The BRIGHTEST monitor we’ve EVER seen – Dell’s HDR Display
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,455 words · ~7 min read
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High dynamic range or HDR has been the
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next big thing in display technology for
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what seems like forever now I mean hell
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our first video about it is from 2014 and it's hard to find a decent TV
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without that feature these days and yet
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HDR is still far from a mainstream
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feature on PC monitors but are we on the
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cusp of a revolution sitting unknowingly at the bottom of a looming scurve about
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to be forcefully catapulted into a utopian future of super bright H vibrant
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displays well if we were then the Dell up 2718 Q would be that future it's a 4k
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monitor with full hdr10 support and
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1,000 nit Peak brightness let's see if
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it's time to start giving a crap
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browse privately and securely with tunnel bear the simple VPN app start
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description when it comes to looks the ultr sharp 27 4K HDR from Dell lands in
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the Goldilocks zone of understated
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sophistication not too flashy for an office and not too dull for the
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$1500 price tag it's got a space gray
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are we allowed to say that that it's got a gray plastic finish one of the easiest
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to use onscreen displays in recent memory and a generous amount of Mobility
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the stand can tilt swivel pivot and
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whatever that word for adjusting the height is let's go with Elevate but also
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the opposite of that there are two HDMI 2.0 a ports on the back the A is for
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ahdr both regular and mini DisplayPort
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1.4 ports also HDR ready an audio line
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out and a pretty sick integrated USB hub with six USB 3 ports two with fast
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charging and dual uplinks that's so the
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up 278 Q can be used as a KVM switch to
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quickly move between tasks on two systems neat and there's a bunch of
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impressive specs inside the display too it's got a 4K 60 HZ IPS panel with true
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10bit color and an incredible
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384 local dimming zones that is what
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allows it to produce super bright points
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with dark areas right next to them and
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those bright points can be really bright up to a, knits fun fact knit is another
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word for the unit Candela which is equal to the light output of one candle so
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this is basically like the output of a th000 candles in your face sort of
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that's the peak brightness typical brightness sustained across the whole
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screen is 400 nits which is still brighter than most displays so all this
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culminates then in a truly professional
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grade monitor with high contrast ratios
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accurate colors with Delta e under two and excellent coverage of even the most
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demanding color gamuts it even comes with a Nifty color calibration report in
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the Box neat okay then so you're stoked
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as hell and you've got the Windows 10 creators update and you're ready to bask
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in the glory of HDR you hit the toggle button and hey why does it look so drab
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isn't HDR supposed to be uh H what's the
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technical term again the welcome to
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the HDR Rabbit Hole HDR is an awesome
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technology but Windows 10's implementation of HDR really
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demonstrates just how unsettled the dust
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is so the colors went dull when HDR was
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turned on for two reasons the first has to do with color space most of the
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content on your PC is likely to be in the srgb color space which has fewer
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colors than Rec 2020 the color space
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used by the hdr10 standard so when HDR
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is on colors need to be remapped to rec
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2020 and since srgb has fewer colors in
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the gamut it's not always a good fit the
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second reason it looks bunk has to do with brightness with HDR on Windows is
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imposing a ceiling of a 100 knits on the
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screen's brightness the colors don't actually change they still have the same
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Hue it's just that your eyes perceive them as less rich or saturated well okay
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but that's pretty crap lonus why would Windows turn the brightness down because
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if it didn't you would get blasted when
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the non HDR content is remapped if the
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whitest whites were allowed to be represented by a thousand nits of
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brightness a blank white page and say
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Microsoft Word would be blinding plus
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all the other colors would look super saturated and
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wrong so you might think then that it would be better if Windows could leave
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all the colors alone until it detects HDR content that's being viewed and then
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it could just adjust them on the fly but that's just not how it works right now
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okay so then the solution is to just switch it on when you're watching HDR
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content like stuff on Netflix or uh
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Amazon Prime video or YouTube not so fast those guys offer HDR content but
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due to browser limitations it's actually only available through the apps on your
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HDR ready Smart TV for now fine then
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lonus at least there's gaming right okay
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this one yes Mass Effect Andromeda looks
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sick in HDR unfortunately if you also
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like to play other games right now you're bound to end up disappointed at
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the moment HDR games are few and far between and many of the titles you see
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advertised as HDR only do so on the Xbox 1s or the
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PlayStation 4 or 4 Pro where that TV HDR
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ecosystem is more mature HDR games are
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coming though so in due time this monitor will be great for gaming kind of
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I mean it's a beautiful monitor but its 4K is capped at 60 HZ and its response
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times at about 6 milliseconds are not
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that competitive with the top gaming displays so then if you're a gamer who
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needs a monitor today your money may be
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better spent elsewhere and if it's HDR
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you're after then hooking up your PC to
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a giant 4K HDR TV for the same
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price that might make a fair bit of sense so then is the up 201718 q a
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solution looking for a problem no actually not at all unlike dellone 8K
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monitor this one has some very real
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applications today if you're a content
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creator you might want to consider the investment wide coverage of multiple
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gamuts gives you the flexibility to produce in whatever standard your
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project demands the KVM switch is super
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elegant not to mention very convenient
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and compared to the pricing of professional grade calibrated displays
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honestly you're not really paying that more for HDR and Dell's solid reputation
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for monitor build quality and support if you're a Content consumer on the other
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hand well it's back to the scurve we go right now I'd say we're
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about and I'm going to say maybe wait for
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