ASUS PQ321Q UltraHD Monitor Review: Living with a 31.5-inch 4K Desktop Display
by Chris Heinonen on July 23, 2013 9:01 AM ESTComing into this review, I wasn’t totally sure what to expect from the ASUS PQ321Q, or any monitor with this high of a resolution. I love the screen on my iPhone 5 and my retina iPad, but I hold those really close to my face. Since I sit a couple feet away from a monitor, was I really going to notice the difference? Yes, yes I did.
Even coming into the office right after a standard 30”, 2560x1600 display, the difference is huge. You get either a larger desktop, or a far crisper screen, or possibly both. It isn’t a small difference, but one that I can notice easily, and every single time I sit down to my desk. It also is apparent that many application vendors have to hurry up with their software support for DPI scaling, because when it isn’t supported correctly it is really ugly out there.
The ASUS PQ321Q does have its share of problems. The color gamut isn’t perfect and leads to a good number of errors in the red, orange, and yellows of the spectrum. I found yellows to be the only one that I could easily notice when I looked at photos, but I did see red and orange issues as well. The dual HDMI 1.4a inputs are nice, but with HDMI 2.0 possibly coming later this year you are going to be limited to 30p on those inputs. The OSD could also be improved upon, as it works, but lacks any location or size adjustments and takes up almost half the screen when active.
In the end, my feelings about the ASUS PQ321Q wind up being very simple. Of the dozens of displays that I’ve reviewed for AnandTech so far, this is the one I want to hold onto the most. The razor sharp screen is just addictive to use, and you realize this is the future for displays. I’m sure over the next few years that performance will improve, prices will come down, and features will increase, and that helps everyone. But I want this now, and I don’t want it to leave my house.
The ASUS PQ321Q is pricey, and I can’t say that getting three or four 30” 2560x1600 panels isn’t a better deal, but it’s not the same as having one display that looks like this. In the end, I give the ASUS PQ321Q a Silver Award, which is the highest award I've personally given to any display. It's not perfect, but there isn't a display that's come across my desk that left me in constant awe over how incredible it was to use on a day-to-day basis that the ASUS has. It's also effectively killed any thoughts I've had about buying a laptop like a MacBook Air instead of a Retina MacBook Pro, because I can't imagine going back to a regular display. The next few years of high resolution displays can't come fast enough now.
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DanNeely - Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - link
As someone who's been in love with his 30" 2560x1600 display for the past 3.5 years the only thing seriously wrong with this display is it's still about twice what I'm willing to spend.Ideally I'd like another inch in the diagonal just to give it the same vertical height as the pair of 20" 1200x1600 screens I'll probably be flanking it with. (I don't have enough desk space to keep the old 30 as a flanker.)
Rick83 - Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - link
I'd prefer if I could avoid the flankers, and just get a screen that is natively wide. 36" 21:9 with 4096 horizontal pixels would be a good start. And going wider wouldn't hurt either, 3:1 - 4:1 h:v ratios should work on most desks.Of course, by then horizontal resolution would reach into the 8k pixels, and display port would have a little cry about required bandwidth, and it would take >1000W of GPU power to render anything halfway complex, at 16MP.... With pixel doubling we're back down to 4MP though, much like a current 30" screen.
I know, pipe dreams, but I just bought new screens, so I can wait another decade or so....I hope people have been buying those 29" 21:9 screens en-masse though, so that manufacturers get it, that there's a market for wide screens, if they have enough vertical pixels.
DanNeely - Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - link
At a 3:1 width (4960/1600), 16" tall, and a normal sitting distance a flat display wouldn't work well. If curved screens ever go mainstream a monolithic display might make sense; until then 3 separate monitors lets me angle the side two so my viewing distance is roughly constant across the entire array.Rick83 - Wednesday, July 24, 2013 - link
For gaming, it has to be flat, until proper multi-head rendering gets implemented. Otherwise the distortion will mess things up.And for films, the central 2.35:1 area should also be flat.
sheh - Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - link
ASUS hinted at 24" hi-DPI monitors in about a year.At the end here: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/asus-ama-toms-...
bobbozzo - Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - link
I'm getting farsighted (and can't tolerate reading glasses due to the horrible lighting at work (I know, the should fix it)), and am considering moving to a 27" monitor and putting it further back on my desk to reduce eyestrain.Cataclysm_ZA - Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - link
Chris, can you please test out scaling in Windows 8.1 with the DPI setting on 200% for us? That enables pixel-doubling and that may also make more applications and websites look a lot clearer. If Anand can try out the same thing with his RMBP and Windows 8.1, it would be interesting to see the results.JDG1980 - Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - link
Does 200% DPI on Windows 8.1 actually do nearest-neighbor scaling on legacy applications? The other scaling factors use GPU scaling (probably bilinear or bicubic) if I'm not mistaken, resulting in the fuzzy results described by the reviewer.freedom4556 - Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - link
On Windows 8 vanilla you have a choice between Vista-style (GPU) and XP-style DPI scaling, and the XP method doesn't appear to use the GPU scaling methods described, but only text scales and not images and other non-text UI elements, leading to layout issues in most legacy apps.cheinonen - Wednesday, July 24, 2013 - link
At 200% the poorly scaled text is more readable than before. Things that do scale correctly are incredibly sharp, though I wouldn't keep it here as I miss the desktop space too much. It's certainly better than 150% on those poorly scaled items, but just too large IMO.