with its Factory tuning and data center DNA an Intel 730 series SSD is an
amazing choice for gamers and performance enthusiasts all right so
this video might be coming at a bit of a strange time if the focus was going to
be on this exact model of 4k monitor
which was first shown off way back at computex 2013 and has been available
pretty much since then at around 3 ,000 to $3,500 an early adopter price point
if I ever seen one no instead the focus of this video is going to be on my
experience of using a 4K display because this is the first time I've actually
gotten the opportunity to try one in the comfort of my own home and at work and
now that 4K is finally coming down in price with a susu's PB 287 Q coming at
around 800 bucks for a 28 in model it is a very exciting time to take a look at
this sexy technology so first I'll give a rundown of this one this very gorgeous
PQ 321 q that I guess I can hold hostage
now until ASUS sends one of the new ones
unlike the lowcost variants that will feature TN panels of various quality
this monitor features an EXO or indium Gallum zinc oxide based panel there's a
great post actually by a complete stranger who goes by the handle of
glenwing on overclock.net Linked In the video description that does a great job
of explaining the benefits of this technology but in short because an exop
panels controlling transistors are smaller respond more quickly and can
even be clear we can get faster response
times High higher pixel densities and more power efficient or even transparent
displays for the rest of the specs we'll move pretty fast here this thing is a
beast it weighs 30 lbs much of which is the robust stand it consumes about as
much power as an idling gaming desktop at about 80 to 90 watts and it's got a
31 1/2 in 3840 by
2160 LED EDG lit screen with one of the best anti-glare Coatings that I've ever
seen it's actually I think the perfect balance between reducing Reflections and
still keeping colors vibrant looking not scattering the light too much the unit
is super thin 35 mm at the back which
contrasts sharply with the Dell 30-in monitor that we use for high-res
benchmarking and this thinness is enabled by an external power brick
versus having an internal power supply I've seen other reviewers complain about
this approach but I disagree 100% I would rather take up space on my floor
with big Power bricks than space on my desk which I can actually use it's not
like I'll be moving this thing around speaking of movement it has height
adjust pivot and tilt but no portrait um
rotate mode um you can actually take the
screws off and then put it in portrait mode permanently but it's not something
that you can just switch between easily it has a side mounted DisplayPort 1.2
connector with two side mounted HDMI connectors it should be noted that due
to the way this monitor works it's basically like two monitors side by side
with no bezel in between you will need to use either a DisplayPort device that
supports multistream that's 1.2 or higher or two separate HDMI cables going
into both ports if you want to run the monitor at 4K 60 htz with stronger
DisplayPort implementations in HTMI 2 coming soon this won't be an issue on
future models but it is something to bear in mind here the monitor uses a
sharp exop panel capable of producing 1.0 7 billion colors with a reasonable
degree of accuracy but with some tendency towards a rmer a warmer overall
tone to the image it should be noted that it was never really marketed as a
pro art series for serious color work so it should still be good enough for most
people the buttons for controlling the on-screen display are around the back
and this is unusual but they actually aren't even labeled on the front they're
only labeled on the back of the monitor it's okay though an optional sticker is
included if you want to be able to see what you're doing but given that the
onscreen display doesn't have a ton of useful options like ASUS's Pro art
series does I would probably just leave the front label off for a super clean
aesthetic if it was mine okay back to that panel type again I've mentioned
this a few times EXO is not actually strictly speaking a panel type like IPS
or TN and apart from telling us that it's exob based ASUS hasn't been
entirely forthright with what type of panel is in the PQ 321 q but on PC
monitors. info they figure it's an IPS or similar display which makes sense
given the strong colors and and outstanding viewing angles if you want
more details on the monitor particularly with respect to color reproduction for
professional work or more nitty-gritty details of the spec un un teched an
excellent review of it which I'll link in the video description the rest of
this video will focus on my experience using it and my thoughts on the upgrade
to 4K so I'll open with this a bigger screen is not always a great upgrade I
used a 30-in Samsung monitor as my daily driver for a couple of years and while
