This morning at CES 2016, Dell held a rather small press conference where they announced a few business-focused updates to their Latitude line. However, the more interesting long-term announcement was the availability of a 30-inch 4K monitor that uses OLED technology.
The asking price for the display is $4,999 starting in March. Let that sink in for a moment.
The reasons for that high price are a few as we learned from speaking with Dell. For one, the glass used for OLED is still very expensive to purchase even in large quantities. The other is the high-performance response time for the pixel changing, which is a crazy 0.1 milliseconds. That makes it ideal for anyone in graphics, video game development, media, and more.
And make no mistake that for now Dell is targeting graphics professionals for this display. Not everyone needs that out-of-this-world 400,000:1 contrast ratio, but there are those who truly do need (or could benefit) from those specs.
However, if you are the wealthy side, you'll also enjoy the USB Type-C port that can handle power, video and data connectivity. In theory, you could plug your Lumia 950 or Lumia 950 XL directly into this to use Continuum, but the word overkill suddenly comes to mind.
So how good is this monitor? It truly is outstanding. The blacks are super dark and make the display seem off when using a black background. Colors are beyond saturated, and this monitor even has a razor thin bezel (notice the web cam on the bottom of the display) making this also an InfinityEdge type experience.
No burn-in here
What about burn-in? Many people have concerns that like the old Plasma TVs if you leave a static image on for too long you could see a ghosting effect burned into the display. Dell has that solved, evidently.
They told us this monitor uses a novel algorithm to prevent that from happening, and although they didn't give it a fancy name, they did not seem concerned that it would be a long-term problem.
The important take away is that OLED displays for PCs and laptops are now a reality. Like all new technology, it starts off very expensive, but within a few years, this tech will be the norm much like how 4K IPS displays are no longer a rich man's purchase.
Either way, welcome to the future. It looks fantastic.
