I think a better solution than the chroma subsampling to achieve 4k60 today would be to use two connectors and stitch the picture together at a high level. It would take bigger buffers on the display and some additional circuitry but there's no reason a display driver couldn't pull this off with existing hardware. 4k60 is already the high end so I don't see why corners need to be cut, especially when displays like this tick all of the feature boxes and come with a bajillion different connectors.
Hello. This can be done on the EA244UHD with the Picture by Picture modes, either 2, 3 or 4 way. A 4-way Full HD configuration over HDMI and DVI would give you 60 Hz support. Or you could just use 1 DisplayPort cable.
Does NEC still use much larger than normal boxes? My 3090's box was several inches larger in every dimension than the box that a friends 30" Dell monitor came in.
Yes, because they ship them with the stand attached where the Dell ones need to be attached (a 10 second process). The Dell box is certainly smaller, and Dell also uses good packaging (all cardboard, easy to recycle but still sturdy). They are really the two best at packaging monitors by far.
Have the dell 24 driven from a mac pro, using "best for display" scaled resolution in 10.10. Did a quick calibration, and this just works. Best monitor I've ever used on a stationary computer, hard not to keep smiling. At this point I think (multiple) 4k 24s are the sweet spot, at least if the os and apps handle scaling well.
in the 30 inch class I'd really rather have a 5k monitor. As long as legacy apps are in frequent use 2:1 scaling options will have major advantages; and a 24" 2k monitor does 2:1 perfectly as an upgrade from 1080p.
A 2k monitor as in 3820x2160 ? Or 2560x1440 ? Because the latter won't do 2:1 scaling. To scale something 2:1 on a monitor, you've got to have 4 times as many pixels.
Agreed. What I want is a 30" 4k monitor (ideally 16:10) that can handle 4k @ 60Hz. Everything else just needs to be "good enough". Ideally I'd prefer a VA monitor for the better contrast (FAR prefer good contrast over slightly better off-angle viewing), or better yet an OLED (probably still years away), but 30" 4k with good enough everything else at the right price would get me over the line for a pair of them right now.
I completely disagree. The benefit of 4K to me is the much increased PPI which makes it possible to utilize actual high resolution textures without the need for anti-aliasing in CGI work and having a denser amount of screen real estate for code work. I already run 3x1080P 23" displays, so 24" is about my max size for displays, and being able to quadruple my resolution (and PPI) in the same footprint is amazing and just what I'm looking for.
My only holdout is waiting to see the dust settle on all the 24" IPS UHD options so I can pick what will end up being a good choice for the long-term, then I'll be ordering 3 of them. NEC is one company I've definitely been watching, as has Dell. I'm looking forward to seeing what Eizo actually releases. They showed off a new 24" UHD Color Edge at NAB that looks fantastic, including being a native 10-bit UHD panel.
For gaming, maybe it'd be fine to just have one larger UHD monitor, but I could easily see myself using my same setup for gaming with the monitors just rotated into portrait mode with nVidia Surround to make the most of it. There's just no advantage I can see to a larger physically sized display unless you don't have proper vision correction.
No need for such a high resolution resolution. 2160p is extreme and goes beyond what is needed for sharpness, adding cost and gpu requirements. The usual 1200p of 24" monitors, or even 1080p, are too low, but 1440p or 1600p would have been perfect. Why is the PC market quadrupling pixel counts so that we are left with either lowish dpis or extremely high dpis and nothing in the middle?
there have been 1600p/30" and 1440p/27" displays for ages now, i think an upgrade to 4k/uhd is nothing too crazy in 2014. 2160p on 24" is a bit much as we see, yes, but we have 1080p on our 5" phones, 1800p and above on 15" laptops, i think it's good that the market is moving again.
where you are right though is that they should offer more 1200p-1600p displays in the 20-24" region, that would be very nice and reasonable indeed.
I agree, I'd rather give 24" at 1440p or 1600p a try, maybe also 1600p at 27", than any 4k display. At this point I could probably avoid scaling and make good use of the added pixels while avoiding all the drawbacks of 4k displays.
4K at 24" is not nearly enough that is needed for sharpness, what's needed for sharpness is un-discernible pixels seen from the minimum distance (~12") that an eye can still focus, famously branded "retina". The TV/PC market is quadrupling pixels because it is the integer multiple (9x;4x) of 720p and 1080p, thus allowing artifact free scaling of both. Mr.Heinonen, the reviewer, should have scaled dpi to 200 %, not 150 %. But at least these monitors offer the option to have really small font/symbols, for some, IMHO crazy people. The goal is to have scaled font, video but native high res pictures.
