Specifications and Overview
We have spent some time with the ASUS PQ321Q 4K display and are ready to talk about our experiences thus far.
Talk to most PC enthusiasts today, be they gamers or developers, and ask them what technology they are most interested in for the next year or so and you will most likely hear about 4K somewhere in the discussion. While the world of consumer electronics and HDTV has been stuck in the rut of 1080p for quite some time now, computers, smartphones and tablets are racing in the direction of higher resolutions and higher pixel densities. 4K is a developing standard that pushes screen resolutions to 4K x 2K pixels and if you remove the competing options discussion (3840×2160 versus 4096×2160 are the most prominent) this move is all good news for the industry.
I first dove into the area of 4K displays when I purchased the SEIKI SE50UY04 50-in 4K TV in April for $1300 when it popped up online. The TV showed up days later and we did an unboxing and preview of the experience and I was blown away by the quality difference by moving to a 3840×2160 screen, even with other caveats to be had. It was a 30 Hz panel, half a typical LCD computer display today, it had limited functionality and it honestly wasn't the best quality TV I had ever used. But it was 4K, it was inexpensive and it was available.
It was hard to beat at the time but the biggest drawback was the lack of 60 Hz support, the ability for the screen to truly push 60 frames per second to the panel. This caused some less than desirable results with Windows usage and even in gaming where visual tearing was more prominent when Vsync was disabled. But a strength of this design was that it only required a single HDMI connection and would work with basically any current graphics systems. I did some Frame Rating game performance testing at 4K and found that GPU horsepower was definitely a limiting factor.
Today I follow up our initial unboxing and preview of the ASUS PQ321Q 4K monitor with a more thorough review and summary of our usage results. There is quite a bit that differs between our experience with the SEIKI and the ASUS panels and it is more than just the screen sizes.
The ASUS PQ321Q 4K Monitor
The ASUS PQ321Q is a 31.5-in edge-lit LCD tiled monitor that has a native resolution of 3840×2160. It has a retail price or $3499 and went on sale earlier this week. There is a lot to this panel, but let's take a quick look at the most important specs:
The PQ321Q shares basically the same platform as the Sharp PN-K321 4K display so if you are familiar with that, nothing has really changed here. The panel is an IGZO based design (indium gallium zinc oxide) that was actually developed by Sharp to replace the active layer silicon of an LCD screen, allowing for smaller pixels or higher reaction speed. For this implementation they were able to get 4K resolution in a 31.5-in design using IGZO technology but Sharp has also built 2560×1600 10-in and 1280×800 7-in screens with it.
With a dot pitch (pixel pitch) of 0.182 mm the ASUS PQ321Q has some incredibly dense pixels and that results in a much smoother and less aliased image on the screen at standard usage distances. For comparison, a typical dot pitch for a 1080p 23-in monitor will be more along the lines of 0.265 mm. As we'll see in our desktop usage patterns this move to a higher pixel density changes how you need to use your operating system and some software will need to be written to take advantage of it properly.
The maximum brightness, contrast ratios and response times for the panel are pretty standard and don't stand out from other high end offerings in the market but are all reasonable specifications for gaming and desktop usage models. The panel is capable of 10-bit color though so professional users will find the PQ321Q to fit nicely in their workflows.
You might also notice that the inputs are pretty limited: DisplayPort and a pair of HDMI ports. I will discuss more about that on a later page but the move to DisplayPort 1.2 MST (multi-stream transport) is really what makes this panel feasible.
Despite being one the first monitors to support 60 Hz signals at 4K resolutions, the ASUS PQ321Q is quite thin, measuring just 1.375-in thick without the stand.
By far the worst part about this monitor is the button panel along the right hand side. It is the mushiest, least user-friendly array of buttons I have ever used, and I don't say that lightly. ASUS does include a sticker that you can put on the front bezel so you can at least SEE what you are doing, but that doesn't stop the fact that pushing them feels like pressing a breath mint into warm playdough.
On the back of the monitor you'll find the input for the power connection and the physical power switch.
One way ASUS was able to keep the monitor so thin was that the power converter is kept outside the housing of the display and as a result we get a big, ugly power brick to store somewhere around your PC.
Whenever I see an external
Whenever I see an external power brick I automatically assume they were cutting as many corners as possible when designing the product. Not that I was going to drop all that money on a monitor anyways, but if I was going to I sure wouldn’t be doing it on one that I can’t use with a normal power plug.
I’ll take an external power
I’ll take an external power brick for any device that I want to live a long time. By separating the power supply and the device, you separate most of the MTBF of the devices. I’ve had power supplies fail in monitors and they’re very hard to fix. Need a generic 19V power brick? That’s COTS.
Agreed. After years of
Agreed. After years of servicing equipment, I’ll gladly take generic external power bricks over internal custom power setups. I even like that they’re doing it with a lot of the budget PCs now.
while it is true that most
while it is true that most failures of LCD monitors are caused by failing internal power supplies, it is not true that they are difficult to fix.
