Dell UP3214Q Review
by Chris Heinonen on April 1, 2014 12:00 AM ESTThe Dell UP3214Q is both a wonderful looking display and a maddeningly frustrating one. When it works correctly, it produces beautiful images that are incredibly sharp. It has a fairly uniform screen and the full AdobeRGB color gamut that allows it to work well for professionals and image editing.
However, the hardware and software support for UltraHD is at a stage that it will likely drive you crazy. MST would work, and then stop working when the PC goes into sleep mode. A firmware update would fix it, and then another software update would cause that to stop working again. The Dell Calibration software never quite worked for me, no matter what USB port or video port on my PC I used (though I know one person who managed to get it working fine).
Software support is also an issue. While the OS X 10.9.3 update holds a lot of promise to make this work well, it currently does not work elegantly with a Mac. With a PC it is even worse as Windows 8.1, despite the promises to work better for HiDPI, still has many issues and really does not do well with multiple monitors. App support on the PC side is also worse than on the Mac side, with far more poorly scaled elements on screen in different applications.
Of course, OS and App support is not something Dell can help. In an ideal environment, the UP3214Q works well. As a single PC display, it is fantastic and the high-resolution display, when scaled, is wondrous to see. However, running it at 60 Hz kept causing me issues and 30 Hz is annoying in real world use. Updated versions of HDMI and DisplayPort promise to remedy this situation, but right now it is troublesome to deal with.
The combination of these issues leads me to want to wait for UltraHD displays until all the pieces are in place. Unless the resolution is essential to you, there are simply too many potential issues right now. The Dell UP3214Q is a beautiful display, but unfortunately it's also temperamental and is not plug-and-play at this point.
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willis936 - Tuesday, April 1, 2014 - link
I'm not sure this is right. Companies usually are making and testing IP while a standard is in the works. In some cases they're out before the standard is done.cheinonen - Tuesday, April 1, 2014 - link
This is correct. There is currently no full HDMI 2.0 silicon out there that I'm aware of, and since the Dell started shipping last fall it certainly didn't have access to it then. There are currently devices shipping that claim "HDMI 2.0" support in the AV world, but that isn't full HDMI 2.0. It is support for 4:2:0 chroma subsampling, which is part of the HDMI 2.0 spec, and enabled UltraHD resolution at 60 Hz. Since computers don't use chroma subsampling, this isn't relevant and there is no HDMI 2.0 silicon right now.Penti - Tuesday, April 1, 2014 - link
Not even Maxwell can output it, so what sources are you suppose to use?BMNify - Tuesday, April 1, 2014 - link
where you get that idea from , its false you need a GeForce 600 "Kepler" graphics card or newer to drive a display up to 4096 x 2160.hell, even the ChromeOS guys have merged this linux UHD patch in to their tree now...so intel Haswell/Iris Graphics work at "UHD-1" 3840x2160P if you are not gaming http://lists.x.org/archives/xorg-devel/2014-Januar...
cheinonen - Tuesday, April 1, 2014 - link
You can do that resolution at 24 Hz, or 3840x2160 at 30 Hz, but you can't do it at 60 Hz without MST right now. HDMI 2.0 allows it at 60 Hz but that isn't available yet on a product.Penti - Tuesday, April 1, 2014 - link
I was speaking about 600MHz HDMI not ~300MHz. 300MHz HDMI has been around since GCN 1.0 and Kepler. It's also available in Haswell, works fine in Windows, OS X or GNU/Linux at that res, but that limits it's to 30Hz for 3840x2160. That's not HDMI 2.0 specs. You can't use anything else than DisplayPort for 60Hz 4k/UHD. DisplayPort-receivers only do that on MST too. You need two 300MHz HDMI-ports to do UHD @ 60Hz. So gaming in UHD with HDMI is out regardless of gpu/source.Maxwell doesn't do H.265/HEVC for that matter either. You only need ~300MHz HDMI 1.4 to do 4096x2160 @ 24Hz. Not HDMI 2.0, that can do it @ 60Hz.
zanon - Tuesday, April 1, 2014 - link
As far as things that still aren't there, I'd throw in color space (both gamut and bit depth) as well. Official UHDTV (see Rec. 2020), beyond the resolution standards bumping to 4K or 8K, also at last features a significantly larger color space and also the depth necessary to go with it (either 10-bit or 12-bit). That's another marquee feature of HDMI 2.0, 12-bit 4:2:2 4K@60fps. Without the increase depth a wider gamut isn't a straight upgrade since the delta between colors increases too, 8-bit AdobeRGB say isn't a clear superset of 8-bit sRGB. It's exciting that as well as HiDPI we'll finally see an industry wide shift to a color space that will be a strict improvement and is large enough to basically be "done" as far as human vision.There's still a lot more pieces needed on the PC side though, including both hardware (video cards, interconnect) and OS/applications. High DPI is slowly improving, but even Apple has slipped a bit in terms of color management and support. That said, given the economies of scale that'll come with the general UHDTV push the market pressure should be there at least.
peterfares - Tuesday, April 1, 2014 - link
Did you test it on a Windows computer other than the one you pictured? Because that one is 8.0, not 8.1 which added multi-DPI support.datobin1 - Tuesday, April 1, 2014 - link
Correct, 8.0 has static scaling across all displays. 8.1 introduced different scaling for each display.This works very well for surface pros that are docked. It will scale the surface pro display at 150% and the extra monitors at 100%. If you move a window between the displays the screen with the majority of the window will decide the scaling for that window. As you pull it from one screen to the next you will see the window change its scaling factor.
cheinonen - Tuesday, April 1, 2014 - link
Yes, I tested with both Windows 8.0 and 8.1. I just happened to have rebooted into Windows 8.0 when I took the photos but I tested both.