Dell 28" 4K P2815Q First Impressions

[tbc]

Hey all,

So you may or may not have noticed, but someone (that would be me) mentioned in the 'what did you get in the mail' thread that they received a Dell P2815Q very recently.  Since this monitor is fairly new and there is exactly one review that I know of, I thought I would take the time to do a quick writeup and offer answers to specific questions.

This is just a 'first impressions' and honestly won't go very much further than that.  I'm not much of a writer and I'm not particularly well-versed in the world of graphics design or print; I know terms like leading and sRGB but I can't honestly say why they're important. 


DISCLAIMERS:

Am I done writing this 'First Impressions' yet?

Nope, but I kinda want to gauge interest before I start going into more detail.  Also, it's the weekend and my second day of actually using it, so I haven't really done any actual 'office work' on it yet.

Why no pictures?

It's just a monitor; I'm not sure what you're exactly interested in seeing.  Let me know if you want a closeup of something, but I only have a Nexus 4 camera.  You have been warned.

Ummm...heard of OS X or Linux?

Sure have, but those aren't my primary systems and I can't be bothered to set them up on my single NUC that I have.  All information is based on experiences on Windows 8.1.



ACTUALLY HOPEFULLY USEFUL STUFF

What monitor was I using before?

Dell U2713HM.  single 1440p workstation.

Why did I get this monitor?

I'm a web developer by trade.  I adore my previous monitor; but I couldn't view two 1920w webpages side-by-side.  Not a big deal for anyone but a web developer or designer;  I don't have enough desk space for two monitors, so this IS a huge deal.  4K is king for single monitor workstations.

On an ergonomic note, I get the equivalent of 4 1080p monitors without having to turn my head.  I can see all parts of my 28" monitor just by moving my eyeballs (I still move my head a little just for 'balance'); this doesn't happen on dual monitors and especially not on quad monitor setups.

Cable clutter.  There is none.  Only a single DisplayPort 1.2 cable is required to drive the screen.  If I were to add another monitor, there is a DP out on this one so there are no new video outs from my NUC.  DISCLAIMER: I haven't actually tried - pleae refer to official specs or actual reviews


What kinda zoom are you using?

'smaller' in Windows DPI settings and 100% zoom (that is to say, no zoom in OR out) in Firefox Aurora 30.


Are you for real?  You paid real money for TN?

Sure am and sure did.  I don't do color-sensitive work; effective real-estate is king.  Nuf' said.  I enjoy nice colors, but it's not worth an extra $3K for myself personally.


Are you for real?  You paid real money for 30Hz?

Still am and still did.  Like I mentioned earlier, I do web work.  That work is the PRIMARY use for this screen.  Every single activity is secondary to that work.  Those secondary activities include watching media and gaming.  I gamed an average of 2.5 hours per month...when I gamed like 2 years ago.  This rate has decreaed to 0 for very many months now.

30Hz simply isn't necessary for not-gaming and not-video work.  It's more than enough for word processing and excel spreadsheets.  My mouse cursor feels like it's dropping 40% of its frames, but I frankly don't care.  Metro app animations feel like they're dropping 10% of their frames - again, no cares given.  Frankly, I'm suspecting that it's the HD4000 and its drivers that are struggling rather than just the low framerate causing these issues.  Let me know if you have a specific case you want to know.


How's text looking?

GORGEOUSLY AMAZING.  I want to say it's print quality, but I'm not qualified to.

I'll be honest, I'm a spoiled brat when it comes to text rendering quality.  My first smartphone was an iPhone 4 and I never stop *****ing about anything less than that.  I am much happier with this monitor's text rendering from 2.5ft away than the iPhone 4's ever.  I can start seeing pixels on 'z' when my eyes are ~4" from the monitor.

NOTE: I wear prescription glasses or contact lenses 100% of the time when using any desktop monitor.


How's gaming?

Sorry haven't gamed.  I think you're a silly duck if you're going to try; stick to single-player RPG/RTS if you do.


And movies?

I've been quite busy and haven't actually watched a movie yet.  I did watch some SC2 VODs and didn't notice any quality issues.  Someone might, but the everyday Joe wouldn't.


Any problems you want to fess up about?

Ya.  There are a few:

1.  (Intel NUC ONLY as far as I'm aware)  No bootup using my core-i5 Ivy Bridge NUC when only the DP cable is plugged in.  UEFI loading seems to fail completely and I'm stuck on a black screen.  The workaround is just plug in the HDMI cable AND the DP cable.  Make sure to use the HDMI input and disconnect it when you're finally in Windows. 

I'm fairly sure it's something wrong with my NUC and it would be weird if it happened when outputting from a real nVidia or AMD discrete GPU.  It's not a bother for me really.

2.  Large 28" TN panels show viewing angle distortion even when viewed from straight on.  Specifically, the top of the panel is ALWAYS darker unless I look straight ahead and align my 'eye sight' with the top bezel.  This makes it harder (but still more than reasonable) to read browser tab names.  The bottom of this panel doesn't have any TN distortion as far as I can tell.

