20Apr Samsung 28-Inch 4k Monitor U28D590D $599
There have been a few affordably priced 4k monitors on the market, but all of them were limited to 30 hz refresh rate. While 30 hz is fine for video, it can be a little painful for normal computing tasks. The Samsung 28 inch 4k monitor is one of the first somewhat affordable 4k panels running at 60 hz to hit the market. At a price of $599 you get a 3840 x 2160 (Ultra HD) workspace in a 28 inch desktop friendly package.
Originally the estimated price on the Samsung 28 inch 4k monitor was $699, but amazon dropped the price to $599 this morning so I ended up pulling the trigger. This will be replacing my much loved Catleap 2560×1440 panel that I’ve been using over the last few years.
Apparently one of the benefits of the Samsung 28 inch 4k monitor is that you can run the monitor off of a single displayport cable at 60 hz making it much more attractive than some of the dual DVI 4k options. I’ll let you know how it turns out when it finally shows up. Might have to upgrade my graphics card, not sure if my HD 7970 GHz Edition or my GTX 680 4GB will be enough to handle a 4k panel. I’ll only be using this monitor for editing so I might end up with enough GPU power to get by.
On a side note, if you are running Nvidia cards in SLI there is currently no support for this monitor. So if that’s your setup you might want to hold off until Nvidia finally releases an updated driver.
April 20th, 2014 at 8:21 pm
GTX 680 will be more than enought to this monitor ;D and i can tell that for sure i work on the tech pc market =) so trust an “expert” word
April 21st, 2014 at 7:37 am
Hey DJ,
What do you think of LG’s new 34″ 4k Ultrawide monitor they’ve just released?
http://www.lg.com/uk/monitors/lg-34UM95
Looks appealing although I’m not sure my mac would be able to drive the full 4k!
April 21st, 2014 at 9:31 am
I’m not a huge fan of the ultrawide formate, but the radeon booth had one on display at nab and it looked pretty good. The $1400 price is a bit high for my budget, but it shouldn’t be as hard on your gpu since its 1440 instead of 2160.
April 21st, 2014 at 9:59 am
http://es.engadget.com/2014/02/13/lg-monitores-pantallas-2014
It’s in spanish, sorry.
I was working in a technical demonstration to customers and potencial clients.
This monitor is awesome, but for me it’s to wide. the sides of the screen are too angled. I preffer 2 monitors, better angles of vision.
I have a Dell xps laptop (first generation of core i7 and an AMD 4670 graphics) and no problem feeding thin monitor (not 4k, 3440 x 1440) and a second ultrawide monitor)
Just be sure you have displayport or thunderbolt connections, hdmi have some problems with these “strange” display configurations
April 22nd, 2014 at 3:47 pm
This monitor costs $734 today on Amazon April 21st, 2014. Also FYI it’s UHD not DCI 4k.
April 22nd, 2014 at 6:33 pm
It was only on sale for easter I believe. Currently sold out at $699, I paid $599.
April 28th, 2014 at 3:52 pm
I ordered one of these from an Amazon marketplace seller and it was delivered Saturday. I set it up with my Retina MacBook Pro (running 10.9.3 beta for 4K @ 60Hz). I was incredibly disappointed by the entire experience and it will be headed back to the Amazon seller from whence it came today.
First off, the stand is incredibly wobbly. That wouldn’t be a HUGE deal except it has no VESA mount to replace the stand or put it on a monitor arm. The stand also doesn’t adjust for height and only tilts around 15 degrees. I’d have put up with this if not for…
Second, the panel quality is just poor. The color temp is unusually warm and changing it to one of the cooler ones results in an odd color cast. There is also a TON of color shift depending on viewing angle. I knew this was a TN panel going in, but all the reports said “it’s an awesome TN panel!”. It’s not. It’s the same as any other TN panel and I’d never trust it for color-critical work.
Third, the ports stick straight out the back. Why decided that was a great idea?
Fourth, mine came without a US power cord and with the menus in Korean… so it wasn’t US-domestic… which should have been disclosed when I bought it from the Amazon marketplace seller. At least it’s “shipped by Amazon” so they’ll handle the return process.
