Tuesday, January 20

Geek

4K Or Not 4K

Guess the answer is 4K.  Dick Smith has the Samsung U28D590D on sale for $499 right now, and even had it in stock at my local store, so I trotted over there at lunchtime and got one.

This is one I considered and rejected before, because it's a TN rather than an IPS panel.  Having now had a chance to look at one up close...  Frankly, if they'd said it was IPS I probably would have believed them.  It doesn't have the characteristic colour shift of TN when viewed at a sharp angle, though there is a brightness/contrast shift.  I think it will do fine.

Also, at $499 for a 28" 4K monitor, I'm willing to forgive a few minor foibles.  Just 15 months ago the only 4K monitor for sale here cost $4200.
  
The stand does wobble if you poke it, which is the first thing every review comments on.  Samsung, spend another $5 on the stand for next year's model, okay?

Review later once I finish work for the day and have a chance to set it all up.

Update: The display glitches when I run it on DisplayPort at the full 4k@60Hz.  It doesn't glitch on HDMI running 4k@30Hz.  I'll try it with a different DisplayPort cable as soon as I can find one.

Running at 30Hz isn't a killer, but you do notice, so I'm really hoping that it will be happy at 60Hz with a cable swap.

Update: Some other people have reported these issues with this monitor and Radeon video cards, and the solution is to find a better cable.  So I'll do that.  Meanwhile:

/images/Desktop2015a.jpg?size=720x&q=95

Also on the plus side, I plugged it into my new notebook, and it worked immediately.  Only 4k@30Hz, but many notebooks have trouble running higher than 1080p for an external display, so I'm happy with that.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:25 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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1 What do "TN" and "IPS" mean?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Tuesday, January 20 2015 03:21 PM (+rSRq)

2 TN is "twisted nematic".  IPS is "in-plane switching".  

I'm a little fuzzy on exactly how this works at the molecular level, but as I understand it, in a TN panel the liquid crystals are perpendicular to the screen, where in IPS they're parallel - in the plane of the screen, hence the name.  

The result is that IPS panels look much the same from any angle, where TN panels can have a pronounced colour shift at sharp angles - in cheap screens, the colours can be completely inverted if you view the monitor from a 45 degree angle above.  This monitor showed almost none of that.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, January 20 2015 03:57 PM (PiXy!)

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Apple pies are delicious. But never mind apple pies. What colour is a green orange?




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