Some can be a challenge to open, yes but once open, they tend to be easy to repair.
Typically they fall under two categories: blown capacitor(s) or arcing/cold solder on the input power lead. The last two monitors I’ve repaired, the input power lead had a cold solder which lead to it cracking…then arcing (tiny amounts) plus with the stress of the power cord being plugged in and out, the gap got big enough to do some serious arcing; enough to partial burn that part of the trace.
Fix was easy: clean, resolder or bypass.
For blown capacitors, the hardest part is ordering the right high-quality capacitors.
With that said, using an external power brick has a few additional advantages such as heat.
$20 replacement power pack,
$20 replacement power pack, versus (at least) 30 minutes of repair work and replacing $3 worth of caps. Economically in terms of service jobs the $20 replacement pack wins out.
Of course, if you’re doing it yourself as a home job or for some fun, no worries, replacing caps is a walk in the park. That said, sometimes it’s more complex than that and you just end up wasting time. Up here we get a lot of geckos in power supply units, a lot of the time the whole board is a write off.
> Whenever I see an external
> Whenever I see an external power brick I
> automatically assume they were cutting as many
> corners as possible when designing the product.
You do not explain WHY you assume that, nor do you explain why the Manufacturer MUST HAVE been wrong to have designed their Product that way; do you do a LOT of design, or a lot of …
I would not want to assume about your decision process nor make too many assumptions about the design of something I was not involved in.
In addition to simplified replacement there is the consideration of weight distribution, thinness, ability to switch Power Supply Manufacturers easily (without affecting the portion of the Product where ‘the Money’ is), heat, interference, Electrical Standards in different Countries, etc. .
Repair may not be as cost effective whether the Power Supply were internal or external, UNLESS they could assume (like Computers) that the End User would most likely be able to do the repair / replacement themselves; which in the case of Monitors / TVs is NOT going to happen).
In addition, in the event that you are partially correct somehow, this is “one corner” that was cut; why assume they cut as many corners as possible. If you do not like a single decision they made in the design then you assume the rest is a bunch of junk.
May I suggest, without assuming for others, that is something not well understood, or perhaps well explained.
Rob – http://www.youtube.com/user/LowLightVideos
A power supply generates
A power supply generates quite high EMFs or magnetic and magnetic fields. Certainly you don’t want them near your face or any part of your body.
The example is the NEC MultiSyc LCD2170NX, which has the power supply behind the screen (and high voltage too, 230VAC equals 325 volts peak. Not very safe but the most important part the mentioned earlier.
Thanks Ryan for an
Thanks Ryan for an informative article that answered all of my most burning questions. As you mentioned there are more details to explore, but your top line findings are already enough for me to know that its probably best to hang back a bit before pressing that buy button (it sounds like they are going to get there though and that’s great.)
define “tiled” ?
define “tiled” ?
Tiled means there are
Tiled means there are multiple heads in side the display.
Would be interesting to know
Would be interesting to know if there’s any additional early adopter problems by using two/three of these monitors. I suspect that drivers are full of bugs for this corner case. One obvious problem with Windows7 might be that the taskbar is stretched over both monitors because of Eyefinity/Surround must be enabled.
I would suspect that any
I would suspect that any issues that plague Eyefinity or Surround would be in play here, yes.
Great Article, it makes me
Great Article, it makes me want one even more lol. I have a silly question how would this monitor work if you where to hook up something like a sony playstation 3 to it? The reason I’m curious is that I run both my PS3 and my computer on my monitor and was wondering if I could still run a setup like that if I was ever to get a monitor like this one?
It works exactly like you’d
It works exactly like you’d expect. I have the PQ321 and I have my PS3 plugged into one of the HDMI ports while my PC uses the Display Port.
It’s VESA DisplayPort 1.2 and
It’s VESA DisplayPort 1.2 and VESA DisplayID 1.3 specs that enable this monitor. DisplayID is the next generation of the ancient VESA EDID standard. DisplayPort. 1.2 added MST support.
It was odd that Ryan was
It was odd that Ryan was referring to DisplayPort 1.2 by name in the article and then started talk about “VESA 1.3”. It seems that DisplayID v1.3 was indeed ratified by VESA in April or May. It certainly make sense for a monitor to advertise itself as tiled via DisplayID/EDID.
Since the spec was just finalized I’m guessing it will probably be a while before it makes its way into display controllers.
Thanks for the article. I’m
Thanks for the article. I’m one of those interested in knowing how the monitor scaled/pixel doubled from 1920 and that tiny bit of info about it being unsupported with MST saved me $3500. I guess I’ll be waiting for the 4k/60hz TCON panels to come out.
“If you had the ability to
What’s different about this than how the dual HDMI mode operates? Why couldn’t you just put the monitor in that mode, but attach different devices to each port?