On the good side it is indeed a UHD display at 60Hz. Things looked nice and sharp, but I need color fidelity.
So, back to my Thunderbolt display for now.
April 28th, 2014 at 4:22 pm
I wonder if you ended up with a Korean clone, there are a few “look alikes” floating around on Amazon and Ebay. If not that’s pretty unfortunate. The lack of VESA mount and the port orientation are issues I heard about, but that’s pretty disappointing if the stand is that wobbly and the color can’t easily be calibrated. The units I saw on display at NAB looked pretty darn good, that’s actually what original sold me on them. I’ll report back once mine shows up, Amazon has changed my shipping date twice. Now it’s not supposed to ship until the 2nd so who knows when I’ll actually get one.
Thanks for the heads up Justin!
April 29th, 2014 at 4:19 pm
Mine appears to be a Samsung display… but I’m pretty sure it’s Korean domestic market. But it did look genuine. I just dropped it off at UPS to go back to Amazon.
It was a Marketplace seller, but it was fulfilled by Amazon.
I’d love to have the extra space UHD would give me, but I’m spoiled by the TbD which is absolutely gorgeous (especially once calibrated).
Good luck with yours and thanks for the blog. I’m a regular reader.
April 29th, 2014 at 5:44 pm
The monitors I saw on the show floor weren’t near any other brands. Not having anything to compair it to could have biased my judgment. I finally got confirmation on shipping from amazon, if it shows up before I hit the road I’ll post some impressions of it once I have it sitting next to my 2560×1440 IPS panel. If it does completely fail in color accuracy, I might still keep it and pick up a small 1080p playback monitor for grading. Kind of excited about all the screen space.
I’m sure by Xmas well start seeing some nicer afordable priced 4k panels. It only took about 6 months to step up from 30hrz to 60hrz panels. Maybe in 6 more months we’ll go from tn to IPS.
April 30th, 2014 at 2:25 pm
I have this same display with a MacBook Pro 13″ Retina and can’t for the life of me get it set up at 60Hz. I’ve installed 10.9.3 and swapped out DisplayPort to Mini DisplayPort cables. I also can’t get the HiDPI resolutions to show up like others are with 10.9.3 on other 4K/UHD monitors.
Did you have a list of resolutions or did you have the “Best (Retina) – More Space” settings under Scaled in System Preferences, like we do with the rMBP built-in display?
I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong. I’m stuck running this thing over HDMI @ 30Hz at 1920×1080 HiDPI.
I expected to be able to properly run this thing using 2560×1440 HiDPI, output to 3840×1440 @ 60Hz over DisplayPort.
April 30th, 2014 at 3:09 pm
Still waiting on mine to show up (shipped out yesterday) so I could be wrong, but I thought the screen didn’t have a lot of internal scaling options. It’s either 3840×2160 or 1920×1080, no inbetween. Again I could be wrong on that, mine is supposed to show up friday. Also it requires displayport 1.2 to run at 60HZ that part i’m sure on. Does your displayport mini output support 1.2?
May 1st, 2014 at 11:29 am
Does your 13″ Retina MBP have Thunderbolt 2 (is is the current model Apple is selling or the previous revision)?
If it doesn’t have Tb2, it won’t do DisplayPort 1.2
May 1st, 2014 at 1:52 pm
It’s the Late 2013 13″ rMBP, so it should definitely have Thunderbolt 2. I’m at a loss. Would you be able to answer some of the questions I had above? Just curious as you are the closest in hardware to what I have that I’ve been able to find.
May 8th, 2014 at 3:45 am
I’m planning on buying this monitor to use it with my 2013 13″ rMBP over a mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable. Is there really no way to get the rMBP to push 4K @ 60Hz over DisplayPort? Even with the latest 10.9.3 beta? That would be a real bummer.
May 19th, 2014 at 9:45 am
I tested today one on my MBPro Retina 2013 with the internal Iris Pro. It works awesome in native Resolution and @ 60 Hz. I may buy it tomorrow.