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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
84 Comments
View All Comments
Kevin G - Tuesday, April 1, 2014 - link
On the Windows site of things, what video card and driver was used? How AMD and nVidia handle MST support varies slightly so you might have better luck with one over the other.Samus - Tuesday, April 1, 2014 - link
Wow, $2800 bucks...you can have a whole WALL of ZR2740w's for that price.nathanddrews - Tuesday, April 1, 2014 - link
... or a wall of U28D590D for $699 each. 60Hz TN 4K. I'm glad to see the major players offer up affordable 60Hz 4K. Of course, I'd rather have 120Hz 4K DP1.3. Doesn't matter if you can't play games, it would be of tremendous value to me just for desktop operations.Gunbuster - Tuesday, April 1, 2014 - link
Or you could run 4 39" 4K's at 1080p 120hz in multi-monitor and still have 4k resolution and some change left over...Bad pricing is bad.
WithoutWeakness - Tuesday, April 1, 2014 - link
If I'm correct in assuming you're talking about the 39" Seiko TV then I must inform you that those are not 120Hz screens in the same sense that a computer monitor is 120Hz. Those Seiko TV's only take an HDMI input which is currently limited to 4K@30Hz. They then interpolate frames between frames of source material to give the illusion of 120Hz. A 120Hz monitor takes in a 120Hz signal and displays it natively. There are currently no 4K 120Hz monitors on the market (there aren't even any 2560x1600 120Hz monitors I'm aware of).nathanddrews - Tuesday, April 1, 2014 - link
The 50" Seiki 4K TVs do native 120Hz 1080p over HDMI 1.4, but it seems to be a lottery as to whether it needs to be hacked or not. While this resolution is not officially supported, creating a custom EDID makes it possible. In addition, several people have been loading the 50" firmware on the 39", making native 120Hz 1080p possible there as well. So you can have your desktop and videos at 30Hz 4K (not ideal, but still razor sharp) while also gaming at 120Hz 1080p. Some are claiming 720p at native 240Hz... but I'd have to see that to believe it.http://www.avsforum.com/t/1473728/official-seiki-s...
houkouonchi - Friday, April 4, 2014 - link
All seiki 50 inch displays will natively display 1080p@120Hz. The 39 inch models all will to (with a firmware update). The 39 inch monitors with the firmware update do pixel doubling which means ideal scaling for gaming (almost identical to gaming on a big 1080p display with no scaling artifacts).Both the 50 inch (and 39 with the right firmware) will accept 720p@240Hz. It sitll only displays 120Hz but this does halve the input lag from around 9ms to 4.5 ms which is why for games where it really matters (only quakelive for me) I ran at 1280x720@240Hz.
marcosears - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link
It's nice, but it could be a lot better! /Marco from http://www.consumertop.com/best-monitor-guide/dave_rosenthal - Tuesday, April 1, 2014 - link
Actually, the 39" inch Seiko *does* accept 1080@120hz over hdmi (when flashed with the firmware from 50" Seiko) and output all individual 120 frames per second (it looks very smooth!). You're right that it's limited to 4k@30hz.inighthawki - Tuesday, April 1, 2014 - link
Enjoy your massive bezel and spanning content across monitors.