I have to agree. Considering that OLED 4K TVs cost about 1/3 of this and are much larger the price does not make much sense. It isn't even higher refresh rate, G-SYNC or DisplayHDR certified like their own PG27UQ. The response time of this OLED is pretty sick though.
Well considering the OLED DisplayHDR certification was only recently introduced in January. It is not surprising this monitor has not gone through the certification process since Display HDR 400/600/1000 are only for LCD panels.
It's not because the standard is recent, it's because this monitor doesn't meet it. The lower standard, DisplayHDR 400 TrueBlack requires 250cd/sqm for full screen and 400cd/sqm for local flashes. This monitor only does 140 and 330. It's the age-old problem of OLED and burn in when you crank up the brightness.
VESA HDR standards have nothing to do w/ OLED screens. You need to grade this monitor along VESA TrueBlack standards.
Also nits is not at all the primary thing to look for w/ HDR. It's something that's been overrated by LCD manufacturers for some time against superior panel tech such as OLED in marketing.
A Dolby Vision OLED monitor such as this ones absolutely destroys almost every LCD HDR 1000 panel; you'd have to start comparing it to $30,000+ FALD LCD panels to start seeing contenders even for this panel.
"The response time of this OLED is pretty sick though." That is not something unique with that display or due to it being a professional monitor. ~0.1 ms response times are typical for OLED panels. OLED is simply super fast at that.
Thanks Brett! I also asked Anton, but maybe you can answer it, too: Are these RGB OLED monitors significantly more resistant to burn-in than W-OLED displays? I love the color depth and blacks of OLED displays, but have shied away from them for use as monitors. Given the price of the ASUS, I wouldn't touch them unless they are fully warrantied against burn-in for at least 3 years.
Not sure if would be any different, but also not sure if burn in is a real issue anymore. It's definitely not something I worry about as an OLED TV owner, but I'll admit the static nature of PCs with things like the task bar is a slightly different matter.
Brett, thanks for the reply! Any chance you, Anton or somebody else from AT can ask ASUS or JOLED about how resistant their displays are to burn-in? You might get an answer, a simple end-user like me won't. A pretty recent longer-term test by rtings found that (W)OLED TVs (the tested an LG) are definitely vulnerable to burn-in if used with static display items, i.e. as monitors, and that gives me and others pause here.
>Doesn't even conform to any HDR brightness standard
Love it. When I read an article here the other day, people were doing their usual complaining that consumers were getting passed the buck for display manufacturers wasting money on stupid HDR 400 certifications, and here we are on a display that manufacturers presumably didn't "waste money" on HDR certifications, and here people are complaining about it not conforming to any kind of HDR standard or certification.
What is this good for to be exact? Gamers want a 144Hz, Professionals are going to want a bigger 4K, Laptop is going to want something less than 22'', People are paying five grand just for the OLED name?
Really? There's no mention of 3D LUT support, which is a must for use as a video monitor. No mention of hardware-level calibration options at all, actually - which means that you're stuck with the measly adjustments available through software. This isn't sufficient for color critical work.
"The monitor features an internal 14-bit 3D LUT (lookup table), can reproduce 1.07 billion colors, and comes factory-calibrated to a Delta E <2 accuracy."
That's Delta£=E <2 out of the box - it's a safe bet you can get that lower with better calibration, which anybody who actually needs that kind of accuracy will already have a device for.
You don't need 144Hz on an OLED (or ULMB), OLED isn't as laggy as LCD. Of course, as a gamer you wouldn't spend five grand with only 22" to show for it.
This is actually a common misconception. You still have retina induced motion blur on OLED due to retinal smear, which is improved by black frame insertion or higher refresh rate. More info: http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/down-the-vr-...
Wrong. You NEED higher refresh rate on higher frame rates. Else it will start to stutter and you will never see the true speed of high frames. Also the response time is directly tied to the refresh rate. The higher the fresh rate, the lower the response time (if the panel can deal with it). So there is no point putting only 60 Hz on a panel with such low response time, then having the audacity to put that response time in the spec sheet. Because effectively you cant see those 0.1 ms, because the refresh rate cant display it. Its like saying "this car has 300 HP", but when you floor it, it will be limited to only 100 HP, because the transmission is so weak, it would blow if you would use the full 300 HP.
Why do people always ask that? Yes, it is. Set scaling to 200% and you have the same sized elements as 1080p, only with vastly better anti-alisaing on smaller text and sharper images (where the original files have the right resolution). This is how I have my 17" 4K laptop set up.
Not bright enough for outdoor use, too small for the 4k resolution to be of use for most people (with a 17 inch 1920x1080 display at 50cm distance I need a magnifying lens to distinguish adjacent pixels). Possibly useful in a cramped production studio without the room for the size of monitor that would do 4k justice. With the uneven aging of OLED displays (blue pixels deteriorate faster than red or green and at a rate that depends on the amount of blue light emitted by each pixel) the impressive Delta-E will deteriorate over a few years.
There's certainly some odd choices here - but it's worth saying that a lot of pros work with a monitor hood and at close distances so they don't get outside glare. I'm not sure why this is being sold as a "thin and light" quasi-portable display, though.
3D LUT support is the key here. Alongside 99% DCI P3, >95% color/brightness uniformity (and factory calibration, even if this is less of an issue for this market) this is extremely close to a reference grade monitor. Those are typically 3-5x the price of this. A bit weird that it doesn't support DCI 4K, but that's probably okay for the price.
