Buy it and a new camera and the biggest graphics card you can find, because you’ll need them to take advantage of the beautiful panel.
Do your research to make sure it will work with your computer. My MacBook didn’t work at full resolution, despite being on Apple’s 4K compatibility list. (Wait, no, they’ve removed it. MacBook 13” Retina before 2015 definitely doesn’t work at 60Hz.)
The Good
It’s an affordable 4K IPS monitor. What’s not to like?
I paid AUD$747 with a 15% discount coupon – easy to find if you Google a little bit. It’s cheaper again in the US.
It’s 4K (3840x2160) and looks absolutely stunning. Once you go Retina, you never go back.
Now you can see all of the flaws in your photos. Time to buy a new camera.
Practically all of the downloadable wallpaper labelled 4K is actually resized from something lower – it’s noticeably blurry.
IPS panel means that you don’t get colour or brightness shift as you change viewing angle. It always looks accurate.
The display rotates 90° onto its side so you can easily adjust the cables.
Built-in USB3 hub.
Ships with a mini-DP to DisplayPort cable. This is a great choice. Laptop users can use mini-DP on the laptop to DisplayPort on the display; desktop users can use DisplayPort on the computer to mini-DP on the display.
Out of the box, this worked perfectly with OS X Mavericks and a Geforce GTX 660 at 60Hz.
It didn’t work with a 2014 Retina MacBook Pro.
OS X’s displays thing lets you choose the native 3840x2160, which is very usable if you have good eyesight. I’m mostly running at scaled 2560x1440 equivalent. Scaling doesn’t seem to hurt performance at all on the GTX 660.
Power consumption is about 30W, which is half of the monitor it’s replacing (a Dell 2407WFP).
The panel has a matte finish, but it doesn’t get in the way – some high-resolution matte displays look shimmery.
Games look amazing, but the GTX 660 isn’t really up to the task.
The Bad
Sometimes the display wakes up at 2560x1440 instead of 3840x2160. Turning it off and on again fixes this, but it also turns off any connected USB devices, so don’t do that if you have a hard drive connected.
There’s no more speaker power connector, which I used to power my DAC.
The display locks hard occasionally and needs to be power-cycled (unplug power cable).
The MacBook
I have a mid-2014 13” Retina MacBook Pro. This machine was on Apple’s 4K compatibility list but has since been removed.
Using the DisplayPort interface, it syncs at up to 2560x1440.
Using the HDMI interface, it syncs at 3840x2160, but only at 30Hz. This is mostly OK.
Oddly, using HDMI, the list of offered scaling options is different to my Mac Pro using DisplayPort. Using the Mac Pro, I get a ‘looks like 2560x1440’ option, which is my preference. Using the Macbook, the only options are 3840x2160 (native), 1920x1080 (native HiDPI), 1504x846 (scaled HiDPI) and 1152x648 (scaled HiDPI).
Fortunately I didn’t buy this monitor to use with the Macbook, so I’m not at all bothered.
The imperfect, but inconsequential
The rotating stand needs a little fiddling to sit level.
The OSD is still HD, not QHD (it pixel doubles)
16:9 ratio, but we lost that battle a long time ago
There are two DisplayPort ports but only one appears in the OSD and only one seems to work (the one near the power cable). No idea why.
