Дизайн монитора
В плане внешнего вида этот монитор не представляет собой ничего особо выдающегося: на средней по габаритам подставке покоится внушительного размера экран обрамлении глянцевой рамки толщиной в пару сантиметров.
Само покрытие экрана матовое, что даст дополнительную страховку от бликов света – например, попавших в комнату солнечных лучей или неправильно установленного освещения.
На торцах нет никаких разъемов и элементов управления: все они спрятаны на тыльной панели. Кнопка для включения питания расположена в правом нижнем углу, если смотреть прямо на экран.
Благодаря специфической форме ее легко нащупать. Эта кнопка совмещена с пятипозиционным джойстиком, с помощью которого легко управлять всеми функциями устройства.
В самой толстой части толщина изделия 65 мм – весьма компактно как для таких широких возможностей. Устройство выполнено в строго черном цвете. К сожалению, с момента выпуска это пока единственно цветовое решение – модификации белого цвета не выпускаются.
Форма поставки не позволяет поворачивать экран по вертикальной оси. Экран наклоняется вверх и вниз в угол до 15 градусов. Замки для крепления замков VESA отсутствуют, поэтому повесить такой монитор на стенку не получится. Зато на столе девайс стоит плотно, как влитой, и не шатается при прикосновении.
Технические параметры устройства
В девайсе используется матрица типа TN. Размер экрана 28 дюймов, а его разрешение до 3840×2160 пикселей (Ultra HD 4K). При этом плотность пикселей довольно высокая – 151,35 точек на дюйм.
Естественно, для запуска современной игры в таком разрешении потребуется мощная видеокарта (а возможно и пара, работающая с использованием технологии SLI или Crossfire).
Не рекомендуется использовать такой монитор, если у вас на компьютере установлена Windows 8 – у этой ОС дела с масштабированием изображения обстоят не лучшим образом. Впрочем, Винду всегда можно переустановить, использовав «Семерку» или «Десятку».
Цветопередача устройства на высоком уровне – матрица может обрабатывать более 1 млн. цветов, при этом картинка яркая и сочная, чем не всегда могут похвастаться TN-матрицы.
К слову, сегодня покупка такого монитора обойдется от 15 000 рублей, и жалеть вы точно не будете. За эти же деньги можно взять монитор с разрешением 27 дюймов с матрицей IPS, однако для игр такое устройство не совсем подходит из-за более высокого времени отклика матрицы.
Облик
Дизайн у U28D590D довольно футуристический, как и положено пришельцу из ближайшего будущего. Тонкий экран с тонкой рамкой как будто парит над столом на тонкой подставке в виде Т-образной металлической полосы, покрытой серебристым пластиком. И это неплохо контрастирует с чёрной рамкой вокруг экрана, но здесь отдана дань не дизайну, а эргономике: изображение в серебристой рамке выглядело бы менее контрастно, и приводило бы к излишнему напряжению глаз. Несмотря на «воздушность», подставка довольно жёсткая, способная дать фору в прочности даже более массивным вариантам. Раскачиваться, как лист на ветру, от лёгкого толчка монитор не станет. Более того, она вообще не имеет степеней свободы, даже наклона вперёд-назад, присутствующего практически у каждой из других моделей. Решение спорное: с одной стороны, оно позволяет уменьшить размеры подставки при сохранении устойчивости, а с другой, не так уж мало людей любят наклонять экран при работе, а здесь это становится невозможным.