Seems you didn't read the features of the monitor that easily makes it the price it's asking for that's typically in $10,000-$25,000 pro monitors that aren't portable.
Wow. 1K would have been steep for this size, an unproven product, and the inherent risks that OLED represents. Maybe they are pricing in risks under warranty and thinking consumers will do anything for something OLED. And to promise pristine color accuracy on a device where the temperature is guaranteed to change over time? Well it'll be interesting to hear from those who get them. There are bound to be one or two.
AN unproven product? OLED have been out for ages now. What risks for OLED? Burn in is not a problem anymore before you spout the FUD. No one that uses a PC has the same screen 24.7 lol
Sorry, no FUD in that. OLED subpixels decay over time, dimming them. Not a single manufacturer has managed to lessen this to a degree that actually matters. The dimming dependent on use and displayed color, but any semi-static image will cause this, including taskbars and other UI elements, even if they're only visible for a part of the display's active time. Using a dark theme will help, but not solve the issue (any bright parts such as app icons in the taskbar will still decay and dim). The dimming is very clearly visible on any somewhat bright image, particularly single colors or smooth gradients. It is also entirely irreversible.
Phones and tablets avoid this by having a) full-screen interfaces that change rapidly (though notification bars and navigation icons burn in very rapidly) and b) not being used for hours at a time.
FUD indeed. No one i knows runs a static screen forever in a PC environment, or on a TV at home. I own two OLED and never had a issue with it. Unless you are a moron who runs the same static screen 24/7 all the time, its complete bull shit to worry about it.
Can you post a photo of the area normally occupied by your taskbar with a full-screen white image displaying?
As for "running a static screen 24/7" - that's not needed for OLED subpixel degradation. All you need is frequent use of mostly static UI elements such as the taskbar and the icons on it.
That's frankly irrelevant for the target audience of this monitor. If you're using content creation, you're definitely not keeping things static and most know to auto-hide taskbars & statusbars to only see what they need as they get things done.
That's rather absurd. While pro users _might_ know to set this up as a "grading only" monitor that does nothing more than display full-screen images of the material being worked on, it's far more likely that it'll run a maximised Premiere preview window, for example - which has visible controls. Those will burn in, and can't be automatically hidden. Don't mistake professionals for tech enthusiasts.
The burn in effect adds up over time. LG says that themselves. It doesnt go away when you turn off the display. The longer you use the pixel, the more it degrades. At some point you will see a huge difference where your task bar is, where your browser elements are, your desktop icons, the HUD of your games and in movies/series the difference where there often are the black bars (top and bottom on cinema formats, sides on old 4:3 formats). Not to mention TV station symbols or news channel bars.
Man, this argument is as old and wrong as the one that the human eye doesnt see more than 24 FPS or SSDs still degrade quickly.
OLED have the burn in problem. Every single one of them. Else they would have been in the PC segment very long ago, because they solve every single problem with LCDs, which have huge problems. Doesnt matter if you deny it or claim you dont see it. Its there and it will happen sooner rather than later. You may throw away your TV or phone sooner before you can really see it, but that doesnt change the facts.
LCD backlights will burn out. Every single one of them if used long enough. Without backlights, how are you seeing on your LCD? You can't deny that fact, so how do you deal with it?
There are those of us that have been using our OLED displays for PC use for years, and the level of degradation I've seen after three years indicates that at some point in twenty years or so my old display will have gotten so bad you might have trouble telling it apart from the best LCD made to date out of the box. It's hard to imagine the displays degrading that badly, but it will happen eventually.
What I'm curious about is if OLED panels would degrade enough over time to actually become inferior to LCD panels before the LCD panel fails.
I get that under certain extreme use scenarios you can end up with burn in, the problem is people who don't own an OLED and use it daily are flat out delusional about what will cause it. 60 hours played in six days of a game that has bright static UI elements and not a hint of image retention(a very mild and temporary version of burn in). I was nervous and super careful when I first got it, a $5k display will do that to sane people, but after three years of heavy usage it simply doesn't register anymore unless I read a new round of FUD from people who read something somewhere.
Nice try at being a jerk. There are no such problems. The stuff you mention is normal wear and tear. Nothing that happenes even remotely as quickly as burn in in OLEDs.
There is a long term test of OLEDs on rtings.com. After just 2 weeks they developed burn in. And its not that when you turn off the display, that it will somehow heal. LG says themselves that its a cumulative effect. 2 x 30 mins is 1 hour. The verdict is that static items are still a huge problem for OLEDs. End of discussion.
It's normal wear and tear on LEDs because reasons...?
I've been following rtings tests, largely because I knew certain people wouldn't comprehend what the tests were showing. As an example there was a person in this thread that use those tests to try and say red sub pixels were more problematic than blue based on a panel that uses neither.
You know what other display technology could get burn in? CRTs. If you set up a torture test comparable to theirs you would get burn in after a certain amount of time.
The verdict was actually under anything close to normal use you won't have a problem, not my verdict, what they have been saying.
Even then, my test has been running three years without issue under normal use.
By the way, the tv "healing" itself is from image retention which is a temporary version of burn in. That is something that is exponentially more common than actual burn in.
rtings.com were extreme, boneheaded edge cases that no average joe would do. After all, you're trying your best to burn in the screen.
Just like how you don't treat a Ferrari/Tesla like a Civic, you don't use a professional monitor using premium material carelessly. I've used OLED TVs & monitors for half a decade and have friends in the medical industrry w/ no issues for even longer as ancedotal evidence.