"what's needed for sharpness is un-discernible pixels seen from the minimum distance (~12") that an eye can still focus"
That's only needed for sharpness if you're watching your 24+" screen from 12". BTW: minimum focal distance is around 10 cm, give or take a few depending on the age of the person. That's just a few inches.
I think a lot of people miss the point with these monitors. It's not to get higher resolution / screen space, but to get a much clearer screen with the same space.
As such, I'm looking to get a 24" 4K screen specifically. I'll run it at 1920x1080, with 2x scaling. That will give me a standard 24" screen res (and 1920x1080 is big enough for my needs, and easy on my eyes) but it'll be *crisp*.
As a coder, I'm staring at a screen full of text all day, and having worked on a retina macbook pro for a while I can say that the screen on them makes text a lot more legible - it really is a huge improvement. So I want that, but bigger :)
(And yes, I'd like a 27" screen even more, but I'd want >4K resolution then..)
I'm a little confused, I thought that if you run a 4K screen at 1920x1080, then it will basically pixel double and therefore be indistinguishable from a 1920x1080 screen running at native resolution.
So you would be completely wasting the 4x pixels on the screen, and could save a lot of money by just buying a 1920x1080 screen.
I wonder if you are confusing this 4K screen with Apple's implementation, whereby they render text at full resolution, thus giving you high resolution and crisp fonts, but then can double scale bitmaps so they are at least not blurry.
Too high of a DP? Not at 183ppi especially when this is the perfect display size/density if you're moving from a 24" display @ 1920*1200. With he exception of getting the more preferable 16:10 display, this is one fits the "Retina" terminology perfectly.
I thought it was common sense by now that high PPI displays should be used with scaling... Yes, it sucks that a lot of software still hasn't caught up, but hopefully hardware like this will help to push in that direction.
I wouldn't want to use a monitor bigger than 24-27", because that wouldn't work well for my FOV (related to viewing distance). So I'm glad there are sub-30" 4k monitors.
The difficulties of supporting widely divergent PPI displays well are very large.
Currently Windows has a single dpi setting per user, and that works well for most software.
However if screens differ widely in PPI, then a single dpi setting will not do, but supporting per-screen dpi is very difficult. Imagine having two screens, perhaps a laptop screen and external monitor, one with low PPI and one with ultra-high PPI. What happens when a window crosses both screens, or is moved from one to the other? You cannot expect apps to be able to deal with this, and only by removing the ability of apps to control pixels directly can this be dealt with. So both the OS and all apps need to be rewritten, and in a way that is not convenient for many apps.
Until then the solution is to have screens with similar dpis so that a single dpi can be set in Windows.
That is why I would avoid ultra-high dpi screens unless I know that there will be a single computer connecting to it and that computer will not need to connect to other screens. Moderately high dpi is best because their sharpness is already excellent and you can set say 125% or 150% in Windows and still connect to normal dpi screens without much problem.
Win 8.1 does support different DPIs for different monitors. AIUI Metro/WPF apps have the ability to handle it built into their UI library; apps using anything else can either set a flag saying they support per monitor DPI or are locked to render in the DPI of the first monitor they open on and are scaled when moved to one with a different DPI.
The DPI isn't too high; the applications are simply behind the times. Software engineers should have had this figured out by now and acted so that UHD @ 24" wasn't a problem. And, scaling is only going of become more of an issue if they don't in the next few years.
Agreed. Developers (of which I am one), have the tools at their disposal to make applications scale well. For the most part however, they don't and I'm really not sure why.
From what I can see, it has to do with the custom UI frameworks. If you stick with the MS's UI widgets as much as you can, you shouldn't have a problem scaling it. However, if you're using a custom coded one, you're going to have a bad time.
In Delphi for an example, some components would render just fine by setting a manifest on it but some components require you to give it custom scaling calculations to make it work. So, you can see different reactions from different components that were coded differently at different eras. For them, they just don't have the time and/or resources to figure it out as the market for folks with HiDPI screens are still a niche.
That's probably why are not one of the display producers, then. Not everyone has the desk space to put 30 - 40" monitors far enough away so that the viewing experience is pleasant.
I don't think this was answered in the review, but can this monitor do 4k@60Hz on SST?