3.  Writing in a text-editor is really hard because the first line is in the top-left of your screen.  I recommend NOT making the word processor fullscreen.  Rather, aero-snap it to the right.  Now the first character of every line will be in the center of your screen rather than in the top-left corner.  REMEMBER, your text editor is still as wide as it would be fullscreened on a 1080p monitor.  Much good.


Can you talk less?

Sure.  This is a text-centric workstation monitor.  While it will work for most use-cases, you probably won't be happy with it and I really don't recommend it.

Can I ask some questions now?

PLEASE DO!

[JaccoW]

This is the same screen that is on Massdrop right now, right?

Thanks for this review.

[Zeal]

What kinda zoom are you using?

'smaller' in Windows DPI settings and 100% zoom (that is to say, no zoom in OR out) in Firefox Aurora 30.

You're browsing in windowed mode though, right? If it were full screen, websites would be 1/4 the size they already are. I personally zoom to ~110% on 1080p full screen monitors. Unless there's some wizardry going on! 

[Findecanor]

I'm a web developer by trade.  I adore my previous monitor; but I couldn't view two 1920w webpages side-by-side.

Your problem is that you made 1920 wide web pages to start with.

[MsYutai]

Mind showing us how large some of the font is on that monitor? I find that with my 1440p monitor it's pretty hard to read without zooming in to 140% then I just feel like a really old person.

Also I demand that you watch a 1080 movie on there and tell us how nice it looks.

[tbc]

Your problem is that you made 1920 wide web pages to start with.

Responsive web design is king.

while having a 960w may be fine for blogs, it's a serious handicap for actual webapps.  It's not much fun viewing a grid of data and having to hscroll even though there are two giant white margins to the left and right just because the web dev didn't feel like doing the work.

1920w (or a 1080p/1200p resolution) is the highest common resolution.  There really aren't enough 1440P monitors even for our testers to use, nevermind any clients.

Mind showing us how large some of the font is on that monitor? I find that with my 1440p monitor it's pretty hard to read without zooming in to 140% then I just feel like a really old person.

Also I demand that you watch a 1080 movie on there and tell us how nice it looks.

Do you want a camera shot or a screenshot (not sure if you can get useful info out of a SS for this case)?  My camera is REALLY bad.  pick wisely

I didn't think 1080p movies would get any improvement (besides pixel density), it that what you were wondering about? It would be really nice to get some 4K content.  By that time, hopefully, I can find a nice 4K 60Hz IPS from Dell for <$1K

You're browsing in windowed mode though, right? If it were full screen, websites would be 1/4 the size they already are. I personally zoom to ~110% on 1080p full screen monitors. Unless there's some wizardry going on! 

Sorry, I'm not quite following.

I fullscreen my browser when I casually browse because most of the sites I go to horizontally center their content body.

I use no zoom in or zoom out because I find scaling to not work so good in a few cases (still enough to bother me).

whatever settings you have on a 1080p monitor, the text will be 1/4 of the size unless there is indeed wizardry going on (in windows at least).

let's put it this way, in excel: A -> BG, 1 -> 93 ( + half of row 94)

[daerid]

Pardon my ignorance, but I've never heard the acronym "NUC" before. What does it stand for?

[Zeal]

Pardon my ignorance, but I've never heard the acronym "NUC" before. What does it stand for?

Intel's "Next Unit of Computing".

Extremely compact computer that's 4"x4".

[tbc]

This is my 3rd full day of using this monitor now.

I've got a couple of more notes:

you need ALOT of DPI to make things work correctly.  I had my G700s set to 2500 for my 1440p monitor and had perfect control.  I've been using 3750 on this current monitor and its still not high enough to reach every corner comfortably.  I just set it to 4250, but it was feeling hard to move the cursor from the center of one letter to the center of the next letter.  Why do I need to do that?  sometimes I need to hit the 'new posts' icon which can be as small as a letter.  Any accuracies mistakes end up bringing me to the OP.  It's frustrating when you make this mistake on 10 threads on 2-3 forums.  Will update later (this is really just a blurb about the '$4000' life rather than the monitor specifically - ALTHOUGH maybe the not perfectly smooth cursor MAY be making things harder).

I'm not a gamer and I was never comfortable with >2500 DPI before, so maybe my mouse dexterity isn't up to par

[Hak Foo]

How would you compare it to two 1080p  scrrens, say 21" ones... that's the default setup at my shop -- I drilled it down the boss's throat that we wanted IPS screens because the first few years we were on 19" TN 5:4 screens where you could subtantially blow out the colours by looking at the wrong angle.

[tbc]

This is my first time using a desktop TN monitor since summer of 2011.  At work, I have a cheap BenQ MVA panel which isn't too shabby actually.

Frankly, I don't remember what TN panels look like anymore.

It's obvious that they should NEVER be used professional work though.  I would imagine there are articles from graphic designer bloggers that articulately describe why they're a bad idea.


sorry for getting offtrack.  onto your actual question. 

if you do alot of partner work, it's actually easier to use two monitors.  there is simply more horizontally distributed space so the person isn't literally resting on your shoulder.

with 2 monitors, you can quickly aerosnap 4 windows rather than 2 on the 4k.

if you do graphics work, I strongly recommend against a 28" TN. the screen is so large there is always TN distortion on your image.  2 ips > 2 TN > 28" TN