- Have a screensaver - Autohide taskbars & status bars; for pros it's a no-brainer anyway to maximize real estate - OLED monitors have modern pixel shifting and even some turn-off if you walk away
Burn in is a big problem. For someone who used specific software on a regular basis, 5 days a week, week after week, burn in is goi g to be there. Menus are in the same place. Many other UI objects are in the same place. These will burn in readily.
And with a such a low brightness, it will be turned up.
For $5000 they should at least make you a windows utility for "professionals" that goes and rearranges app toolbars and the moves the windows taskbar around at random. ;)
No word on hardware calibration? For a professional device, that probably has color-shift over time, it's a must.
Interesting, that they use a printing technique to produce the OLED panel. The first market ready application I have heard of. The technique has the potential to make large OLED displays cheap.
For those who compare the price with OLED TVs: These are not suitable for static content because of burn-in.
So if this monitor $5k, it probably has 1/5 of the “sice” of the $25k one you mentioned. You remind me of the app called “I am rich” from the AppStore with $999.99 price tag. Unbelievably, seven people purchased it. The 8th (last) was a kid who bought it using one of his parents’ account. His parent called Apple, Apple refunded and took down the app. That app was useless but this monitor actually has some use which might justify the $5000 price tag for some rich dumbass. And according to you, it’s a good deal.
Some people’s stupidity is way beyond my imagination.
Professional monitors are usually pretty expensive because they are made for "professionals" such as X-ray inspector, cinematographer, not us the average users. And if this monitor works like a charm, its price is somewhat reasonable. By the way Joled will start mass production of the oled panel in a year so it's safe to say that this price tag is not permanent.
Do you make print commercial where every color has to be exacly right? You set 20000 for each picture/photo/poster you make or more? No... that is what I think Also. This is for pro photo editors. Where extreme accurasy is essential. You can get good monitors for fraction of this price, but if you want to get the best of the best... wel you have to pay for it. This is not something that you recommended to your grandma for Main monitor to read emails, but you can recommended to this for someone who makes money by producing some material to big company that is going to be printed to paper later, or those $25000 monitors mentioned above.
Don’t be a dick. AT just reported the specs and price from the maker of this monitor. AT haven’t tested it. I know you’re the type who just believes everything the media says but did AT recommend this monitor? FYI this monitor doesn’t contain any break thru tech or anything new. Professional need well calibrated monitors that have the range of colors they need just to have accurate readings and produce accurate results, not outrageously priced ones with a “pro” suffix.
"I know you’re the type who just believes everything the media says"
So you call me a dick and then proceed to be a massive one. Very nice. You have no idea what I do or don't believe.
Yes, they reported the specs and it falls in the professional category, including the price. Which part of that is not clear? A review will reveal if it's any good or worth the money, but that wouldn't change its category.
awehring simply wrote the price is good for a pro display, nothing more, and yet you proceeded with personal attacks and calling him an idiot.
Again, why are you even reading anandtech when you cannot even comment without unwarranted personal remarks.
It comes out, finally. I saw a video Joled posted on youtube recently and their technology was very impressive. Still wondering whether they've improve the short lifespan of blue diode, though.
Red ones are the most problematic nowadays. Theres a long term test with OLEDs on rtings.com. On one hes running CNN all day long (all red banners and bars), and its by far the worst burned in.
It's a white OLED sub pixel basically painted red(oversimplification). LG TVs are all made that way because each sub pixel element degrades at a different rate of time.
This has been linked in this thread already. This is I spent ten minutes learning about OLED level simple.
You can't test white OLED sub pixels against white OLED sub pixels and then say red is the problem, technology , science and reality don't work that way.
Wasn't JOLED's printing method supposed to result in *cheaper* OLED monitors? Or is much of that price a "professional tax"? By the way, how is a monitor with just 330 nits peak brightness expected to support HDR10 exactly?
that is 10x the price I payed for a ProArt 8yrs ago ... For that price it should atleast have a higher refresh rate, Maybe they should throw in a used car too.
For everyone complaining about the price and that it is "stupid" high, I'm a filmmaker and professional colorist and my first reaction was "wow this is cheap, when can I order it?" That is, assuming the 3D LUT support mentioned is real and robust. If you're comparing to consumer monitors, it will seem stupid expensive. But the alternatives are things like the Eizo CG319X I am typing this on (~$5600), which is not even OLED but has the LUT functionality required. Or there's Flanders Scientific DM250 for $25K, which is a similar size OLED but has SDI inputs (that additional functionality is worth about $5K on its own). Point is, there is a market for this monitor and Asus is not stupid, it's just not for YOU.
Fine, next time you are Asus and you are announcing an OLED monitor, say that you only want to sell a hundred of them, that it is a professional only product, and that you expect the price to be >$5000. They created anticipation that this would be a consumer OLED monitor, and that was misleading.
Ahah (The Simpsons' Nelson style) - 5k for a 22" screen. Really? Anyway, Oled contrast is tipically stated as infinite because blacks are really without any light. So why the 1 million to one?
This is a top end monitor. It's squarely aimed at professionals. It's this price for a number of reasons:
a) It's using top end technology. b) These lines have bigger profit margins. c) These kinds of products are bought by large organisations that have dedicated pools of cash for this. Some may even have a "use it or lose it" policy. $5,000 is nothing to them. They also often buy in bulk, outfitting whole studios, etc. with them.