Вынужденная мера предельно малой толщины корпуса – вынос блока питания в отдельный модуль, сам по себе, впрочем, довольно компактный, толщиной в пару сантиметров всего
Приятное удивление вызывает качество разъёма, соединяющего блок с монитором: хоть он и напоминает своим видом подобные хлипкие коннекторы с кольцевым контактом и штырьком внутри, где соединение может пропасть лишь при неосторожном движении провода с разъёмом, здесь при аналогичной конструкции фиксация производится с усилием и очень надёжна: случайно провод не выпадет
Вид сзади
Остальные разъёмы, в число которых входит пара входов HDMI и один DisplayPort, расположены, как водится, в нише посередине задней стенки. Вот только направлены они не вниз, как кажется логичнее, а назад – то есть, воткнутые кабели торчат из них перпендикулярно стенке. За это можно было бы пожурить конструкторов-разработчиков, но это создало бы проблему при настенном креплении, а здесь такой вариант не предусмотрен, так что проблем нет. Отметим, что популярные мультимедийные опции, такие как динамики или TV-тюнер, здесь отсутствуют – перед нами «чистый» монитор. Нет также и портов расширения USB. В целом девайс выглядит аккуратно, пластик качественный, детали подогнаны ровно. Такой облик хорошо впишется и в домашнюю обстановку, и в интерьер офиса.
Introduction
For a while now ‘4K’ has been touted as the next big thing for displays. Manufacturers have been showing off ‘4K’ TVs at trade shows for a number of years and now the technology has made its way onto smaller displays. The Samsung U28D590D features a 28” panel with UHD (Ultra High Definition) resolution of 3840 x 2160 – which is what most manufacturers are actually referring to when they use the buzzword ‘4K’. The monitor certainly looks sleek on the outside and boasts some fairly decent specifications, but what is it actually like in practice? We put this screen through its paces in our gantlet of ‘real world’ tests to find out.
Specifications
This monitor uses the aforementioned 28” ‘4K’ UHD panel, which is manufactured by Taiwanese manufacturer Innolux (formerly Chimei Innolux and Chimei Optoelectronics or CMO). This uses Twisted Nematic technology to yield rapid pixel response times (which look good on paper) at the expense of somewhat restricted viewing angles. Another figure which looks nice on paper is the 10-bit colour performance, with the monitor supporting up to 1.07 billion colours. This is a positive change from the 6-bit + FRC common on TN panels and many of the more affordable IPS-type panels. It must be stressed that, as with many of these specifications, you rarely get a full indication of what to expect in practice. Even so we’ve highlighted these nice figures for you in blue below with our subsequent testing filling in the gaps.
Screen size: 28 inches
Panel type: Innolux M280DGJ-L30 TN (Twisted Nematic) LCD Panel
Native resolution: 3840 x 2160
Typical maximum brightness: 300 cd/m² (370 cd/m² specified by Samsung)
Colour support: 1.07 billion (8-bits per subpixel plus dithering)
Response time (G2G): 1ms
Refresh rate: 60Hz
Weight: 5.65kg
Contrast ratio: 1,000:1 (Plus ‘MEGA’ Dynamic Contrast)
Viewing angle: 170º horizontal, 160º vertical
Power consumption: 32W typical
Backlight: WLED (White Light Emitting Diode)
Typical price as reviewed: £470 ($620 USD)
The ‘4K’ UHD Experience
We have published an article to accompany the review which looks at our experiences running the ‘4K’ UHD (3840 x 2160) resolution on the U28D590D. As you can see the experience was quite mixed, but we certainly got a lot of enjoyment out of the resolution of the monitor and feel that it has a lot of potential for the future. We should also make mention that we noticed very occasional flashes which other users have reported on this and other monitors using the same panel. Small white lines would appear on the screen for a split second. This occurred using the supplied DP cable and another fairly high quality DP cable manufactured by ‘Cable Matters’. This occurred infrequently and wasn’t at all distracting in our opinion. There were sometimes a matter of hours between instances of the flickering and the flickering was extremely brief. The exact cause of this issue isn’t known at time of writing, although there are various theories – the most promising of which suggests it may be something that Nvidia (and AMD) can fix driver side.
Responsiveness
Input lag
The input lag of the U28D590D was calculated using SMTT 2.0, a sensitive camera and a range of displays of known latencies to compare with. We measured 33.2ms (just over 2 frames) of input lag. This measurement is influenced by both signal delay (the element of lag you ‘feel’) and pixel responsiveness (the element you ‘see’). This is quite a high value, one which will bother some users but not others. Unfortunately we didn’t have any other screens at our disposal which supported the UHD resolution and had to run the screen at 1920 x 1080. To us the monitor felt somewhat more responsive when running the UHD resolution, for some reason, so it is possible that forcing the monitor to run at a non-native resolution increases the signal delay and hence increases input lag.
