Today Samsung launched two new UltraHD monitors with support for AMD's Freesync technology. AMD actually announced these monitors at their Future of Compute event last year, but there wasn't much information about them beyond the fact that they would be UHD panels and ship with Freesync support. As you may know, Freesync is AMD's alternative to NVIDIA's G-Sync technology to enable variable refresh rates on displays. We've talked about how this works and the implications it has, but the most significant benefit is that it can reduce stuttering and tearing when a game's frame rate isn't synchronized with the native maximum refresh rate of the display.

As far as these two displays go, they're two different sizes of UHD panels. However, while the 23.6" model is a PLS panel, the 28" model is a TN panel like the existing U28D590D which does not have Freesync. I've organized the most relevant specifications of both new displays below.

  U24E590D U28E590D
Panel Size 23.6" 28"
Panel Type PLS TN
Resolution 3840 x 2160
Refresh Rate 60Hz
Response Time (GtG) 4ms 1ms
Viewing Angle (H/V) 178° / 178° 170° / 160°
Inputs / Outputs 1 x HDMI 2.0
1 x HDMI 1.4
1 x DisplayPort 1.2
Number of colors 16.7 million 1.07 billion
Color Gamut 100% sRGB
Price $399 $599

Samsung's U28D590D was really the first affordable 60Hz UltraHD monitor, and aside from the addition of Freesync support the U28E590D is essentially unchanged. To me, the U24E590D is the more interesting display. At 23.6" it's a fairly high density UltraHD monitor, and it's a PLS panel which will definitely outperform the 28" display when it comes to viewing angles and color shift. Samsung advertises 16.7 million color support but it's not clear if that's achieved through temporal dithering or if the panel actually has an 8bit color depth for each color channel. At $399 it's also extremely affordable, and undercuts Dell's P2415Q which has been one of the most affordable non-TN 60Hz UltraHD dsplays up until this point.

The 28" U28E590D is available now for $599, and the smaller 23.6" U24E590D will be available for $399 on July 26th.

Source: Samsung via TechPowerUp

Comments Locked

29 Comments

View All Comments

  • at80eighty - Monday, June 22, 2015 - link

    or you have lost your ability to interpret context in your old age.

    it is highly affordable for a 4k monitor
  • Impulses - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link

    New gear is more expensive than older and less capable gear? Say it isn't so! I paid $300 for two 1920x1200 IPS displays a few years ago and the third was still $250 just a couple years ago, I'm sure they're cheaper now...

    I'm sure street prices will eventually be lower on this too, but they're not gonna debut the thing at $200 much less anything under that. If that's your budget then be happy with a 1080p and/or non-Freesync display.
  • Bateluer - Thursday, June 25, 2015 - link

    Those Seiki 4K TVs are also complete pieces of crap. And too large to be used comfortably on most people's desks. Those ~100 dollar 24" 1080p panels are likewise low grade TN junk.

    400 USD for a PLS UHD display is a very good deal, provided it actually delivers what it promises.
  • althaz - Monday, June 22, 2015 - link

    Ok, I think that 28" has my name on it. First I'll wait and see how AMD are doing with graphics cards, if next-gen is good enough, I'll be dumping nVidia (unless their next-gen cards also support freesync, which seems unlikely) and upgrading my monitors.
  • PixyMisa - Monday, June 22, 2015 - link

    I have the previous model. It's pretty good except for the vertical viewing angles; there's significant contrast shift from even a moderate angle below. Oh, and the stand isn't as robust as it might be. Not awful, but not rock solid like my old Dell model.
  • MrSpadge - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link

    At 28" a TN panel is showing color shift even across the display due to the changing viewing angles. Even in the office it's sometimes distracting when interpreting 2D color-coded plots.
  • meacupla - Friday, July 3, 2015 - link

    no, that only happens on super cheap TN panels originally intended for TVs.

    Expensive TN panels won't invert at normal viewing distances, which is, usually, a bit more than an arms length. Although, there's also the question of why you would want to use an expensive TN panel in the first place, aside from 120Hz+ gaming, when a cheap IPS or MVA panel can do the job better and cost the same or less than an expensive TN panel.

    Depending on the size of the business in question, they may have just went with ultra cheap monitors to cut costs.
  • vailr - Monday, June 22, 2015 - link

    Will there also be equivalent-specced G-Sync monitors from Samsung?
    Or maybe even a single monitor that can switch to/from either technology: G-Sync & Freesync?
  • medi03 - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link

    G-Sync is an expensive (about 100$ overhead) piece of "oh, we wanna patent this to ban competitors from using it" kind of shit. (kinda like with PhysX/CUDA)

    FreeSync on top of being a free to use standard, is cheapo to implement, to a point that most scaler chips out there have FreeSync support out of the box.
  • bernstein - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link

    i just can't see any reason for 3K below 30".... i mean i got about 125% vision, can see retina pixels if focus my eyes, yet i fail to notice pixels on my 30" monitor... i'm still waiting for a >=40" monitor...

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now