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4K for $649: Asus' PB287Q monitor reviewed

88 points| ismavis | 11 years ago |techreport.com

90 comments

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[+] kayoone|11 years ago|reply
Here's a chart which shows the ideal viewing distance for various resolutions, based on the smallest detail the human eye can discern at 20/20 vision.

http://cdn.avsforum.com/4/4c/600x376px-LL-4cd4431b_200ppdeng...

This monitor is pretty close to retina level DPI based on the typical viewing distance, but i guess a 24inch 4K would be even better.

[+] reitzensteinm|11 years ago|reply
Note also that 20/20 vision isn't actually that high, especially if you're young, so the chart isn't necessarily definitive.

"a subject diagnosed as having 20/20 vision will often actually have higher visual acuity because, once this standard is attained, the subject is considered to have normal (in the sense of undisturbed) vision and smaller optotypes are not tested."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_acuity

[+] phkahler|11 years ago|reply
It's probably better to have a larger screen further away, particularly for older people who can't focus close up any more. That occurs some time in your 40's for you youngsters who may think "older" means quit a few more years than that.
[+] Retric|11 years ago|reply
Your information is wildly inaccurate. Take a 30' black screen vs one with a single white pixel and someone can tell the difference from across a football field if it's dark enough. Do the same thing with one white pixel vs 2 next to each other and you can't tell the difference. The important point is screens showing normal video have aliasing effects so under some situations with unedited video you get differences such as flickering at fairly long distances. Edit: Basicly if you have 480p and 720p video having a 720p monitor is worse than a 720x4 monitor at fairly long distances.

Toss in compression artifacts and you want a screen at least 4x the resolution as your showing in that chart.

[+] tbrownaw|11 years ago|reply
Note that you want no pixellation effects when image features are at the limit of your visual acuity. So you want the pixels to be 3-5 times smaller than you can see.

To demonstrate: draw a pair of vertical black lines 1px wide, with 1px white space between them. Then, tilt them at 30° or 45°. (Or, draw a pair of circles that are 1px thick and have 1px between them at the top, bottom, and sides; then look at various other positions.) Then try the same thing with a line and space thickness of 3px and 5px.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern

[+] joncameron|11 years ago|reply
This chart gets trotted out in seemingly every resolution-related discussion... does anyone know where the numbers come from? I've always assumed they were pulled from somebody's ass, but I'd be interested to find out if that's not the case.

Very curious since it looks dubious to me but gets thrown out at as cold hard fact every single time.

[+] baq|11 years ago|reply
do you have something like this but log scale? the most interesting part of the graph is the most unreadable.
[+] Symmetry|11 years ago|reply
I believe that chart is for video viewing. That's important for a TV, but on a computer monitor you also spend a lot of time reading text and higher resolutions tend to provide benefits for longer with that.
[+] zokier|11 years ago|reply
> Web browsers can be a problem. You may want to choose Internet Explorer rather than Chrome, since Microsoft has clearly done more work to support high-PPI configs. However, note that IE ditches the ClearType sub-pixel antialiasing scheme and snap-to-grid GDI font rendering in favor of simple greyscale antialiasing. As a result, the effective text resolution with IE at high PPIs isn't a huge leap from other browsers with ClearType on conventional displays. [emphasis mine]

Umm.. I know Firefox is not fashionable these days but ignoring it completely seems bit odd, especially if both Chrome and IE produce suboptimal results.

Also can't you these days force compatibility bitmap-scaling for applications like Fraps that apparently do not work correctly with HiDPI? Sure it is one extra step that ideally shouldn't be necessary, but it is not like you need to live with broken UIs.

[+] sergiosgc|11 years ago|reply
Firefox does not handle high DPI screens. It renders fonts at a fixed 96dpi and your only option is to crank up the devPixelsPerPx pref, which is akin to page zoom.

The bug has been reported multiple times. It always ends up being closed as wontfix, which is just burying the head in the sand. My laptop is 210dpi, and I guess we'll just go up from here.