Contrast and brightness
Contrast ratios
A Konica Minolta CS-200 luminance meter was used to measure the luminance of white and black using a range of monitor settings. The resulting static contrast ratio was calculated using these figures. The table below shows these values with blue highlights indicating the highest white luminance, lowest black luminance and peak contrast ratio recorded. Black highlights indicate the results under our test settings and also with an ICC profile applied. With the exception of our test settings and ICC all settings not explicitly mentioned were left at default on the monitor.
| Monitor Profile | White luminance (cd/m2) | Black luminance (cd/m2)) | Contrast ratio (x:1) |
| 100% brightness | 391 | 0.43 | 909 |
| 80% brightness | 323 | 0.35 | 923 |
| 60% brightness | 263 | 0.29 | 907 |
| 40% brightness | 198 | 0.22 | 900 |
| 20% brightness | 117 | 0.13 | 900 |
| 0% brightness | 15 | >750 | |
| Magic Bright= Standard | 243 | 0.27 | 900 |
| Magic Angle= Group View | 391 | 0.43 | 909 |
| Color Tone= Warm2 | 298 | 0.41 | 727 |
| Game Mode | 391 | 0.43 | 911 |
| Gamma= Mode2 | 383 | 0.42 | 912 |
| Gamma= Mode3 | 382 | 0.42 | 910 |
| Test Settings | 164 | 0.20 | 820 |
| ICC profile (Gamma = Mode3) | 163 | 0.20 | 815 |
The average contrast ratio of the U28D590D sat at 909:1 with brightness only adjusted, excluding at ‘0’ brightness where the measurement lacked accuracy due to the low luminance levels involved. This is a decent performance for a TN panel. What was particularly pleasing was the exceptional luminance adjustment range offered by the monitor. The peak luminance recorded was a retina-scorching 391 cd/m² whilst the minimum white luminance sat at an extremely low 15 cd/m². This gave a massive and generally unheard of luminance adjustment range of 386 cd/m². The contrast ratio under our test settings dropped to 820 cd/m², due to the considerable alterations to colour channels required. Applying our ICC profile on top of had little effect on the contrast ratio, which sat at 815 cd/m². These figures are still quite respectable and don’t really make a noticeable difference in practice. The most significant drop in contrast occurred when setting the ‘Color Tone’ to ‘Warm2’, with a static contrast of 727:1 recorded. Again, this is still a perfectly workable value.
As usual a ‘Dynamic Contrast’ setting is included as a ‘Magic Bright’ preset. You can’t adjust colour tone, gamma, brightness, contrast sharpness or really do anything else to the image using the monitor OSD with this setting active. The monitor takes over, adjusting the backlight brightness according to how ‘light’ or ‘dark’ the content on the screen is. As usual the backlight is adjusted as one unit (BLU or Backlight Unit) and can’t account for the subtle mixture of light and dark content that is commonly displayed on a monitor. During even mixed scenes with plenty of darkness the monitor tends to adopt an uncomfortably high brightness using this setting. It rapidly responds to changes in on-screen content, which means it is certainly ‘Dynamic’ but can prove a little distracting at times. The backlight also dims very effectively for the darkest scenes. This isn’t a mode we personally like using, but it’s there for those who do.
PWM (Pulse Width Modulation)
The Samsung uses a hybrid solution to dim the backlight. The monitor does not use PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) as long as the brightness is kept above ’30’ in the OSD, instead using DC (Direct Current) regulation. The monitor is therefore flicker-free under such conditions. At or below a brightness of ‘30’ PWM is used to regulate the backlight, which can induce flicker which some users may find bothersome. This solution seems to have enabled Samsung to provide a truly exceptional luminance adjustment range of on this monitor, as noted above.
