Those who know me know that I invest in interfaces. Previously, I had an LG 38GN950-B (38“ Ultrawide, 3840×1600 @ 144Hz). It was expensive, but had a little extra vertical resolution vs its competitors, and the high refresh rate was great for casual gaming. But, over the years, I play games less, and my eyes are aging! I find myself appreciating larger and more crisp fonts for programming.
With that in mind, I started looking for a high resolution “retina”-class display. There are only a handful of these around at the time of writing. In the 27“ 5K group: Apple Studio Display/ProArt PA27JCV/Samsung S9/Kuycon G27P. Then, there is the 32“ 6K group: Apple Pro Display XDR/ProArt PA32QCV/Kuycon G32P/Dell U3225KB/LG 32U990A-S. Then, there is the even more sparse 8K group: Dell UP3218K/ProArt PA32KCX.
I know I wanted to avoid fractional scaling, so I was searching for either 6K or 8K.
I immediately discovered that 8K is way out of my price range.
In the land of 6K, this ProArt PA32QCV met a sweet spot: (1) being available for purchase right now, (2) having relatively modern hardware, and (3) not being ridiculously expensive. So, I bought it.
First impressions
WOW.
I’m a big fan. As soon as I switched, I understood why people like these high-resolution displays. Text is crisp and delightful to look at! I do not miss the ultrawide at all.
I run at 2× scaling, and have been loving looking at it.
Yes, I do notice the drop from 144Hz to 60Hz. However, because I’m mostly programming, I really don’t notice it during a typical workday unless I go looking for it (e.g., dragging a window quickly).
The colors look great.
In other words, when it comes to the display itself, it seems fantastic, which is what I was looking for.
Some people complain about the matte “LuxPixel” finish. I think it looks fantastic, and appreciate the lack of glare. This is an important feature, in my opinion.
The less good
When it comes to some of the other features, they are notably less useful.
Speakers
These are fairly awful, as one would expect. What confuses me is why these are here at all. This is a “pro” monitor, and I see no value in having speakers. I wish they saved some cost or reduced size/weight instead.
KVM
I frequently multiplex between a work laptop and a personal desktop. So, a built-in KVM is actually very appealing! However, I’ve never found one that works well for my needs, so I’ve always reverted to separate display cables and a USB switch. The same is true here.
Yes, this monitor has a KVM, but it does not have enough USB ports for my needs. It has 3 USB ports, and 1 thunderbolt port. The good news is that this lets me use 4 USB devices just fine on MacOS. The bad news is that the 1 thunderbolt port does NOT work on my desktop, leaving me with just 3 devices. Typically, I want four: a mouse, keyboard, webcam, and audio interface. Five, if you count a security key. So, good idea and will work for just a keyboard an mouse, but not enough for me.
Another fatal flaw is that the KVM doesn’t appear to activate immediately upon switching input. This is vital because if your other machine goes to sleep, the input button will not switch until there is a display signal on that input—a signal that you have no way to initiate without a keyboard or mouse active! With a USB switch, that means I typically switch, wake up the machine, and then switch the input. With the built-in KVM, that means there is simply no way to actually switch without waking up the machine first some other way. Not cool.
That said, my normal USB switch setup works well.
I recently improved this setup to be even better.
Light sync
The “Light Sync” feature actually sounded great: I work right by a window, and frequently do adjust brightness to compensate for the ambient light. It would be awesome if it could do it for me!
However, after using it, as far as I can tell there is no way to set the baseline/target brightness you want.
Instead, it ranges from acceptable (in Native color preset) to unusably dim (in M Model-P3).
It is a good idea, but the implementation seems to only be viable in Native mode of the ones I tried, which means this forces you to make a color preset trade-off.
Instead, they should’ve just let me set the target brightness.
That said, as someone not using this monitor for color accuracy, specifically, I’ve been quite satisfied with Native mode’s behavior thus far.
The surprising
Some features/design choices I was pleasantly surprised at. Not surprised they existed, but surprised how much I liked them.