It seems like no IPS monitors on the market at the moment can. There are quite a few 4k@60Hz on SST TN Displays, but it seems like there's no IPS displays that can.
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57 Comments
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willis936 - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
I think a better solution than the chroma subsampling to achieve 4k60 today would be to use two connectors and stitch the picture together at a high level. It would take bigger buffers on the display and some additional circuitry but there's no reason a display driver couldn't pull this off with existing hardware. 4k60 is already the high end so I don't see why corners need to be cut, especially when displays like this tick all of the feature boxes and come with a bajillion different connectors.NECDisplaySolutions - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
Hello. This can be done on the EA244UHD with the Picture by Picture modes, either 2, 3 or 4 way. A 4-way Full HD configuration over HDMI and DVI would give you 60 Hz support. Or you could just use 1 DisplayPort cable.marcosears - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link
This is a nice try from NEC, but it just doesn't meet the standards of some of the really good monitors on the market today. /Marco from http://www.consumertop.com/best-monitor-guide/fpsdean - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
LOL! TN panels are garbage! Watch what garbage you post -- none of those monitors are even good.gevorg - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
Does it use PWM? If yes, at what brightness levels?http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/content/pulse...
kepstin - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
This is an LED-backlit model, so it almost certainly uses PWM for backlight control. I'd be interested to know what frequency it runs at.xenol - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
Not every LED backlight uses PWM.NECDisplaySolutions - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
Hello. The PWM frequency on this monitor is 23kHz. You can see all of the product specifications for the EA244UHD here: http://www.necdisplay.com/p/desktop-monitors/ea244...Ahriman4891 - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
PWM frequency is 23kHz, mentioned in this press release: http://cinescopophilia.com/nec-4k-24-inch-multisyn... and confirmed by a NEC rep on hardforum.NECDisplaySolutions - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
You are correct. The PWM frequency on this monitor is 23kHz. You can see all of the product specifications for the NEC EA244UHD monitor here: http://www.necdisplay.com/p/desktop-monitors/ea244...DanNeely - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
Does NEC still use much larger than normal boxes? My 3090's box was several inches larger in every dimension than the box that a friends 30" Dell monitor came in.cheinonen - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
Yes, because they ship them with the stand attached where the Dell ones need to be attached (a 10 second process). The Dell box is certainly smaller, and Dell also uses good packaging (all cardboard, easy to recycle but still sturdy). They are really the two best at packaging monitors by far.NECDisplaySolutions - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
The NEC Display Solutions box size is 25.7in. (W) x 19.6 in. (H) x 10.5 in. (D).Death666Angel - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
The wrong monitors seems to be highlighted in the power draw chart. :)Good review otherwise, out of my price range though and I like 1440 with 110Hz IPS and near zero input lag just fine for my needs. :D
cheinonen - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
Thanks, fixed the graph!boblozano - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
Have the dell 24 driven from a mac pro, using "best for display" scaled resolution in 10.10. Did a quick calibration, and this just works. Best monitor I've ever used on a stationary computer, hard not to keep smiling. At this point I think (multiple) 4k 24s are the sweet spot, at least if the os and apps handle scaling well.nevertell - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
But what could handle a set of three 4K monitors ?B3an - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
I'm so sick of these 4k monitors that are not even 30".A 30 - 36" 4k monitor would be perfect.
DanNeely - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
in the 30 inch class I'd really rather have a 5k monitor. As long as legacy apps are in frequent use 2:1 scaling options will have major advantages; and a 24" 2k monitor does 2:1 perfectly as an upgrade from 1080p.nevertell - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
A 2k monitor as in 3820x2160 ? Or 2560x1440 ? Because the latter won't do 2:1 scaling. To scale something 2:1 on a monitor, you've got to have 4 times as many pixels.DanNeely - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
The former as in "I couldn't type yesterday"piroroadkill - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
Total disagree. I'd rather have a 40" 3840×2160 monitor and run it at 100%.I don't want increased DPI, I wanted increased size and res :D
AnnonymousCoward - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
piroroadkill, yup, same here. 44" gives 100 PPI. Someone just needs to make one, and curve it while they're at it (and stop curving the damn TVs).althaz - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
Agreed. What I want is a 30" 4k monitor (ideally 16:10) that can handle 4k @ 60Hz. Everything else just needs to be "good enough". Ideally I'd prefer a VA monitor for the better contrast (FAR prefer good contrast over slightly better off-angle viewing), or better yet an OLED (probably still years away), but 30" 4k with good enough everything else at the right price would get me over the line for a pair of them right now.piroroadkill - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
An 8:5 (1.6:1) AR monitor of this resolution? Not a chance. You'd have to go back to 2001.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_mo...