Luminance uniformity
Whilst observing a black screen in a dark room under our test settings we could see a small area of slight backlight bleed at the very bottom edge of the monitor. There was also some slight clouding towards the corner where the screen took on a slightly lighter grey hue compared to the darker areas surrounding it. This area became more visible off-angle as it became considerably lighter than the surrounding area. We didn’t notice this during normal testing in even a fairly dimly lit room and it didn’t affect our impression of the monitor. The picture below shows the uniformity of the screen when displaying black in a dark room under our test settings.
As you can see the dark uniformity is actually rather pleasing with no major problems. This picture was taken 70cm from the screen. As you can see there is no peripheral ‘glow’ as you would see on most IPS-type panels. There is a slight golden-grey and blue sheen once you move to more acute angles, as demonstrated in the viewing angles video later on in the review.
Interpolation
As we’ve already explored, the ‘4K’ UHD resolution of 3840 x 2160 brings plenty of clarity and real-estate benefits to the table – but is also a demanding resolution to run when gaming. Furthermore you may be thinking about hooking up a device such as a games console to the monitor, in which case 1920 x 1080 is the maximum resolution you’ll be running. When running this monitor at a non-native resolution there is no 1:1 pixel mapping function, so the monitor will interpolate the content so that it fits the whole screen.
People theorise that running this monitor at 1920 x 1080 should provide similar sharpness to a native 1920 x 1080 screen of equivalent size as the Full HD resolution uses exactly half as many pixels horizontally and half as many vertically compared to its native UHD resolution. In practice the monitor’s interpolation process is not as perfect as that and you do lose a significant degree of sharpness compared to running the content on a native 1920 x 1080 screen. On Battlefield 4, for example, objects such as vehicles and tree foliage looks noticeably softer than they should. Textures are somewhat blurred – indeed it looks like a considerably lower resolution than ‘1920 x 1080’. This can’t be rectified by adjusting the sharpness control on the monitor – that simply makes things look bizarre.
Running the 2560 x 1440 resolution tells a similar story in some respects as things looks softer than running that resolution natively on a screen of similar size. Despite lacking the absolute sharpness of a real native 2560 x 1440 resolution, again with the sharpness control offering no relief, the image was quite reasonable overall using this setting. Some textures looked quite as they should, but edges appeared somewhat softer on the whole. This at least meant that anti-aliasing was less of a requirement. So if there are some game titles that you really struggle to run at the UHD resolution, dropping to WQHD and perhaps even disabling MSAA is an option. We tested a number of other resolutions that are both slightly higher and slightly lower than this and none were preferable really.
If you run a Blu-ray movie or other film content on the monitor via software on the PC, the best results are achieved by keeping the monitor at its native resolution. The content, for example a 1920 x 1080 Blu-ray, is upscaled by the GPU to fit the monitor’s resolution. We didn’t notice a significant loss of sharpness compared to watching our Blu-ray test titles on a native 1920 x 1080 display of similar size. Things still looked much as they should really, so film lovers shouldn’t really worry about the resolution difference between the monitor and the content they wish to view.
Features and aesthetics
From the front the monitor has a contemporary appearance. The glossy black plastic bezels are of a moderate thickness (18mm or 0.71 inches) at all edges. There is a power LED at the bottom right, which glows a moderately bright medium blue. His can be configured to turn off when the monitor is in operation, if you prefer. The stand has a T-shaped design with a thin metallic angled front plate and matte silver plastic elsewhere. The right of the stand’s front plate is labelled ‘UHD’, which is of course a major highlight of the screen. The screen surface is relatively light matte, comparable to the surface used by Samsung on their AD-PLS panels. This provides a clearer and potentially more vibrant image than a stronger anti-glare surface. You can see some outlines of objects and the cameraman in the first image, which was taken in a bright room flooded with natural summer daylight. When the monitor is displaying content and lighting in the room is controlled there is no issue with glare, as shown in the second image.