One instance of the bug:https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=512522

[+] The_Sponge|11 years ago|reply
I'm bothered by the usage of "whore of babylon". I feel like that sort of language doesn't belong in a review like this.
[+] rjknight|11 years ago|reply
So, I think this phrase may benefit from some context. Specifically, the cultural backdrop to the statement is that we[1] have a recent tradition of using the transition from "pure, sweet good-girl teen" to "raunchy, sexualised young woman" as a kind of marketing event for female pop stars who began their careers as teenage TV stars. Part of their marketing value derives directly from the public and "shocking" nature of the transition. It's essentially exploiting the Madonna-whore complex[2] for marketing purposes.

There are ambiguities, of course. Perhaps the "shock" value of female sexuality is a good thing and is helping us all to get out of outmoded views about female purity. Perhaps the presentation of female sexuality as being about raunch and nudity is catering to male fantasies and is thus bad. Perhaps the problem lies with the excessively "pure" image that teenage female entertainers need to maintain in order to be deemed "family-friendly".

Personally, I interpreted the comment in the article as being one about the exaggerated nature of the image change that stars like Miley Cyrus go through once they hit the age of consent. She's neither the whore of Babylon nor Hannah Montana, but it suited advertisers to portray her as both at different times.

Is this a suitable topic for a joke or a metaphor? I didn't interpret it negatively, so for me it was fine. I can appreciate why other people would disagree, but I thought adding some context might be useful[3].

[1] Actually this is mostly an American thing, so I'm not entirely entitled to use "we" here

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna%E2%80%93whore_complex

[3] Who am I kidding? I'm just giving my 2c on an internet forum like everyone else who has nothing better to do right now

[+] pervycreeper|11 years ago|reply
>I'm bothered by the usage of "whore of babylon". I feel like that sort of language doesn't belong in a review like this.

If you're complaining about obscenity, you should know that that was a reference to the Bible, of all things.

[+] phkahler|11 years ago|reply
Actually, it doesn't belong anywhere. In the book "Women's Infidelity" the author makes a compelling argument that a lot of relationship issues today stem from the double standard society uses to shame womens sexuality. Promiscuous men are revered, while women are shamed. There's a LOT more to it and it's really interesting reading. Society is a changin' and this language needs to go, not just on tech sites.
[+] SeanKilleen|11 years ago|reply
Thank you. I came here specifically to say just that. I'm trying to do more to say something in cases like these and call it when I see it. That usage was jarring and yes, completely out of place / uncalled for. Glad others feel same. Of all the analogies in the world, that was the choice?
[+] nemof|11 years ago|reply
you're right to be, casual sexism in a tech review is not ok (not that it would be anywhere), and seems extremely unprofessional.
[+] davidblueit|11 years ago|reply
the actual usage is "whore o' Babylon". is it really something to get your panties in a bunch? get over yourself
[+] Kayou|11 years ago|reply
I may be a nitpicker, but for me 4k is 4096x2160, or am I wrong? This screen is UHD, or 2160p but not 4k.
[+] byuu|11 years ago|reply
For me, it's 7822x4096. Or even 7112x4000 if you must. This really should be called 2160p, but you know, marketing. Also really loving my 976GiB "terabyte" hard drive, and my "ten meg" 1.25MiB/s broadband.
[+] zokier|11 years ago|reply
It is quite widely accepted that 3840x2160 is "4K", eg. quoting wikipedia:

> The SMPTE first released Standard 2036 for UHDTV in 2007. UHDTV was defined as having two levels called UHDTV1 (3840×2160 or 4K UHDTV) and UHDTV2 (7680x4320 or 8K UHDTV). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4K_UHDTV

and

> The television industry has adopted ultra high definition television (UHDTV) as its 4K standard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4K_resolution

[+] cs02rm0|11 years ago|reply
You're not wrong, but I think the argument has been lost with the marketers long ago.
[+] unhammer|11 years ago|reply
Double disappointment (it also looks fairly ugly, as do all monitors I've seen apart from Apple's ones, which don't work with non-Apple computers :-/)
[+] hackerboos|11 years ago|reply
$649 in US

$699 in Canada

$1000 in UK <- What on earth is going on here - even with 20% VAT?

