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Can Dell’s 6K monitor beat their 8K monitor?

michael.stapelberg.ch

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Re: Can Dell’s 6K monitor beat their 8K monitor?

#391

Post by jupblb »

Kon5ole wrote: post #386

I don't understand why these monitors are so expensive. I've been using a 55" 8k TV as my main monitor for years and paid less than USD 1000 for it new. Recently I saw a similar deal for a 8k tv again, so making panels at 8k and shipping them around the world at around USD 1000 is certainly still possible, but the Dell 8k is 4000+ and the 6k is 2300+. Using a tv as a monitor has downsides (Only HDMI, doesn't detect i…

It's because a smaller screen with the same (high) resolution means higher pixel density and smaller pixel size. It's something noticeably more expensive to manufacture.

Re: Can Dell’s 6K monitor beat their 8K monitor?

#392

Post by rubin55 »

Michael Stapelberg's blog was a source for me when I bought my Dell UP3218Ks specifically for usage with Linux. A great resource!

The article mentions that "it (the Dell UP3218K) needs two (!) DisplayPort cables on a GPU with MST support, meaning that in practice, it only works with nVidia graphics cards."

I would like to tell people here that this is not true in my experience (which might be related to advances in amdgpu and/or linux in general): I'm running one Dell on a Vega (64) Frontier Edition and one on a 6900XT, both on Linux 6.3 with the amdgpu driver. It sets up correctly, using DP TILE extension, so both cables used, 7680x4320@60hz.

Also I would like to add (subjectively) that nothing beats the display quality of these screens. It's literally life/eye-changing.. insanely nice, sharp. I could never go back to sub ~200ish DPI displays.

Re: Can Dell’s 6K monitor beat their 8K monitor?

#393

Post by [deleted] »

opdahl wrote: post #199
boyter wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought I was in 2... till I actually got a 120Hz screen. Since I flip between my desktop at 120Hz and Macbook Air M1 at 60Hz frequently I discovered I really notice. Its always so much nicer when I leave the Air. Everything is so much smoother.

John Linneman from Digital Foundry made a great point about refresh rates (or framerates in his context). Lower refresh rates generally is perceived as way worse when you often switch around between high and low refresh rates. Case in point if you change from 60hz to 120hz and move your mouse etc. you will definitely feel that its way smoother, and 60hz would feel extremely sluggish. But if you just stuck with the 60…

[deleted]

Re: Can Dell’s 6K monitor beat their 8K monitor?

#394

Post by crote »

bernawil wrote: post #308
hilbert42 wrote: post #298

"Is a matte screen the better option compared to the 8K monitor’s glossy finish? Surprisingly, I found that I don’t like the matte screen better! It’s hard to describe, but somehow the picture seems more “dull”, or less bright (independent of the actual brightness of the monitor), or more toned down. The colors don’t pop as much." A useful post. Whilst I've not yet had the luxury of owning a 6k or 8k monitor his comm…

Matte never made sense at all. I have no idea how matte ever made it into PC monitors. I mean, before lcd screens all screen surfaces where smooth glass. Then came LCD in plastic. Did the early LCD tech necessitate that the outside layer be not as smooth for some reason? Maybe it was just a coincidence that was later cargo-culted? Anyway, there's a reason macbooks, and almost every TV uses a glossy surface. Their mai…

I strongly prefer matte, to the point of immediately excluding glossy from my initial selection.

In my experience matte only has issues when the sun is shining directly onto it, whereas glossy will immediately glare in areas which aren't incredibly light. Got something with black on your screen? Guess what, it's suddenly a mirror! Additionally, glossy is way more susceptible to fingerprints, so you have to religiously keep cleaning them.

> There's a reason macbooks, and almost every TV uses a glossy surface.

I always thought it is just because it looks "premium".

> Mobile phones, the devices we carry outside the most and should be most susceptible to glare issues never ever come with matte screens!

Yes, and I often notice myself tilting the screen away from reflections. That's a lot harder with a desktop.

