The CHEAPEST 4K Monitor on Amazon - Sceptre U27
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
1,986 words · ~9 min read
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have you always wanted a 4k monitor but you just couldn't handle spending
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hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a freaking computer screen well
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have we ever got a deal for you as long as you don't need high refresh rate HDR
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10-bit color freesync g-sync or sexy RGB lighting
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then this right here is the scepter u27
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the cheapest 4k monitor on amazon at
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just 179 bucks but is it any good
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well i wouldn't be able to tell you if it
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wasn't for our sponsor storyblocks storyblocks offers you studio quality
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the video description
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all right so james over there has actually seen this already but
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i haven't so this is going to be my first time
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unboxing just how much monitor you can get for
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180 bucks i'll tell you you're not going to get a lot of packaging so
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i mean it should be fine as long as ups doesn't you know drop kick it or
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anything outputs wow it's got built-in speakers
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so that's not bad although my expectations are
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pretty low in terms of what kind of speed wow you get a metal stand i wasn't
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really expecting that i was expecting it to be pretty low plastic
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all right that's cool
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included accessories you got your screws you got your other more different screws
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you got your driver of screws also known as a screwdriver
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uh one HDMI cable one
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pretty skinny power cord but that's fine i
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guess huh i guess they didn't need a third ground prong for this for some
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reason and some other more different screws
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you also get the monitor itself and we have come to the point where even
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literally the cheapest displays are super thin
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with narrow bezels these days 2018 is a great time to be alive isn't it
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look at that oh thank god i mean
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if it wasn't compatible with Windows 10 whatever would i do the craziest thing
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about this sticker is that that doesn't happen by accident
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someone somewhere went out of their way to
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obtain reams upon reams of these stickers
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and find some way to work into the workflow of producing this monitor that they get
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applied to them who made that call
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base screw
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hanging screw so these are for for if you're face amounting it okay that's
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cool that is actually a really nice inclusion that's one of the ways that
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conventional you know the monitor brands you've ever heard of
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tend to differentiate their low end products is they don't allow them to be
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mounted on a third-party ARM well
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this is a serious advantage for this one
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it's always been something that's kind of triggered because it doesn't cost them really anything to put
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four freaking holes there this is not even the worst screwdriver i've ever
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encountered and basically for free
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uh you probably need to know which way the stand goes on though uh so there's these
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convenient rubber feet on the bottom of the metal stand
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i gotta say the i o is a little better than i expected so we've got two HDMI
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ports though you should note and they've marked this very clearly one of them is
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only HDMI 1.4 so it doesn't have the latest hdcp as well 4k 30 hertz and it
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won't be able to play the latest protected content one of them those HDMI
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2.0 hdcp 2.2 4k 60hz it's also got
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displayport and dvi curiously along with a headphone jack now you're not going to
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get like a usb hub or anything like that but frankly
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at this price you shouldn't be expecting that moment of truth scepter
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worst peel ever
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it should be illegal to ship monitors with stickers that not only are just
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completely superfluous but also cover the screen
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uh let's go ahead and have a look at the at the menu here so we've got our
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they've they've committed a cardinals in here they've put buttons on the back without
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labels on the front so
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we're just kind of i'm just kind of guessing here
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overdrive is on
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just does nothing they call us they do nothing no never
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mind i just had it wrong blue light shift so you can
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it's kind of like a reading mode now that we're running at 60 hertz my
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immediate impressions are pretty good
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like it there's no obvious like oh wow this is really you know pretty crap
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input leg or dang can we actually cut the lights like do
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you guys remember when every cheap monitor had like the grossest tn panel
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and just like epic amounts of backlight
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bleed along the sides like this is not bad
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like obviously you get a bit of that ips glow but
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frankly that's never really bothered me and you know the stand's not amazing you
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know it has height adjust in the sense that you can
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put it put it
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it okay that's some tilt that's good that's better than nothing
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so next up here is how suitable would this thing be for gaming
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well
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frankly there's a fair amount of motion
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blur there it's possible that we could actually
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bump the refresh rate someone on reddit apparently reported getting as high as
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71 hertz on this thing i don't know if i'm necessarily going to aim that high
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but why don't i try setting it oh
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oh
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i have not seen that before okay so your mileage may vary this
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worked but is clearly a terrible experience you want to get in close to
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that brandon so they can really they can really have the experience here
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yeah look at this razer logo it's alive
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squirming like a snake all right
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so we're gonna call it quits on the display overclocking at this point but
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you know let's fire up a game let's fire up cs go
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those are not great speakers
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at 3 watts i mean i wasn't expecting
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much but those are quite bad
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this is actually a lot better in terms of responsiveness than i was expecting
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sorry the game's not rendering like that it's just it's i'm just moving it around
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like this like i mean obviously it's not a
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you know 240 hertz gaming monitor or whatever but
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like it doesn't feel like oh my god i suck
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the thing is that if you're spending 180
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on your display like running 4k has inherent problems because
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you probably aren't spending enough on your pc that you can comfortably game at
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4k 60 but if you happen to be hooked up to something that can game at 4k 4k60
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this is not a terrible experience so the last real
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question mark for us then is color accuracy and thankfully james has
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actually run it through our gamut of tests using the i1 pro from x right here
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and in terms of results this is far from amazing
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so a delta e of 7 is well within the
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range that it would be a noticeable difference to the eye
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but it's not
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the worst we've seen for sure
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and let's actually check out our gamut test here
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and with 90 coverage of srgb like with calibration yeah you wouldn't
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be doing any serious photo or you know
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video work on it but it is more than usable for casual use you're
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not gonna you're not gonna notice like oh yeah red is pink or anything like
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that i consider this very acceptable
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considering the price of this display now with all that said something that
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you're going to run up against with any kind of value monitor these days is that
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you might be getting sort of the reject from a more reputable factory so the
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word on the street is that these are using cast off samsung panels which to
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be clear that's actually a pretty good thing even a b samsung panel is not
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going to make for a terrible display but you're more likely to run into things
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like this so we actually have a dead pixel on ours right about yeah you can
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see that black spot right there sometimes you can actually kind of massage them out
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it looks like that is not going to be happening the good news is
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that at 4k 10 pixels are actually far less of an
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issue than they used to be back when we were running 1280x1024 where you could
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like really see them and dead is better than stuck like if
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you got like a like a freaking blue
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stuck pixel that's that's quite a lot more noticeable than this like i
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probably wouldn't notice that
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if i hadn't known it was there i think it's just like a tiny little
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piece of dust or something what's that
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oh we got another one
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okay yeah actually we've got we've got a handful we've got one here
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got one here got one here
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that one there it took me till now to notice them and i
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don't think anyone sets their desktop background like that either though
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so in conclusion this thing is actually kind of awesome
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like i don't know is it would you put it a different way
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like at this price for at least for the unit we got which
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by the way we just bought so your mileage may vary but like
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clearly this can happen like i'm impressed as hell 180 bucks i mean
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when you compare that to the most popular monitor on amazon which is that
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hp 1080p one yeah it costs twice as much but it
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absolutely blows it out of the water this thing's great
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video description so thanks for watching guys you can dislike this video if you
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disliked it but if you liked it hit like get subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we
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totally join i am impressed as hell by this thing
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like it really doesn't
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it doesn't have any glaring problems
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get it glaring problems because it's a matte screen