it was great once I got used to it scaling back to 27 as I recently did has
actually been just fine too but some people will always want bigger and
better so if you do want a huge display then you need to consider pixel density
there was a period of time when many folks particularly Gamers were buying
32in TVs with resolutions as low as 1366
X 768 and then lulling at me at lens for
paying so much for my 1920x 1200 24in
monitor which was obviously much smaller but that kind of solution was always
very fatiguing for me to look at if you increase the size but not the pixel
density text and icon sizes are effectively blown up making everything
look blocky if you increase both pixel density and size proportionally you get
effectively more of the same level of detail and same size text and icons but
when you ramp up resolution faster than
size you get a very different Computing experience and everything starts to look
much more crisp or as Apple would call it retina at 140 pixels per inch the PQ
321 Q is the highest density desktop monitor I've ever used by a significant
margin about 30% better than a 27in
1440p display and it's incredible to see how sharp everything looks the only
challenge is that while ramping up resolution gives us more screen real
estate to spread out our work it also decreases the size of elements now to
the point where it's hard to read text and click on things accurately unless
the solution to this of course is scaling which is what smart osses like
Android and iOS do but unfortunately Windows doesn't handle scaling amazingly
well because even with improvements in Windows 8 which I unfortunately don't
use yet thirdparty software makers need
to support it for it to work properly from within applications what this means
is that if I leave the scale at 100% Windows Explorer text has the same
sharpness as text in 7zip or Steam but
if I scale to 150% all of a sudden text
in thirdparty applications can look terrible by comparison it was not just
isolated to these two applications there are some other things that behave
strangely at such enormous resolution as well remember that this is effectively
for 16in 1080p monitors side by side and
stacked with no bezels between them websites designed for fixed width will
just float in a sea of emptiness in the middle of your screen and dynamic
websites won't Faire much better with elements strch stretched out to the
edges of the screen or even just broken out right one solution to that is to
split your monitor into virtual smaller ones using third party software but
that'll just take some tinkering for you to get things set up the way that you
want it it's just something to think about speaking of the way you want
things for all the complaining I've done about scaling and text and whatever else
the 4K experience when you're doing it right when you're enjoying native
content is absolutely unreal it's one
thing to see a 4K TV at a trade show
it's another thing entirely to have one two feet in front of your face playing
all of your favorite games natively at 4K because PC games support that stuff
as long as you have the graphics horsepower for it it is a great time to
be a PC Gamer because of the improved pixel density I find myself hardly even
needing anti-aliasing anymore in Dirt 3 I went from 0x to 2x to 4X and then it
got to the point where I had to have my nose like 6 in from the screen to see
any jaggies whatsoever when you add to that the beautiful colors and
respectable but not amazing processing leg on this monitor the experience is
unlike anything else I've always found that surround would be okay for me but
the bezel just totally takes away from the immersion well this it's just it's
there in your field of view and it looks amazing I mean I think the craziest and
most exciting thing about it is that while I found over 30 in to be a little
bit big this technology is coming soon
to smaller display sizes which means even high higher pixel density and at
lower prices 4K might not matter much to
me for my TV but for my desktop computer
it makes a really big difference it's like when I moved from 24in 1200p to
30in 1600p all over again it's absolutely beautiful the one thing I
really need to see though before I'd be willing to drop $800 to $1,000 on a
really nice 4k monitor is g-sync support I noticed this at NVIDIA's Montreal
event when they had some 4K TV gaming demos running but the larger the screen
the more noticeable giant tearing artifacts across it are to me these sync
is a solution but it adds more leg to what I'm already expecting to be slower
than average monitors in this first round of affordable 4K monitors although
I haven't like tested any of them yet so when ASUS delivers about $1,000 4k 60hz
g-sync monitor they will not be able to take my money fast enough thank you guys
very much for watching like this video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment if you have
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