Re: Can Dell’s 6K monitor beat their 8K monitor?

#395

Post by LoganDark »

kimburgess wrote: post #365
LoganDark wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Forget 4K, 6K, or 8K. Pixel density is the spec when considering any display. I'm not really sure what you're refuting, if anything. Either I personally find 220ppi now rather unimpressive, or I found the 2015 MacBook display to have been especially impressive, but I am not sure which; all I was really saying is that they do indeed have quite similar pixel densities.

Nothing to refute - I was simply continuing from your highlight of pixel densities. While PPI has stayed mostly static (which is a good engineering choice), plenty of other display parameters have improved: better contrast, faster response times, deeper colour, larger continuous surfaces. The 2015 MacBook display was impressive. Modern panels are too!

> The 2015 MacBook display was impressive. Modern panels are too!

Apple's always been pretty impressive with their color reproduction. Which makes sense, since they are really, really pushing hard for designers and content creators (that's one of the big central themes of nearly all Mac-related advertising). Their newer, more premium machines are mostly sporting HDR & WCG displays, and macOS has had incredibly good software support for many years.

The MacBook was a premium product for its time, so even 5 years later, there were brand new higher-resolution (and higher-PPI) panels that performed much worse! My 2020 ASUS laptop is a great example of that. The display was 4K, Adobe RGB, and had a higher PPI, so it sounds like it should have been better, but it only supported 24 bpp and had awful ghosting (around 6 frames to change a pixel).

But at least then I won't screenshot something and have the file saved to disk in Adobe-RGB-interpreted-as-sRGB (which is literally what would happen when the dedicated GPU did the color space conversion, but that was then taken as an input to the Intel APU and interpreted as sRGB, even though it was rendered for an Adobe RGB display) which even if converted back still loses a ton of precision due to Adobe RGB being squeezed into 24 bits in the middle. I care about that a lot. Something that annoys only me is possibly tolerable, but something that affects the content I share with others is like life and death (in terms of importance to me).

They also connected that display to the Intel APU so Windows could not properly do the color space conversion in hardware, resulting in artifacts that were so terrible I had to turn off the conversion entirely and just deal with viewing everything in sRGB-interpreted-as-Adobe-RGB. (yes I know "switchable graphics" is a near-universal configuration in laptops, but it's incredibly cursed and causes so many fucking problems in a completely irreparable fashion. Why not just connect the display input to the display output as it was intended, ASUS turds.)

They market it as "Pantone validated", so I guess that means that they added negative value for the sake of a marketing sticker. (Honestly, put that way, it definitely sounds like something that they couldn't possibly not do. Companies just can't help themselves when it comes to this stuff.)

When I switched to a desktop, I grabbed a random 15" 4K monitor from China for $70. It's sRGB, but it's proudly sRGB, and didn't half-ass itself into something that is hopelessly broken like ASUS did.

When I have a spare $400 I'll dish out for one of the 10-bit DCI-P3 displays on AliExpress and then be happy.

Re: Can Dell’s 6K monitor beat their 8K monitor?

#396

Post by LoganDark »

lrem wrote: post #321
kimburgess wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forget 4K, 6K, or 8K. Pixel density is the spec when considering any display. It doesn't matter if it's a wearable, phone, laptop, monitor, TV, or stadium wrapping LED surface, the only important factors for resolution are the distance to the viewer's eyes and the distance between the pixels. For context, 20/20 vision is the ability to perceive 1 arcminute of angular resolution. Beyond that point there are diminishin…

20/20 vision is a low bar though. I’m bothered by how much my vision has deteriorated since I was a teenager. The difference is obvious, as I now need to walk up to things I used to read from a distance. I’ve tested 20/20 a few weeks ago.

> 20/20 vision is a low bar though.

Absolute preach right here. I would say I laugh when someone says it's not perceptually possible for me to differentiate the pixels of my 4K display from a typical viewing distance, but that's actually become such a common assertion that I'm dying to know if my vision is just that much better or theirs is just that much worse. :/

Re: Can Dell’s 6K monitor beat their 8K monitor?