- I really like buttons being on the front of the monitor, rather than needing to blindly click around on a side or bottom.
- No giant power supply! I appreciate the saved desk space of having the power supply built-in.
Compatibility
The box came with the display itself, a stand, a Thunderbolt 4 cable, an “ultra 8K” HDMI cable, and a power cable.
After reading Michael Stapelberg’s review of the 6K Dell, I was a little worried about compatibility. I was optimistic that with a brand-new release, more compatibility issues would’ve been ironed out.
I have two machines I use with this display: an M1 MacBook Pro, and my custom workstation (Radeon RX 7800 XT), running both Windows and Linux.
The monitor was clearly built with a MacBook in mind.
Using the Thunderbolt 4 cable, I instantly got power and display—full 6K no problems.
Colors do indeed seem highly matched with the M Model-P3 color preset.
On my desktop with Windows via the included HDMI cable there was no problem. It instantly recognized full 6K@60Hz.
My desktop with Linux via the included HDMI cable? No 6K at all.
❯ hyprctl monitors
Monitor HDMI-A-2 (ID 0):
3008x1692@59.96700 at 0x0
description: ASUSTek COMPUTER INC PA32QCV T7LMSV006894
make: ASUSTek COMPUTER INC
model: PA32QCV
physical size (mm): 700x390
serial: T7LMSV006894
active workspace: 1 (1)
special workspace: 0 ()
reserved: 0 26 0 0
scale: 1.00
transform: 0
focused: yes
dpmsStatus: 1
vrr: false
solitary: 0
solitaryBlockedBy: windowed mode,missing candidate
activelyTearing: false
tearingBlockedBy: next frame is not torn,user settings,missing candidate
directScanoutTo: 0
directScanoutBlockedBy: user settings,missing candidate
disabled: false
currentFormat: XRGB8888
mirrorOf: none
availableModes:
3008x1692@59.97Hz
4096x2160@60.00Hz
4096x2160@59.94Hz
4096x2160@50.00Hz
4096x2160@30.00Hz
4096x2160@29.97Hz
4096x2160@25.00Hz
4096x2160@24.00Hz
4096x2160@23.98Hz
3840x2160@60.00Hz
3840x2160@59.94Hz
3840x2160@60.00Hz
...I first went down a bit of a rabbit hole assuming it was a Linux software issue (the same hardware works with Windows!). But, I’m running Arch, with a very recent kernel and all up-to-date drivers. I decided to try a DisplayPort cable instead.
❯ hyprctl monitors
Monitor DP-1 (ID 0):
6016x3384@59.99200 at 0x0
description: ASUSTek COMPUTER INC PA32QCV T7LMSV006894
make: ASUSTek COMPUTER INC
model: PA32QCV
physical size (mm): 700x390
serial: T7LMSV006894
active workspace: 1 (1)
special workspace: 0 ()
reserved: 0 26 0 0
scale: 2.00
transform: 0
focused: yes
dpmsStatus: 1
vrr: false
solitary: 0
solitaryBlockedBy: windowed mode,missing candidate
activelyTearing: false
tearingBlockedBy: next frame is not torn,user settings,missing candidate
directScanoutTo: 0
directScanoutBlockedBy: user settings,missing candidate
disabled: false
currentFormat: XRGB8888
mirrorOf: none
availableModes:
6016x3384@59.99Hz
3008x1692@59.97Hz
6016x3384@29.99Hz
4096x2160@60.00Hz
4096x2160@59.94Hz
4096x2160@50.00Hz
4096x2160@30.00Hz
...Whew! Instantly recognized the 6K@60Hz.
So, that’s the tip: use DisplayPort on Linux.
Verdict
So far, after a bit more than 3 months of daily use, I’m very pleased.
One of the biggest evidences of how nice it is was when I went back to my old monitor for a little bit. The lack of text clarity was just as apparent as my initial shock at the clarity going the other direction.
We’ll see how it fares long term, but this is absolutely a keeper right now.