In other words, this isn't intended for your average Joe, or even the enthusiasts found here. Just like we won't go out and buy an ARRI or RED camera. We just get a chance to buy them if we so wish (which is great).
@Anton: Thanks. Nice specs, outrageous price. Questions: Any information on resistance to burn-in? Are the JOLED panels more resistant than LG's, SONY's or SAMSUNG's offerings? Burn-in is a real risk with organic LED screens used as monitors, at least up to now. Are these different, and does ASUS warrant against burn-in for, let's say, 5 years?
I was tempted to go with an LG 4K OLED panel (TV, really) as my main monitor (gorgeous colors!), but shied away from them as I use my monitors in daylight, so at high brightness settings.
How bright are you talking? I pulled up rtings top rated PC monitor and it has peak brightness levels of 361 which is markedly lower than LG OLED tv peak brightness(sustained 100% is lost though).
I think there is confusion because new high end LCDs offer retina burning brightness levels. My OLED never gets set higher than 50% brightness and it is *much* brighter than the $500 BenQ monitor I have hooked up to the same PC(that monitor has a peak of sub 250 iirc).
Doesn't have to be more than 250-300 most of the time. What worries me is burn-in over time, as some screen elements are unavoidably in the same place all the time. Simplest thing that ASUS can do to disspell that worry is have a 3 or more years, no questions asked, warranty against burn-in.
What type of work are you doing? If you're in say excel with toolbars locked in place all day ten hours a day, better to stay away, if you have a mixed work flow though, they may actually work for you.
Probably mainly for video editing. If used alongside another set for the static elements (user interface etc), it'd probably work. I would love it if Anton or another writer for AT shoots an email to ASUS and JOLED asking them about how sensitive their panels are to burn-in. Would be great if somebody finally solved this vulnerability.
Thought about that, BUT, a recent (2018) longer-term test of 4K panels (review by rtings) confirmed that using an OLED TV as a monitor lead to burn-in within a few weeks of intense use. The LCD panels run alongside were fine (VA panel) or showed some minor degradation (IPS panel), but even the IPS was much less affected even after months of intense use.
The high price is likely because this is the only product using this panel. Even 4k 22 in LCD panels are only used in one product that I have seen. Larger panels benefit from economy of scale.
The benefit of 21.5 inch, is that it is the largest size you can fit in carry-on luggage, and therefore the largest size you can conveniently travel with. You could easily fit 2 of these in carry-on. Also, 200 dpi is much closer to 1200 dpi print resolution than 70 dpi.
Still, $5k will be a very limited market, even for first adopter professionals. Hopefully the price can be made to drop quickly.
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jrs77 - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link
Awesome display, but a bit pricey.Frenetic Pony - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link
$5k is a BIT? Doesn't even conform to any HDR brightness standard, which is what any artist paying for an HDR monitor would require.What a stupid thing.
quiksilvr - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link
I have to agree. Considering that OLED 4K TVs cost about 1/3 of this and are much larger the price does not make much sense. It isn't even higher refresh rate, G-SYNC or DisplayHDR certified like their own PG27UQ. The response time of this OLED is pretty sick though.caqde - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link
Well considering the OLED DisplayHDR certification was only recently introduced in January. It is not surprising this monitor has not gone through the certification process since Display HDR 400/600/1000 are only for LCD panels.https://www.anandtech.com/show/13756/vesa-rolls-ou...
bug77 - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
It's not because the standard is recent, it's because this monitor doesn't meet it. The lower standard, DisplayHDR 400 TrueBlack requires 250cd/sqm for full screen and 400cd/sqm for local flashes. This monitor only does 140 and 330.It's the age-old problem of OLED and burn in when you crank up the brightness.
lilkwarrior - Sunday, August 18, 2019 - link
VESA HDR standards have nothing to do w/ OLED screens. You need to grade this monitor along VESA TrueBlack standards.Also nits is not at all the primary thing to look for w/ HDR. It's something that's been overrated by LCD manufacturers for some time against superior panel tech such as OLED in marketing.
A Dolby Vision OLED monitor such as this ones absolutely destroys almost every LCD HDR 1000 panel; you'd have to start comparing it to $30,000+ FALD LCD panels to start seeing contenders even for this panel.
dropme - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13896/samsung-unvei...At least Samsung's meets the standard (if we believe what they're saying)
Santoval - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
"The response time of this OLED is pretty sick though."That is not something unique with that display or due to it being a professional monitor. ~0.1 ms response times are typical for OLED panels. OLED is simply super fast at that.
Brett Howse - Sunday, March 24, 2019 - link
4K OLED TVs are not RGB OLED but W-OLED which is why they are significantly less money:https://www.anandtech.com/show/13054/at-101-unders...
eastcoast_pete - Monday, March 25, 2019 - link
Thanks Brett! I also asked Anton, but maybe you can answer it, too: Are these RGB OLED monitors significantly more resistant to burn-in than W-OLED displays? I love the color depth and blacks of OLED displays, but have shied away from them for use as monitors. Given the price of the ASUS, I wouldn't touch them unless they are fully warrantied against burn-in for at least 3 years.Brett Howse - Monday, March 25, 2019 - link
Not sure if would be any different, but also not sure if burn in is a real issue anymore. It's definitely not something I worry about as an OLED TV owner, but I'll admit the static nature of PCs with things like the task bar is a slightly different matter.eastcoast_pete - Tuesday, March 26, 2019 - link
Brett, thanks for the reply! Any chance you, Anton or somebody else from AT can ask ASUS or JOLED about how resistant their displays are to burn-in? You might get an answer, a simple end-user like me won't. A pretty recent longer-term test by rtings found that (W)OLED TVs (the tested an LG) are definitely vulnerable to burn-in if used with static display items, i.e. as monitors, and that gives me and others pause here.JoeyJoJo123 - Monday, March 25, 2019 - link
>Doesn't even conform to any HDR brightness standardLove it. When I read an article here the other day, people were doing their usual complaining that consumers were getting passed the buck for display manufacturers wasting money on stupid HDR 400 certifications, and here we are on a display that manufacturers presumably didn't "waste money" on HDR certifications, and here people are complaining about it not conforming to any kind of HDR standard or certification.