#397

Post by senttoschool »

veidr wrote: post #170

Absolutely, hell no, if you are talking about the screen itself. The difference in crispness between the Dell UP321K (~280ppi at 7680x64280 at 31.5 inches) and this new U3224KBA (~220ppi at 6144 x 3456 at 32") is dramatic . The new Dell 6K is about the same as the Apple 6K (the XDR Pro Display). I had that 6K Apple and the 8K Dell side-by-side on my desk for a few months (until I could find a buyer for the dramatical…

>The new Dell 6K is about the same as the Apple 6K (the XDR Pro Display).

I don't think they're in the same class.

Spec shows Apple's Pro XDR is 2.5x brighter and have a much better contrast ratio along with 10bit and P3.

Re: Can Dell’s 6K monitor beat their 8K monitor?

#398

Post by iSnow »

dumpsterdiver wrote: post #221
crazygringo wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I can easily tell the difference and couldn't care less. Brightness, pixel density, and contrast/blacks (including glossiness) are what I care about in terms of image quality. Maybe if I were a gamer it would matter, but I couldn't care less about how smooth scrolling or cursor movement is. It doesn't change my productivity or affect my comfort at all.

I'm in the same boat, except that I recently discovered that in my advanced years (early 40s) I am now one of those people who are "sensitive to certain flashing light patterns or textures". It's not often that it happens, but every blue moon I will be looking at a screen and suddenly begin sweating profusely right before I lose consciousness for a brief bit. Most recently when that happened I passed out on top of my…

You probably should get yourself checked for photosensitive epilepsy.

Re: Can Dell’s 6K monitor beat their 8K monitor?

#399

Post by veidr »

senttoschool wrote: post #397
veidr wrote: post #170

Absolutely, hell no, if you are talking about the screen itself. The difference in crispness between the Dell UP321K (~280ppi at 7680x64280 at 31.5 inches) and this new U3224KBA (~220ppi at 6144 x 3456 at 32") is dramatic . The new Dell 6K is about the same as the Apple 6K (the XDR Pro Display). I had that 6K Apple and the 8K Dell side-by-side on my desk for a few months (until I could find a buyer for the dramatical…

> The new Dell 6K is about the same as the Apple 6K (the XDR Pro Display). I don't think they're in the same class. Spec shows Apple's Pro XDR is 2.5x brighter and have a much better contrast ratio along with 10bit and P3.

Sorry, I meant about the same resolution.

But in that case I'd expect the Dell 6K to fare even worse than the Apple 6K in a head-to-head comparison with the Dell 8K.

Re: Can Dell’s 6K monitor beat their 8K monitor?

#400

Post by LoganDark »

Joeri wrote: post #319
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, if 25 cm is an optimal viewing distance, 350 ppi is maximum phone screen density required?

Generally apple picks the optimal ppi and they don’t market the ppi value, only that it’s “retina”. They will prefer odd resolutions over suboptimal ppi. For example, the m2 macbook air is 2560 by 1664 at 224 ppi. The maximum ppi you can get on an iphone is 460 ppi, so I assume in their testing they found that even people with perfect vision holding it really close had no use for sharper screens than that.

> Generally apple picks the optimal ppi and they don’t market the ppi value, only that it’s “retina”.

First world problem, but I hate when companies choose a one-size-fits-all value that is allegedly supposed to reach the limits of human perception, but that value still turns out not to be enough for me because (surprise) some people are naturally slightly better than average.

For example, the new Apple VR headset, despite having a resolution of around 4k*4k pixels per eye, would probably still have to make up for it in other ways, because I can still see significantly more pixels than that.

Apple actually seems to know this, and they know it so well that their entire marketing push is based on augmented reality and immersion. Blending things with the environment, moving around and interacting- basically things that can never really be disappointed by the screen resolution being insufficiently high.

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