GROUP TEST

Whether you do high-end image editing or just want to bask in the glory of so many pixels, 4K displays are where it’s at

Five large 4K displays for a better workspace

4K DIsplays ON TEST… AOC U3277PWQU Asus MX27UQ BenQ PD3200U Lenovo ThinkVision X1 Philips 272P7VPTKEB

There’s nothing quite like a large, high-resolution display, especially if you work with graphics. 4K displays have been around for a while, and some of the latest models are showing the benefits of this maturity, but the price drops we’ve seen for these screens over the last couple of years have slowed. They’re fine for doing serious work, but they’re certainly not cheap.

A 4K display’s resolution is either 4096x2160 or 3840x2160 pixels, which you may also see mentioned as ‘ultra-highdefinition’ (UHD). You can drive a 4K display from pretty many Macs made in the last three or four years, although running at 60Hz rather than 30 can be a challenge – refer to Apple’s list at bit.ly/4KMacs for details.

The ‘4K’ label doesn’t define the physical size of the display, which is why in this group test we’ve looked at three 27-inch models and two enormous 32-inch screens. Technically, none of these are actual Retina-class displays, but the ‘smaller’ screens pack in an impressive 163 pixels per inch. At this level you could choose to work with Apple’s ‘larger, sharper’ display-scaling tricks or run as a large, fine-grained desktop. Four of the models we looked at use IPS technology and one uses VA. See Things to Consider for what this means in practice.

Image is everything

A couple of these displays include built-in webcams and one can also automatically dim and even blank the screen if nobody is in front of it for a while. Those can be nice, but remember they’re extras. Whether you’re a professional graphic designer or someone with wider-ranging requirements, if you’re looking for a good 4K display then you’ll be demanding a lot from the screen itself. That’s why we’ve made image reproduction quality our overriding priority.