Shadowself - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
Probably true, 16:10 seems to be, unfortunately, a thing of the past. However, an ~ 30" 4096x2560 monitor would be truly wonderful!Tristor - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
I completely disagree. The benefit of 4K to me is the much increased PPI which makes it possible to utilize actual high resolution textures without the need for anti-aliasing in CGI work and having a denser amount of screen real estate for code work. I already run 3x1080P 23" displays, so 24" is about my max size for displays, and being able to quadruple my resolution (and PPI) in the same footprint is amazing and just what I'm looking for.My only holdout is waiting to see the dust settle on all the 24" IPS UHD options so I can pick what will end up being a good choice for the long-term, then I'll be ordering 3 of them. NEC is one company I've definitely been watching, as has Dell. I'm looking forward to seeing what Eizo actually releases. They showed off a new 24" UHD Color Edge at NAB that looks fantastic, including being a native 10-bit UHD panel.
For gaming, maybe it'd be fine to just have one larger UHD monitor, but I could easily see myself using my same setup for gaming with the monitors just rotated into portrait mode with nVidia Surround to make the most of it. There's just no advantage I can see to a larger physically sized display unless you don't have proper vision correction.
MrSpadge - Monday, August 11, 2014 - link
Then simply don't buy it - there are larger models available, of course. The modles around 24" are for people who's desk is not large enough for 30"+.CSMR - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
No need for such a high resolution resolution. 2160p is extreme and goes beyond what is needed for sharpness, adding cost and gpu requirements.The usual 1200p of 24" monitors, or even 1080p, are too low, but 1440p or 1600p would have been perfect.
Why is the PC market quadrupling pixel counts so that we are left with either lowish dpis or extremely high dpis and nothing in the middle?
fokka - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
there have been 1600p/30" and 1440p/27" displays for ages now, i think an upgrade to 4k/uhd is nothing too crazy in 2014. 2160p on 24" is a bit much as we see, yes, but we have 1080p on our 5" phones, 1800p and above on 15" laptops, i think it's good that the market is moving again.where you are right though is that they should offer more 1200p-1600p displays in the 20-24" region, that would be very nice and reasonable indeed.
MrSpadge - Monday, August 11, 2014 - link
I agree, I'd rather give 24" at 1440p or 1600p a try, maybe also 1600p at 27", than any 4k display. At this point I could probably avoid scaling and make good use of the added pixels while avoiding all the drawbacks of 4k displays.know of fence - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
4K at 24" is not nearly enough that is needed for sharpness, what's needed for sharpness is un-discernible pixels seen from the minimum distance (~12") that an eye can still focus, famously branded "retina".The TV/PC market is quadrupling pixels because it is the integer multiple (9x;4x) of 720p and 1080p, thus allowing artifact free scaling of both. Mr.Heinonen, the reviewer, should have scaled dpi to 200 %, not 150 %. But at least these monitors offer the option to have really small font/symbols, for some, IMHO crazy people. The goal is to have scaled font, video but native high res pictures.
MrSpadge - Monday, August 11, 2014 - link
"what's needed for sharpness is un-discernible pixels seen from the minimum distance (~12") that an eye can still focus"That's only needed for sharpness if you're watching your 24+" screen from 12". BTW: minimum focal distance is around 10 cm, give or take a few depending on the age of the person. That's just a few inches.
psonice - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
I think a lot of people miss the point with these monitors. It's not to get higher resolution / screen space, but to get a much clearer screen with the same space.As such, I'm looking to get a 24" 4K screen specifically. I'll run it at 1920x1080, with 2x scaling. That will give me a standard 24" screen res (and 1920x1080 is big enough for my needs, and easy on my eyes) but it'll be *crisp*.
As a coder, I'm staring at a screen full of text all day, and having worked on a retina macbook pro for a while I can say that the screen on them makes text a lot more legible - it really is a huge improvement. So I want that, but bigger :)
(And yes, I'd like a 27" screen even more, but I'd want >4K resolution then..)
Stephen Barrett - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
this! i do the same on my xps 15. 2x scaling works greatseapeople - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
I'm a little confused, I thought that if you run a 4K screen at 1920x1080, then it will basically pixel double and therefore be indistinguishable from a 1920x1080 screen running at native resolution.So you would be completely wasting the 4x pixels on the screen, and could save a lot of money by just buying a 1920x1080 screen.
