Viewsonic XG2700-4K
A versatile, pixel-packing 4K display
Monitors have been typically 27 inches for years, but their resolution keeps rising. While many are Full HD (1920x1080 pixels), pricier models increase this to 2560x1440, which packs in a bit more Windows desktop space at the expense of making icons and text slightly smaller. The next step, however, is a much bigger one – to 3840x2160, also known as 4K.
Unless you have the eyesight of a golden eagle, you won’t want to use all these pixels to squeeze in the equivalent of four Full HD screens, making everything tiny. Instead, you’ll set Windows 10’s scaling options to make programs look about the same size, but much sharper, with four times more detail. Even text looks better, and with photos you see more of what you shot without zooming in.
This 4K monitor from Viewsonic is aimed at gamers, who may struggle to get the benefit: you need a really powerful graphics card, such as AMD’S £350ish Radeon RX 580, to run 3D games at such a high resolution. The XG2700-4K incorporates AMD’S Freesync, which gives smoother movement in games, and runs at 60Hz for a flicker-free picture. With Low Input Lag and Ultra Fast mode enabled, we saw very little delay or ghosting.
More interestingly, the XG2700-4K also promises accurate colour reproduction and can distinguish a billion colours rather than the usual 16.7 million. This means it could support high dynamic range content (see Issue 508, page 22).
By default, the XG2700-4K gives an eye-poppingly vivid picture, which many people will love from the moment they switch it on. For serious photo editing, though, there’s an SRGB mode that turns the brightness and contrast levels right down to maximise accuracy. In our tests, this covered more than 97 per cent of the SRGB colour range – close enough to the claimed 100 per cent – with excellent accuracy. This isn’t an especially attractive piece of hardware, and like other 4K screens it’s expensive, but for serious gamers and anyone wanting good-quality colour, it’s well worth considering.
The XG2700-4K gives an eye-poppingly vivid picture
All brands of smart bulbs rely on the fact that LEDS last years – Hive’s are rated at 25,000 hours, for example – so technology can be built into them without having to be replaced too often. A different approach is represented by systems like Lightwaverf, which replaces your light switches and wall sockets instead of your bulbs (it can also control heating). This requires a lot morere DIY and/or the assistance of an electrician,rici an, but the obvious benefit is thatt you can choose any bulbs you like, and they’ll cost you a lot less to replace whenen they do eventually die. On the other hand, you can’t control features like colour changing.
Lightwaverf is a well-established system that offers both physical remote controls and a wireless bridge for operation from an app. But it has one big flaw: communication is one way, so you can order lights to turn on or dim but you can’t check what level they’re currencurrently at. It looks as if this will be fixed in Lightwave’s secondge genera generation hardware (see www. snipca.com/25464), whic which is due to go on sale in Ooctober.