Love it. Keep up the whining.
airdrifting - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link
What is this good for to be exact? Gamers want a 144Hz, Professionals are going to want a bigger 4K, Laptop is going to want something less than 22'', People are paying five grand just for the OLED name?dropme - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
144Hz one will come out too in a year from now. And the reports say that it will be made in Joled, the panel maker of this one.haukionkannel - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
Color accuracy! This is pro monitor for those who like to get the colors exactly right. And those Are expensive. 10000 to 20000 easily in bigger size!Valantar - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
Really? There's no mention of 3D LUT support, which is a must for use as a video monitor. No mention of hardware-level calibration options at all, actually - which means that you're stuck with the measly adjustments available through software. This isn't sufficient for color critical work.FullmetalTitan - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
"The monitor features an internal 14-bit 3D LUT (lookup table), can reproduce 1.07 billion colors, and comes factory-calibrated to a Delta E <2 accuracy."Valantar - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
Wow, I do read too quickly some times. That does indeed change the value proposition of this (even if DeltaE <2 is a bit weak for this application).Spunjji - Tuesday, March 26, 2019 - link
That's Delta£=E <2 out of the box - it's a safe bet you can get that lower with better calibration, which anybody who actually needs that kind of accuracy will already have a device for.lilkwarrior - Sunday, August 18, 2019 - link
It has LUT.bug77 - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
You don't need 144Hz on an OLED (or ULMB), OLED isn't as laggy as LCD.Of course, as a gamer you wouldn't spend five grand with only 22" to show for it.
DesktopMan - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
This is actually a common misconception. You still have retina induced motion blur on OLED due to retinal smear, which is improved by black frame insertion or higher refresh rate. More info: http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/down-the-vr-...Valantar - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
Also, it's not like faster response times make up for lower refresh rates in any way whatsoever.Beaver M. - Sunday, March 24, 2019 - link
Wrong. You NEED higher refresh rate on higher frame rates. Else it will start to stutter and you will never see the true speed of high frames.Also the response time is directly tied to the refresh rate. The higher the fresh rate, the lower the response time (if the panel can deal with it). So there is no point putting only 60 Hz on a panel with such low response time, then having the audacity to put that response time in the spec sheet. Because effectively you cant see those 0.1 ms, because the refresh rate cant display it.
Its like saying "this car has 300 HP", but when you floor it, it will be limited to only 100 HP, because the transmission is so weak, it would blow if you would use the full 300 HP.
Makaveli - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link
who is this product for?is 4k even usable on a 21.6 display?
Spunjji - Tuesday, March 26, 2019 - link
Why do people always ask that? Yes, it is. Set scaling to 200% and you have the same sized elements as 1080p, only with vastly better anti-alisaing on smaller text and sharper images (where the original files have the right resolution). This is how I have my 17" 4K laptop set up.Alistair - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link
This is so sad. It should be $1000..... Oh well my OLED dream died again.Duncan Macdonald - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link
Not bright enough for outdoor use, too small for the 4k resolution to be of use for most people (with a 17 inch 1920x1080 display at 50cm distance I need a magnifying lens to distinguish adjacent pixels). Possibly useful in a cramped production studio without the room for the size of monitor that would do 4k justice. With the uneven aging of OLED displays (blue pixels deteriorate faster than red or green and at a rate that depends on the amount of blue light emitted by each pixel) the impressive Delta-E will deteriorate over a few years.sing_electric - Monday, March 25, 2019 - link
There's certainly some odd choices here - but it's worth saying that a lot of pros work with a monitor hood and at close distances so they don't get outside glare. I'm not sure why this is being sold as a "thin and light" quasi-portable display, though.euskalzabe - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link
WHY. Why can a 55" be bought for $1500, but a 21" panel cost FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS. (!!!!!!)imaheadcase - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
Because you and millions of other people still don't understand a TV is NOT THE SAME AS A PC MONITOR.lowphas - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
Okay, I got that this is not rgbw, and smaller in size, and has less features... but what is the point you want to make here?Valantar - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
3D LUT support is the key here. Alongside 99% DCI P3, >95% color/brightness uniformity (and factory calibration, even if this is less of an issue for this market) this is extremely close to a reference grade monitor. Those are typically 3-5x the price of this. A bit weird that it doesn't support DCI 4K, but that's probably okay for the price.bigboxes - Monday, March 25, 2019 - link
You have decide if you need a monitor or a TV. They're not the same.Xex360 - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link
The price doesn't make any sense, it doesn't offer anything special for the price.imaheadcase - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
Besides being OLED and the stuff listed in article..sure...lilkwarrior - Friday, March 29, 2019 - link
Seems you didn't read the features of the monitor that easily makes it the price it's asking for that's typically in $10,000-$25,000 pro monitors that aren't portable.sorten - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link
$5150? That's crazy ...lilkwarrior - Friday, March 29, 2019 - link
It has features like a built-in 3D LUT table. Understandably targeted out of the price range of average joesFXi - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link
Wow. 1K would have been steep for this size, an unproven product, and the inherent risks that OLED represents. Maybe they are pricing in risks under warranty and thinking consumers will do anything for something OLED. And to promise pristine color accuracy on a device where the temperature is guaranteed to change over time? Well it'll be interesting to hear from those who get them. There are bound to be one or two.imaheadcase - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
AN unproven product? OLED have been out for ages now. What risks for OLED? Burn in is not a problem anymore before you spout the FUD. No one that uses a PC has the same screen 24.7 lolValantar - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
Sorry, no FUD in that. OLED subpixels decay over time, dimming them. Not a single manufacturer has managed to lessen this to a degree that actually matters. The dimming dependent on use and displayed color, but any semi-static image will cause this, including taskbars and other UI elements, even if they're only visible for a part of the display's active time. Using a dark theme will help, but not solve the issue (any bright parts such as app icons in the taskbar will still decay and dim). The dimming is very clearly visible on any somewhat bright image, particularly single colors or smooth gradients. It is also entirely irreversible.Phones and tablets avoid this by having a) full-screen interfaces that change rapidly (though notification bars and navigation icons burn in very rapidly) and b) not being used for hours at a time.
