NEC EA244UHD Review
by Chris Heinonen on August 7, 2014 2:30 PM ESTDPI: Too High?
The real question with a 24” UltraHD display is how well can you see/use it at native resolution? To me, it’s simply not usable at 3840x2160 resolution without DPI scaling. If you want to try and use it at this resolution you can, but I imagine you will stop after a short period of time. Scaled to 150% (or 2560x1440, which OS X Yosemite also supports as an option) it is easy to read and use everything. With applications that support DPI scaling correctly, like Lightroom, you can also have elements that are scaled while images utilize all the pixels that UHD offers.
Talking to NEC, they also realize that most people will be scaling images on the display. One issue, beyond OS support, is that applications that use custom UI elements take more work to improve for HiDPI and UltraHD displays. Those applications that only use standard OS elements (normal menus, no icons or images like Photoshop or Paint.NET) can migrate to supporting HiDPI far more easily.
There are many areas where UHD displays, even a smaller 24” one, are very valuable for their larger screen area. Content creation, including images and videos, can utilize the extra space. Financial users, who always want as much data on hand as they can have, are another large market. NEC includes DICOM support so the UHD display works for examining x-rays in as much detail as possible.
As I mentioned before, SpectraView II now works with the EA-series displays starting with the EA244UHD. Compared to the PA-series there are a few limitations to what SpectraView can do. It will calibrate the grayscale and color using the internal LUTs, but your only color gamut target is native. Since the EA244UHD has a large gamut that covers AdobeRGB, this causes issues. SpectraView II will create an ICC profile that lets ICC-aware applications see colors perfectly, but non-ICC applications will have a blown-out gamut. Since the EA244UHD also has an sRGB emulation mode, you can still use non-ICC applications and get an accurate gamut, but you must do so without calibration.
SpectraView II also now supports the BT.1886 gamma curve that is becoming more common in home theater use. One feature I was hoping to see, but NEC says will not be there, is support for 4:2:0 chroma subsampling over HDMI. Since HDMI 2.0 chipsets are just now becoming available, fitting a 60Hz UltraHD signal into the HDMI 1.4 bandwidth requires use of this chroma subsampling. For video content this is perfectly fine, Blu-ray and DVD content has always used it, and some vendors have used it with HDMI 1.4 chipsets. The NEC does not so the highest refresh rate you can achieve with an UltraHD signal over HDMI is 30Hz.
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MrSpadge - Monday, August 11, 2014 - link
I agree, I'd rather give 24" at 1440p or 1600p a try, maybe also 1600p at 27", than any 4k display. At this point I could probably avoid scaling and make good use of the added pixels while avoiding all the drawbacks of 4k displays.know of fence - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
4K at 24" is not nearly enough that is needed for sharpness, what's needed for sharpness is un-discernible pixels seen from the minimum distance (~12") that an eye can still focus, famously branded "retina".The TV/PC market is quadrupling pixels because it is the integer multiple (9x;4x) of 720p and 1080p, thus allowing artifact free scaling of both. Mr.Heinonen, the reviewer, should have scaled dpi to 200 %, not 150 %. But at least these monitors offer the option to have really small font/symbols, for some, IMHO crazy people. The goal is to have scaled font, video but native high res pictures.
MrSpadge - Monday, August 11, 2014 - link
"what's needed for sharpness is un-discernible pixels seen from the minimum distance (~12") that an eye can still focus"That's only needed for sharpness if you're watching your 24+" screen from 12". BTW: minimum focal distance is around 10 cm, give or take a few depending on the age of the person. That's just a few inches.
psonice - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
I think a lot of people miss the point with these monitors. It's not to get higher resolution / screen space, but to get a much clearer screen with the same space.As such, I'm looking to get a 24" 4K screen specifically. I'll run it at 1920x1080, with 2x scaling. That will give me a standard 24" screen res (and 1920x1080 is big enough for my needs, and easy on my eyes) but it'll be *crisp*.
As a coder, I'm staring at a screen full of text all day, and having worked on a retina macbook pro for a while I can say that the screen on them makes text a lot more legible - it really is a huge improvement. So I want that, but bigger :)
(And yes, I'd like a 27" screen even more, but I'd want >4K resolution then..)
Stephen Barrett - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
this! i do the same on my xps 15. 2x scaling works greatseapeople - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
I'm a little confused, I thought that if you run a 4K screen at 1920x1080, then it will basically pixel double and therefore be indistinguishable from a 1920x1080 screen running at native resolution.So you would be completely wasting the 4x pixels on the screen, and could save a lot of money by just buying a 1920x1080 screen.
I wonder if you are confusing this 4K screen with Apple's implementation, whereby they render text at full resolution, thus giving you high resolution and crisp fonts, but then can double scale bitmaps so they are at least not blurry.
MrSpadge - Monday, August 11, 2014 - link
He's probably referring to using 200% scaling instead of setting 1080p resolution.MykeM - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
Too high of a DP? Not at 183ppi especially when this is the perfect display size/density if you're moving from a 24" display @ 1920*1200. With he exception of getting the more preferable 16:10 display, this is one fits the "Retina" terminology perfectly.thewhat - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
I thought it was common sense by now that high PPI displays should be used with scaling...Yes, it sucks that a lot of software still hasn't caught up, but hopefully hardware like this will help to push in that direction.
I wouldn't want to use a monitor bigger than 24-27", because that wouldn't work well for my FOV (related to viewing distance). So I'm glad there are sub-30" 4k monitors.
CSMR - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
The difficulties of supporting widely divergent PPI displays well are very large.Currently Windows has a single dpi setting per user, and that works well for most software.
However if screens differ widely in PPI, then a single dpi setting will not do, but supporting per-screen dpi is very difficult. Imagine having two screens, perhaps a laptop screen and external monitor, one with low PPI and one with ultra-high PPI. What happens when a window crosses both screens, or is moved from one to the other? You cannot expect apps to be able to deal with this, and only by removing the ability of apps to control pixels directly can this be dealt with. So both the OS and all apps need to be rewritten, and in a way that is not convenient for many apps.
Until then the solution is to have screens with similar dpis so that a single dpi can be set in Windows.
That is why I would avoid ultra-high dpi screens unless I know that there will be a single computer connecting to it and that computer will not need to connect to other screens. Moderately high dpi is best because their sharpness is already excellent and you can set say 125% or 150% in Windows and still connect to normal dpi screens without much problem.