[+] KhalPanda|11 years ago|reply
A trend that appears to be synonymous across a lot of markets (electronics, fashion, etc)... just swap that '$' out for a '£' and call it job done!

Why? Because they can.

[+] jotm|11 years ago|reply
Just look at the difference in prices for laptops, those are nuts. I'm importing everything from the US, even if it's more expensive (and it never is), because I will not support this kind of price gouging.
[+] chanux|11 years ago|reply
I can't find it right now but I read about a study that concluded British people would chose x£ over x$. That's probably being exploited here.
[+] albinoloverats|11 years ago|reply
But still, at £600 it's much less expensive than most other available 4K displays (that I've seen)
[+] tubs|11 years ago|reply
Import tax + VAT.
[+] bsimpson|11 years ago|reply
My Chromebook Pixel has spoiled me. A 28" 4K monitor isn't sharp enough. Dell has a 24" that yields 180 ppi. I'd be interested to see that in person, but it probably still isn't sharp enough comparatively.
[+] bainsfather|11 years ago|reply
Good to see the price of big high resolution screens coming down, after so many stagnant years.

> The one thing that may freeze you from pulling the trigger right now on the PB287Q is, oddly enough for the monitor market, the promise of better things coming soon.

Any guesses about how the market will progress in the next year or two? I have an old 30" 2560x1600, bought for £1200 6 years ago - good enough for my uses (coding). Would like to get a second similar screen, when they are cheap. At the moment I see e.g. 27" 2560x1440 for £420 [1] - would buy it today, except maybe I can get something cheaper and better soon ...

[1] http://www.cclonline.com/product/95902/U2713HM/Monitors/Dell...

[+] cpks|11 years ago|reply
I'd buy one if I knew it would work. Heck, I'd buy two or four for a multimonitor setup. The process of figuring out whether a given laptop or graphics card will drive 4k over a particular standard is daunting. Knowing if it will work with Ubuntu, in particular, is beyond me.

I wish there was a standard -- perhaps over USB -- where ordinary people who don't play games and just want a machine to work on (emacs, xterms, web browsers, word processors, rather than gaming) could make many monitors and large monitors work plug-and-play.

[+] zokier|11 years ago|reply
> I wish there was a standard -- perhaps over USB -- where ordinary people who don't play games and just want a machine to work on (emacs, xterms, web browsers, word processors, rather than gaming) could make many monitors and large monitors work plug-and-play.

You mean like DisplayPort? If your system supports DisplayPort (1.2 or later), you should have no issues getting image on screen. EDID/DisplayID can be used to autoconfigure DPI/PPI scaling, so ideally the experience should indeed be just plug-and-play.

[+] fulafel|11 years ago|reply
USB display adapters do exist, people have been using USB 2 adapters with 1080 displays, and USB 3 with 4K will have more bandwidth per pixel available.
[+] headShrinker|11 years ago|reply
> The sRGB option does produce colors that appear to be closer to our post-calibration settings than the default "standard" mode, for what it's worth.

Hmmmm... I need something that can do a little better than "closer to". Guess $650 and color accuracy is too much to ask at 4k.

[+] rayiner|11 years ago|reply
The Miley comment is totally unprofessional and unnecessary.
[+] firefoxNX11|11 years ago|reply
Good to see prices of 4K coming down. Are 4k displays better at rendering text for those who read and work with code a lot?
[+] MartinMond|11 years ago|reply
Can someone explain how this is 4k? Apple's Thunderbolt Display has a resolution of 2560x1440 [1] and ASUS' PB287Q also has 2560x1440 according to Amazon [2].

What am I missing? UPDATE: I transposed digits and looked at the PB278Q not the PB287Q.

[1] https://www.apple.com/displays/specs.html

[2] http://www.amazon.com/PB278Q-27-Inch-LED-lit-Professional-Gr...

[+] bsimpson|11 years ago|reply
I believe you're looking at the 278Q. The 287Q (note the digit changes) has a resolution of 3840 x 2160 according to the article.
[+] timme|11 years ago|reply
The review is about the PB287Q, your amazon link is for the PB278Q.