I wonder if you are confusing this 4K screen with Apple's implementation, whereby they render text at full resolution, thus giving you high resolution and crisp fonts, but then can double scale bitmaps so they are at least not blurry.
MrSpadge - Monday, August 11, 2014 - link
He's probably referring to using 200% scaling instead of setting 1080p resolution.MykeM - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
Too high of a DP? Not at 183ppi especially when this is the perfect display size/density if you're moving from a 24" display @ 1920*1200. With he exception of getting the more preferable 16:10 display, this is one fits the "Retina" terminology perfectly.thewhat - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
I thought it was common sense by now that high PPI displays should be used with scaling...Yes, it sucks that a lot of software still hasn't caught up, but hopefully hardware like this will help to push in that direction.
I wouldn't want to use a monitor bigger than 24-27", because that wouldn't work well for my FOV (related to viewing distance). So I'm glad there are sub-30" 4k monitors.
CSMR - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
The difficulties of supporting widely divergent PPI displays well are very large.Currently Windows has a single dpi setting per user, and that works well for most software.
However if screens differ widely in PPI, then a single dpi setting will not do, but supporting per-screen dpi is very difficult. Imagine having two screens, perhaps a laptop screen and external monitor, one with low PPI and one with ultra-high PPI. What happens when a window crosses both screens, or is moved from one to the other? You cannot expect apps to be able to deal with this, and only by removing the ability of apps to control pixels directly can this be dealt with. So both the OS and all apps need to be rewritten, and in a way that is not convenient for many apps.
Until then the solution is to have screens with similar dpis so that a single dpi can be set in Windows.
That is why I would avoid ultra-high dpi screens unless I know that there will be a single computer connecting to it and that computer will not need to connect to other screens. Moderately high dpi is best because their sharpness is already excellent and you can set say 125% or 150% in Windows and still connect to normal dpi screens without much problem.
DanNeely - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
Win 8.1 does support different DPIs for different monitors. AIUI Metro/WPF apps have the ability to handle it built into their UI library; apps using anything else can either set a flag saying they support per monitor DPI or are locked to render in the DPI of the first monitor they open on and are scaled when moved to one with a different DPI.jay401 - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
That sure is an ugly stand for such an expensive monitor.Sabresiberian - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
The DPI isn't too high; the applications are simply behind the times. Software engineers should have had this figured out by now and acted so that UHD @ 24" wasn't a problem. And, scaling is only going of become more of an issue if they don't in the next few years.althaz - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
Agreed. Developers (of which I am one), have the tools at their disposal to make applications scale well. For the most part however, they don't and I'm really not sure why.MikhailT - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
From what I can see, it has to do with the custom UI frameworks. If you stick with the MS's UI widgets as much as you can, you shouldn't have a problem scaling it. However, if you're using a custom coded one, you're going to have a bad time.In Delphi for an example, some components would render just fine by setting a manifest on it but some components require you to give it custom scaling calculations to make it work. So, you can see different reactions from different components that were coded differently at different eras. For them, they just don't have the time and/or resources to figure it out as the market for folks with HiDPI screens are still a niche.
Penti - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
Plenty of Windows components still doesn't scale at all except bitmap. If the OS it self can't do it well why should anybody follow?Pinkynator - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
This is the first time I've ever seen calibrations to 80 and 200 cd/m2. Usually it's 120...Clorex - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
We already have monitors that do 4k single-stream over DP 1.2; so why are there still MST monitors being released?SanX - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
I really do not understand people who want 24" 4K monitors and not 30-40". They have different DNA. I do not understand producers either.MrSpadge - Monday, August 11, 2014 - link
That's probably why are not one of the display producers, then. Not everyone has the desk space to put 30 - 40" monitors far enough away so that the viewing experience is pleasant.CrazyElf - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
I don't think this was answered in the review, but can this monitor do 4k@60Hz on SST?It seems like no IPS monitors on the market at the moment can. There are quite a few 4k@60Hz on SST TN Displays, but it seems like there's no IPS displays that can.
I'm hoping that changes by the end of the year.
jdrch - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
I'm not sure why you'd put 2 single link DVI ports on a monitor ... that makes zero sense.MrSpadge - Monday, August 11, 2014 - link
So you can switch between different input sources.AnnonymousCoward - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
28ms lag sucks. I refuse to buy a monitor over 16ms.