Whilst the mainstream adoption of 4K and 5K monitors is finally underway, Dell has leapfrogged the consumer market. The company has just launched the Dell UltraSharp UP3218K, claimed to be the ‘world’s first’ 8K consumer monitor. Touting a 7680×4320 resolution, it packs more than double the pixels of a 5K monitor and can display four 4K videos at native resolution simultaneously.
It also beats out many competing 5K monitors on pixel density, with 279 PPI across a 31.5-inch canvas. The cutting-edge technology comes at a hefty price; Dell is selling the monitor right now for a cool $4999.
Dell announced the display back at CES in January and has followed through on its promise of late March availability. If you have a spare $4999 to spend, you can order it today and own the world’s first consumer 8K monitor in mid April.
Obviously, the big draw of this monitor is the ginormous resolution. 7680×4320 means it displays more than 33 million pixels at a time with ample space to show 4 4K movies at a time. At 32 inches, it outstrips competition from the 27 inch 5K LG UltraFine monitor in both pixel density and physical size.
Of course, the panel itself is also rated highly with a myriad of other tech specs, including 1300:1 contrast ratio, 400 nit brightness and full support for Adobe RGB and sRGB color spaces. The panel is IPS just like all of Apple’s laptops and iMacs, so it features strong vibrant color and wide 178° viewing angles. It also displays 98% of the DCI-P3 color space for wide color photography and video.
Because a single DisplayPort cannot carry enough bandwidth to push 7680×4320 pixel buffers at 60Hz, to use the monitor you have to dual-link. This means plugging in two DisplayPort 1.3 cables; the monitor then stitches the two display streams together. As ever, living on the cutting edge means sacrificing some conveniences. For 8K monitors today, a single-port solution simply isn’t possible.
This 8K monitor is out of reach for most people today, with its $4,999 price tag. However, it shows that the pace of innovation in display technology is not slowing down. Hopefully, prices of 8K monitors fall as fast as the cost of 5K and 4K monitors did. Expect to see 8K displays with realistic consumer prices in the not too distance future.
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