Perhaps nothing, but Dual
Perhaps nothing, but Dual HDMI assumes the two inputs are the same input.
I know it’s lame, but even
I know it’s lame, but even though this has such a high resolution, the 16:9 aspect really puts me off. Do we really enjoy swiveling our head left and right all the time at our desks?
Yes we do, that’s a lot more
Yes we do, that’s a lot more enjoyable than looking up and down.
Good post. I will be
Good post. I will be experiencing some of these
issues as well..
I’d be interested to see this
I’d be interested to see this display tested on different Apple hardware. I have a hard time finding information what for instance newer macbook (air/pro) handles. Also, no tests were done with Intel hardware, does that mean it’s a no-go with Intel 4000 chipset?
Apple maintains strict
Apple maintains strict control over video drivers on OS X so it is possible they may not support using 4K@60p with this monitor.
PCper did tests with Intel hardware in their unbox/preview video. Intel’s Collage feature supports 2×1, 3×1, 4×1 and 4×4 monitor configurations and is available on Ivy Bridge (like the Intel HD 4000) and Haswell integrated GPUs.
Great article as always Ryan!
Great article as always Ryan! There are a couple of things I would like to see going forward. First, 8x AA is way beyond overkill at 4k res to be sure. Let’s look into exactly how much AA is need at 3840×2160. Show us more screenshots and in-game assets like that Skyrim tree at different modes and levels of AA. And let’s also look into how much of a performance hit they will have. Though I imagine AA will cost about the same amount of performance it could possibly be different than what we are used to seeing with resolutions that are more commonly used today. Keep up the good work for us all!
correct me if I’m wrong. I
correct me if I’m wrong. I have a rMBP, which has a GTX 650M and thunderbolt port. If I buy this monitor, I would be able to plug a display port cable into the TB port and drive the monitor?
Yes but 4K@60p may not work
Yes but 4K@60p may not work in OS X. NVIDIA had to put a special driver hack in the Windows driver to make the monitor work due to their artificially crippled drivers. Apple maintains tight control over the Mac OS X NVIDIA driver which is even more crippled than the Windows driver. It may not support tiled displays.
We hooked the MBA that Ken
We hooked the MBA that Ken has up to this monitor through DisplayPort and could NOT go higher than 1920×1080.
Ryan- have you tried hooking
Ryan- have you tried hooking it up to a Macbook Pro Retina? Or the new 2012 iMac?
Ryan that was an awesome
Ryan that was an awesome article. Since I doubt anyone is going to risk opening a $3500 monitor I didn’t think I’d ever find out what TCONs are driving the panel but you went above and beyond and got the info! Great Job!
It is still too bad NVIDIA refuses to support 2×1 and 2×2 surround for all monitors not just these tiled 4K displays. I was hoping that if a ton of these tiled displays hit the market, NVIDIA would be forced to add proper Surround support instead of white-listing monitors. But if what you said about the new standards comes to pass, they will probably be able to support these tiled monitors while still preventing generic 2×1 and 2×2 Surround. Too Bad.
DisplayPort 1.3 is under development. With all the delays I wonder what will get finalized first DP 1.3 or HDMI 2.0. I hope the DP 1.3 is as ahead of its time as DP 1.2 was in 2009. Here’s hoping for 8K @ 120 Hz over a single cable. That would be awesome.
Will 120hz ever become
Will 120hz ever become mainstream? *sigh*
“The first problem was an
“The first problem was an occasional ability to fail a cold boot”
+
“Another potential problem was the lack of ability to see the POST screen and BIOS during boot”
=
This is basically not consumer ready on nVidia hardware right now. Or is it just me that wouldn’t want to put up with that level of crap from a $4500 GPU + display combination?
Is there any unusual behavior
Is there any unusual behavior when doing MST with either the monitor put into portrait mode directly via OSD, or through windows control panels? How the drivers react to portrait mode can be a problem. Additionally, how are the viewing angles when in portrait mode, as many displays have polarization filters that look fine in landscape, but in portrait orientation screw up the brightness as perceived by the eye. Finally, it appears the control buttons are sufficiently recessed so you can align multiple monitor bezels to touch each other without pressing them, but can you confirm that?
The need for MST or tiling in
The need for MST or tiling in general makes me think now isn’t really the time for 4k on the desktop, unless you’re working in an industry that can very obviously make use of the added resolution.
I’d rather wait for the next revision of DP or HDMI so the monitor can be driven at native res, at 60 or even 120Hz with just one proper connection. That pretty much means waiting for the next generation of GPUs and monitors.
The new driver version 326.41
The new driver version 326.41 adds support for tiled 4k monitors.
what about three of these in
what about three of these in eyefinity 🙂 ?
Has anyone tried hooking up 3
Has anyone tried hooking up 3 PQ321Q in one machine?
Do u think it is doable?