5K goes ULTRAWIDE - LG 34WK95U-W Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
1,488 words · ~7 min read
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4k ultra 1 4k 4k
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how do you decide between 4k and ultrawide why not both
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introducing the lg 5k ultrawide
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feed your fiesta glasswire allows you to instantly see your current and past
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network activity detect malware and block badly behaving apps on your pc or
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Android device use offer code Linus to get 25 off at the link below
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historically there have been mostly two
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different pixel counts for ultra wide monitors
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2560x1080 which takes your standard 16x9
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1080p monitor and stretches it by a
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third and 3440 by 1440 which does the
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same thing to a wqhd monitor both of
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them have an aspect ratio of 21x9
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except it's not actually 21x9 it's more like
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21 and a third by nine so
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64 by 27 but i guess that didn't sound
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as sexy on the marketing materials and also i guess it's easier for people to
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understand 21 by nine since most people are pretty familiar with how 16x9 looks
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so that means that visualizing 21x9
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isn't as much of an uh stretch of the imagination as calling it
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seven by three would have been anyway none of that is the point all of that
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stuff pales in comparison to the beast that we've got today
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this ladies and gentlemen is lg's 34
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wk95 uw i think the wk is for work like
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work in it because this thing boasts over 11 million pixels that are so close
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to each other that if you tried to pass your body between them you would have to
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go through one cell at a time it is a
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lot of pixels and yet lg still doesn't call this resolution 5k they call it
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5k 2k because they already make a 5k
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monitor which has 3 million more pixels all in the vertical direction
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so ima cho even though there are 5 000 horizontal pixels here really this
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is more like a 4k ultra wide something that we've never seen before and a true
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5k ultra wide should have a resolution of something like
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6820x2880 but let's not get ahead of ourselves here because 5k 2k is plenty
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sweet as it is its pixel density of 163
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pixels per inch is almost exactly the same as a 27 inch 4k monitor putting it at
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apple retina levels from a reasonable viewing distance of 21 inches which
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means you will be blown away by the crazy sharp text assuming that is that
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your pc can actually drive this many pixels
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so if you're plugging the monitor into the displayport port man i wish they had
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come up with a different name for that on your 10 series NVIDIA or rx 400
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series or newer AMD graphics card then you are
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golden if you're relying on the HDMI 2.0 ports
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then you are basically sol you'll be capped at 3440 by 1440
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since even though 3840x2160
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is available you can select it that is a 16x9 aspect ratio meaning it is
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squishville so say no to HDMI
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as for if you're using the Thunderbolt 3 port probably on your laptop that's
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where things get really interesting because when we reviewed the lg 5k ultra fine we
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learned that while it worked perfectly at full resolution with our 2016 macbook
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we could only get about four and a half of those k's on a Windows machine the
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reason was that the available Thunderbolt 3 chipsets at that time only
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supported displayport 1.2 which doesn't
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have nearly enough bandwidth for 5k at 60 hertz it only worked on the macbook
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because apple cleverly used the capacity from the chipsets of two side-by-side
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ports to push all those pixels through but that changed ostensibly in early
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2018 when Intel released a new Thunderbolt 3 chipset called titan ridge
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that supports displayport 1.4 which can
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handle full 5k at 60hz or even 8k at
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30hz off of a single port so uh okay
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that's great Linus how do i know if i have a titan ridge
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good question if you want a one cord solution to
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connect your laptop to an external display and potentially even charge it
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at the same time what you need is both a
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2018 model laptop that has the new titan ridge Thunderbolt 3 implementation you
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can check with your manufacturer to find that out and a discrete GPU since titan ridge
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isn't designed to work with Intel's integrated graphics
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and even if you have all that there's still no guarantee that it will
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charge your laptop so if you're a Windows user and a one
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cable laptop docking feature is a big focus for you
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be sure that you've got a compatible machine or you will be disappointed oh
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and by the way you can wipe that smug latte mustache
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smirk off your face's 2018 macbook users because currently mojave has a bug
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preventing this monitor from working properly for you too
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the good news is that once these little details are ironed out
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this thing will not disappoint its color accuracy is fantastic out of the box we
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measured color differences that were on average indistinguishable to the human
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eye despite this not being a 10 bit panel thanks in part to lg's nano cell
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tech which if you're not familiar works on a similar principle to quantum dot
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but kind of the opposite so it filters out all the colors except the intended
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rg and b and its HDR capabilities are what i
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would describe as not bad
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now bear in mind that the 34 wk95 uw
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only manages a peak brightness of 600 nits while 1 000 nits is required
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imo for a true okay this makes a really
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big difference HDR experience but at the very least it does sport the
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new vasa display HDR 600 certification
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which demands 90 coverage of the dci p3
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gamut a threshold that it crosses with ease the biggest deficiency with this
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panel at least on our particular unit was
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uniformity though and it was worst along the left edge and in the corners which
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are a little darker than the rest of the display and you could also make the
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argument that given the 1500 price tag the looks of the monitor are
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clean but a little less premium than they could be
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with that said though personally i'd rather my money went towards a better
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panel and backlight solution than fancy casing for the most part anyway
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so bottom line should you buy this monitor
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i guess that depends on who you are if you're a gamer
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you're gonna find this thing pretty hard to drive like especially in triple a
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titles and i would strongly recommend a higher refresh rate lower resolution
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alternative but if you specifically want large format
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and very high resolution the 34 wk95 uw really is a best of both
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world solution that does a reasonable job of justifying its 1500 price tag so
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go for it because the rest of the really big computer displays out there are 4k
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and even though they have a lot of pixels at this kind of size
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4k won't be nearly as sharp as this and
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for my part anyway i prefer the ultra wide aspect ratio it's kind of like
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multi-monitor but with no awful bezels the massdrop sennheiser hd6xx headphones
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are one of massdrop's all-time best sellers with over 40
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000 of their members picking them up to date now they have not changed the
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driver and sound structure compared to the hd 650s meaning you can expect a
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balanced mid-range and natural sounding bass but they do come with a detachable
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six-foot cable instead of 10-foot based on community feedback and a 1 8-inch
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plug that is versatile for everyday use also they include a quarter inch adapter
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and support from sennheiser directly so
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go check it out at the link in the video description to join the drop and get
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your own hd6xx headphones so thanks for watching guys if you
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disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed maybe consider checking out
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where to buy the stuff we featured at the link below also down there is our merch store which has cool shirts
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i shot a lot of videos in this shirt today it's awkward because i keep
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telling people to go check out our merch store you know what it's fine our merch
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store has cool shirts they're just not like this one and you can check out our
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community forum that's also linked down there definitely join it it's awesome