imaheadcase - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
FUD indeed. No one i knows runs a static screen forever in a PC environment, or on a TV at home. I own two OLED and never had a issue with it. Unless you are a moron who runs the same static screen 24/7 all the time, its complete bull shit to worry about it.Valantar - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
Can you post a photo of the area normally occupied by your taskbar with a full-screen white image displaying?As for "running a static screen 24/7" - that's not needed for OLED subpixel degradation. All you need is frequent use of mostly static UI elements such as the taskbar and the icons on it.
lilkwarrior - Friday, March 29, 2019 - link
That's frankly irrelevant for the target audience of this monitor. If you're using content creation, you're definitely not keeping things static and most know to auto-hide taskbars & statusbars to only see what they need as they get things done.Valantar - Tuesday, April 23, 2019 - link
That's rather absurd. While pro users _might_ know to set this up as a "grading only" monitor that does nothing more than display full-screen images of the material being worked on, it's far more likely that it'll run a maximised Premiere preview window, for example - which has visible controls. Those will burn in, and can't be automatically hidden. Don't mistake professionals for tech enthusiasts.Beaver M. - Sunday, March 24, 2019 - link
The burn in effect adds up over time. LG says that themselves. It doesnt go away when you turn off the display. The longer you use the pixel, the more it degrades.At some point you will see a huge difference where your task bar is, where your browser elements are, your desktop icons, the HUD of your games and in movies/series the difference where there often are the black bars (top and bottom on cinema formats, sides on old 4:3 formats).
Not to mention TV station symbols or news channel bars.
Beaver M. - Sunday, March 24, 2019 - link
Man, this argument is as old and wrong as the one that the human eye doesnt see more than 24 FPS or SSDs still degrade quickly.OLED have the burn in problem. Every single one of them. Else they would have been in the PC segment very long ago, because they solve every single problem with LCDs, which have huge problems.
Doesnt matter if you deny it or claim you dont see it. Its there and it will happen sooner rather than later. You may throw away your TV or phone sooner before you can really see it, but that doesnt change the facts.
BenSkywalker - Sunday, March 24, 2019 - link
LCD backlights will burn out. Every single one of them if used long enough. Without backlights, how are you seeing on your LCD? You can't deny that fact, so how do you deal with it?There are those of us that have been using our OLED displays for PC use for years, and the level of degradation I've seen after three years indicates that at some point in twenty years or so my old display will have gotten so bad you might have trouble telling it apart from the best LCD made to date out of the box. It's hard to imagine the displays degrading that badly, but it will happen eventually.
What I'm curious about is if OLED panels would degrade enough over time to actually become inferior to LCD panels before the LCD panel fails.
I get that under certain extreme use scenarios you can end up with burn in, the problem is people who don't own an OLED and use it daily are flat out delusional about what will cause it. 60 hours played in six days of a game that has bright static UI elements and not a hint of image retention(a very mild and temporary version of burn in). I was nervous and super careful when I first got it, a $5k display will do that to sane people, but after three years of heavy usage it simply doesn't register anymore unless I read a new round of FUD from people who read something somewhere.
Beaver M. - Sunday, March 24, 2019 - link
Nice try at being a jerk.There are no such problems. The stuff you mention is normal wear and tear. Nothing that happenes even remotely as quickly as burn in in OLEDs.
There is a long term test of OLEDs on rtings.com. After just 2 weeks they developed burn in. And its not that when you turn off the display, that it will somehow heal. LG says themselves that its a cumulative effect. 2 x 30 mins is 1 hour.
The verdict is that static items are still a huge problem for OLEDs. End of discussion.
BenSkywalker - Monday, March 25, 2019 - link
It's normal wear and tear on LEDs because reasons...?I've been following rtings tests, largely because I knew certain people wouldn't comprehend what the tests were showing. As an example there was a person in this thread that use those tests to try and say red sub pixels were more problematic than blue based on a panel that uses neither.
