizio P series? Since the Titans WILL only output 60hz from the display port...how do I plug in the display port into a 4k tv? I'm so confused, and keep throwing money at something that may be impossible?

winpy• 12 years ago

Apple Mac pro does not have the drivers for 4096×2160 at 60 Hz even with the 700D video. You have to run a bootleg windows software. How do we fix that?

Ask HN: What's the best 4K computer display available on the market?

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