UltraSharp 24
sharp shooter Millions of pixels in a normal-sized monitor. But are modern computers ready for such high-definition displays?
Apparently 4K is the next big thing in displays. It’s less cumbersome and whimsical than 3D, and more inclusive and sociable than virtual reality headsets. Its big selling point is that it includes a lot more pixels than a current HD screen, so everything looks deeply impressive.
Dell’s UltraSharp 24 is the smallest 4K monitor we’ve had time with, at just 23.8 inches, pretty much the standard for desktop monitors. The small size works in its advantage too: those pixels have to be remarkably small for all eight million of them to fit in such a comparatively small area.
While the resolution is Dell’s big selling point here, it’s backed up with lots of other high-end specs. Dell custom-tunes its UltraSharp monitors in the factory to get colour and contrast spot-on, even supplying a print-out of the calibration results in the box. And it really does look astonishing: it boasts 99 per cent AdobeRGB and 100 per cent sRGB coverage, so images look as good on-screen as they do on paper. Basic option windows are also sharp and clear.
Dell includes various practical features. The weighty stand keeps the screen firmly planted on your desk, but it takes a mere fingertip to adjust its height, and it’ll rotate 90 degrees for working on long, tall things. It also acts as a USB hub, so you can connect your keyboard and mouse to the monitor and avoid a spaghetti of cables. And there’s even a built-in card reader.
So while Dell has thought of just about everything, it’s a shame Microsoft and Apple haven’t. The biggest problem here is that neither Windows 8 nor Mac OS X plays all that nicely with a 4K screen. Both fail to recognise that there’s a whole load of pixelly goodness going on. Some individual programs – such as Photoshop – work fine, and films look jaw-dropping. But menus and windows within the operating systems suddenly become fiddly and impractical. It’s without a doubt the best-looking and most comprehensive monitor we’ve seen – it’s just up to the operating systems to catch up now.