You know what other display technology could get burn in? CRTs. If you set up a torture test comparable to theirs you would get burn in after a certain amount of time.
The verdict was actually under anything close to normal use you won't have a problem, not my verdict, what they have been saying.
Even then, my test has been running three years without issue under normal use.
By the way, the tv "healing" itself is from image retention which is a temporary version of burn in. That is something that is exponentially more common than actual burn in.
lilkwarrior - Friday, March 29, 2019 - link
rtings.com were extreme, boneheaded edge cases that no average joe would do. After all, you're trying your best to burn in the screen.Just like how you don't treat a Ferrari/Tesla like a Civic, you don't use a professional monitor using premium material carelessly. I've used OLED TVs & monitors for half a decade and have friends in the medical industrry w/ no issues for even longer as ancedotal evidence.
- Have a screensaver
- Autohide taskbars & status bars; for pros it's a no-brainer anyway to maximize real estate
- OLED monitors have modern pixel shifting and even some turn-off if you walk away
melgross - Monday, March 25, 2019 - link
Burn in is a big problem. For someone who used specific software on a regular basis, 5 days a week, week after week, burn in is goi g to be there. Menus are in the same place. Many other UI objects are in the same place. These will burn in readily.And with a such a low brightness, it will be turned up.
Gunbuster - Monday, March 25, 2019 - link
For $5000 they should at least make you a windows utility for "professionals" that goes and rearranges app toolbars and the moves the windows taskbar around at random. ;)awehring - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
No word on hardware calibration?For a professional device, that probably has color-shift over time, it's a must.
Interesting, that they use a printing technique to produce the OLED panel. The first market ready application I have heard of. The technique has the potential to make large OLED displays cheap.
For those who compare the price with OLED TVs: These are not suitable for static content because of burn-in.
awehring - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
Btw: professional displays for cinematographers are about ~25'000 $.So this product has a good price for its sice.
sonny73n - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
So if this monitor $5k, it probably has 1/5 of the “sice” of the $25k one you mentioned. You remind me of the app called “I am rich” from the AppStore with $999.99 price tag. Unbelievably, seven people purchased it. The 8th (last) was a kid who bought it using one of his parents’ account. His parent called Apple, Apple refunded and took down the app. That app was useless but this monitor actually has some use which might justify the $5000 price tag for some rich dumbass. And according to you, it’s a good deal.Some people’s stupidity is way beyond my imagination.
dropme - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
Professional monitors are usually pretty expensive because they are made for "professionals" such as X-ray inspector, cinematographer, not us the average users. And if this monitor works like a charm, its price is somewhat reasonable. By the way Joled will start mass production of the oled panel in a year so it's safe to say that this price tag is not permanent.haukionkannel - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
Do you make print commercial where every color has to be exacly right? You set 20000 for each picture/photo/poster you make or more?No... that is what I think Also. This is for pro photo editors. Where extreme accurasy is essential. You can get good monitors for fraction of this price, but if you want to get the best of the best... wel you have to pay for it.
This is not something that you recommended to your grandma for Main monitor to read emails, but you can recommended to this for someone who makes money by producing some material to big company that is going to be printed to paper later, or those $25000 monitors mentioned above.
eddman - Monday, March 25, 2019 - link
Why are you even reading anandtech.sonny73n - Monday, March 25, 2019 - link
Don’t be a dick. AT just reported the specs and price from the maker of this monitor. AT haven’t tested it. I know you’re the type who just believes everything the media says but did AT recommend this monitor? FYI this monitor doesn’t contain any break thru tech or anything new. Professional need well calibrated monitors that have the range of colors they need just to have accurate readings and produce accurate results, not outrageously priced ones with a “pro” suffix.eddman - Monday, March 25, 2019 - link
"I know you’re the type who just believes everything the media says"So you call me a dick and then proceed to be a massive one. Very nice. You have no idea what I do or don't believe.
Yes, they reported the specs and it falls in the professional category, including the price. Which part of that is not clear? A review will reveal if it's any good or worth the money, but that wouldn't change its category.
awehring simply wrote the price is good for a pro display, nothing more, and yet you proceeded with personal attacks and calling him an idiot.
Again, why are you even reading anandtech when you cannot even comment without unwarranted personal remarks.
dropme - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
It comes out, finally. I saw a video Joled posted on youtube recently and their technology was very impressive. Still wondering whether they've improve the short lifespan of blue diode, though.Beaver M. - Sunday, March 24, 2019 - link
Red ones are the most problematic nowadays.Theres a long term test with OLEDs on rtings.com. On one hes running CNN all day long (all red banners and bars), and its by far the worst burned in.
BenSkywalker - Sunday, March 24, 2019 - link
LG OLED panels only use white OLED elements.Blue is still the problematic color for all the companies that lack access to the white OLED IP.
Beaver M. - Sunday, March 24, 2019 - link
Oh my god... wtf is wrong with you guys? Read the article. Its has pictures that prove what I just said. Why make a jerk out of yourself?BenSkywalker - Monday, March 25, 2019 - link
It's a white OLED sub pixel basically painted red(oversimplification). LG TVs are all made that way because each sub pixel element degrades at a different rate of time.This has been linked in this thread already. This is I spent ten minutes learning about OLED level simple.
You can't test white OLED sub pixels against white OLED sub pixels and then say red is the problem, technology , science and reality don't work that way.
Santoval - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
Wasn't JOLED's printing method supposed to result in *cheaper* OLED monitors? Or is much of that price a "professional tax"? By the way, how is a monitor with just 330 nits peak brightness expected to support HDR10 exactly?Soulkeeper - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
that is 10x the price I payed for a ProArt 8yrs ago ...For that price it should atleast have a higher refresh rate, Maybe they should throw in a used car too.
bigboxes - Monday, March 25, 2019 - link
Your 8 year old monitor is not OLED.Canam Aldrin - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
For everyone complaining about the price and that it is "stupid" high, I'm a filmmaker and professional colorist and my first reaction was "wow this is cheap, when can I order it?" That is, assuming the 3D LUT support mentioned is real and robust. If you're comparing to consumer monitors, it will seem stupid expensive. But the alternatives are things like the Eizo CG319X I am typing this on (~$5600), which is not even OLED but has the LUT functionality required. Or there's Flanders Scientific DM250 for $25K, which is a similar size OLED but has SDI inputs (that additional functionality is worth about $5K on its own). Point is, there is a market for this monitor and Asus is not stupid, it's just not for YOU.Opencg - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
but i am a gamer and therefore there are better products i can buy. ME WRITE COMMENT SO GOODAlistair - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
Fine, next time you are Asus and you are announcing an OLED monitor, say that you only want to sell a hundred of them, that it is a professional only product, and that you expect the price to be >$5000. They created anticipation that this would be a consumer OLED monitor, and that was misleading.Pyrostemplar - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
Ahah (The Simpsons' Nelson style) - 5k for a 22" screen. Really?Anyway, Oled contrast is tipically stated as infinite because blacks are really without any light. So why the 1 million to one?
Metroid - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
this is what i call a stupid product.Tams80 - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
This is a top end monitor. It's squarely aimed at professionals. It's this price for a number of reasons:a) It's using top end technology.
b) These lines have bigger profit margins.
c) These kinds of products are bought by large organisations that have dedicated pools of cash for this. Some may even have a "use it or lose it" policy. $5,000 is nothing to them. They also often buy in bulk, outfitting whole studios, etc. with them.
In other words, this isn't intended for your average Joe, or even the enthusiasts found here. Just like we won't go out and buy an ARRI or RED camera. We just get a chance to buy them if we so wish (which is great).
kbswaff - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
$5150 the number referring to the California Psych Hold seems about right. Anyone paying that much for a 21.5 inch should ve locked up.YoloPascual - Sunday, March 24, 2019 - link
Dafuq is that price? Thats a top of the line Microsoft surface studio money.eastcoast_pete - Monday, March 25, 2019 - link
@Anton: Thanks. Nice specs, outrageous price. Questions: Any information on resistance to burn-in? Are the JOLED panels more resistant than LG's, SONY's or SAMSUNG's offerings? Burn-in is a real risk with organic LED screens used as monitors, at least up to now. Are these different, and does ASUS warrant against burn-in for, let's say, 5 years?I was tempted to go with an LG 4K OLED panel (TV, really) as my main monitor (gorgeous colors!), but shied away from them as I use my monitors in daylight, so at high brightness settings.
BenSkywalker - Monday, March 25, 2019 - link
How bright are you talking? I pulled up rtings top rated PC monitor and it has peak brightness levels of 361 which is markedly lower than LG OLED tv peak brightness(sustained 100% is lost though).I think there is confusion because new high end LCDs offer retina burning brightness levels. My OLED never gets set higher than 50% brightness and it is *much* brighter than the $500 BenQ monitor I have hooked up to the same PC(that monitor has a peak of sub 250 iirc).
eastcoast_pete - Monday, March 25, 2019 - link
Doesn't have to be more than 250-300 most of the time. What worries me is burn-in over time, as some screen elements are unavoidably in the same place all the time. Simplest thing that ASUS can do to disspell that worry is have a 3 or more years, no questions asked, warranty against burn-in.BenSkywalker - Monday, March 25, 2019 - link
What type of work are you doing? If you're in say excel with toolbars locked in place all day ten hours a day, better to stay away, if you have a mixed work flow though, they may actually work for you.eastcoast_pete - Tuesday, March 26, 2019 - link
Probably mainly for video editing. If used alongside another set for the static elements (user interface etc), it'd probably work. I would love it if Anton or another writer for AT shoots an email to ASUS and JOLED asking them about how sensitive their panels are to burn-in. Would be great if somebody finally solved this vulnerability.zodiacfml - Monday, March 25, 2019 - link
Why? Why not simply take LG's 4K OLED panels. This is too small and too expensive.eastcoast_pete - Tuesday, March 26, 2019 - link
Thought about that, BUT, a recent (2018) longer-term test of 4K panels (review by rtings) confirmed that using an OLED TV as a monitor lead to burn-in within a few weeks of intense use. The LCD panels run alongside were fine (VA panel) or showed some minor degradation (IPS panel), but even the IPS was much less affected even after months of intense use.vikingvista - Saturday, April 27, 2019 - link
The high price is likely because this is the only product using this panel. Even 4k 22 in LCD panels are only used in one product that I have seen. Larger panels benefit from economy of scale.The benefit of 21.5 inch, is that it is the largest size you can fit in carry-on luggage, and therefore the largest size you can conveniently travel with. You could easily fit 2 of these in carry-on. Also, 200 dpi is much closer to 1200 dpi print resolution than 70 dpi.
Still, $5k will be a very limited market, even for first adopter professionals. Hopefully the price can be made to drop quickly.