The side of the screen uses a chrome-effect silver plastic surround. The screen itself is reasonably thin at around 20mm (0.79 inches) at thinnest point, bulking out a bit centrally. The interesting stand shape can also be seen from this angle. The stand attaches at the bottom of the monitor and affords only slight tilt adjustment to the screen. The stability of the monitor is fairly standard for such a design – a bit of wobble if you knock the screen but nothing that should cause problems during general use.
The rear has a faux brushed metal (matte black plastic) finish. The ports are located centrally; 2 HDMI 1.4 ports, DP 1.2 input, 3.5mm headphone jack and a DC power input (external ‘power brick’). Beneath that you will find a cable-tidy clip and Kensington lock socket.
The OSD (On Screen Display) is controlled by a ‘JOG button’ (small joystick) shown at the bottom left of the image. It can be controlled by the fingers of the right hand when the monitor is places in its usual forward-facing orientation. This system proved responsive and intuitive. Twiddling the joystick in any direction provides a quick menu that allows you to adjust brightness, contrast and sharpness with a further twiddle of the joystick up or down. A side to side twiddle allows you to adjust the volume for the 3.5mm headphone jack. If you press the joystick in on this menu or before entering this quick menu you gain access to the feature menu. This allows you to select one of four main options, each one corresponding to a to a different joystick direction; ‘Source’, ‘Menu’, ‘PIP/PBP’ and ‘Power Off’. Once an option is highlighted a further click of the joystick inwards selects it. Indeed the monitor can’t be powered off with a single button press, but that’s a minor inconvenience given the well thought out system as a whole. The following video will give you a better idea of how the system works and the menu options available.
Colour reproduction
Colour gamut
The Samsung U28D590D’s colour gamut follows sRGB quite closely. There is a little under-coverage in certain red shades in particular and a little over-coverage as well in this 2D representation of the colour gamut.
Colour in games and movies
Colours looked rich and varied overall on Battlefield 4. Subtle shade variety, for example the range of greens and browns of vegetation, was held back a bit by the restrictive TN viewing angles. For example, a dark green may look particularly lush and vibrant towards the centre of the screen or further up, but becomes lighter further down. Likewise a minty green in the centre of the screen may take on an overly deep look towards the top of the screen. We feel that the rich look overall is more important to most gamers, though, and that’s something the Samsung delivered. Vibrant elements such as roaring flames and deep sky blues looked suitably vivid, for example.
Dirt 3 also had a pleasing look. Environments looked fairly lush and natural, despite the aforementioned TN restrictions. Some Finnish forest greens weren’t quite as deep as we would have liked to see, accentuated somewhat by the viewing angle ‘fade’ further down the screen. Overall things looked vivid, though. This was particularly evident on the car paint jobs which showed off some good bold blues, deep oranges and strong bright greens. Some reds looked slightly lighter than they should further down the screen but didn’t have the slightly anaemic look that ‘Gamma = Mode1’ gives them.
Colours looked natural and appropriately vivid, overall, on the Skyfall Blu-ray. Skin tones appeared appropriately saturated. Despite the viewing angle restrictions of the panel technology, apparent shade veriety was good. This was helped somewhat by the thick black bars at the top and bottom of the picture where the most extreme variations in colour would usually be observed. Some colours were not quite as vibrant as we’ve seen, for example the red neon lights of Shanghai. They were fairly lively nonetheless. Bright pinks and electric blues stood out particularly nicely in those scenes.
Colours looked quite lively on the Blu-ray of Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder. There were plenty of dashing neon shades, some good deep shades and various pastel shades. With its solid blocks of individual colour this film also highlighted the TN viewing angle limitations quite nicely. A given shade appeared lighter towards the bottom of the screen and deeper towards the top. If you consider the red exoskeleton of the giant lobster-like character Dr Zoidberg, for example, the red appeared relatively faded at the bottom third of the screen and a little too saturated at the top section. This also had an effect on closely matching pastel shades, causing them to lose distinction and individuality.
Тесты и выводы
Измеренные нами параметры экрана слегка разочаровали. Яркость подсветки и статическая контрастность оказались несколько меньше заявленных, но, впрочем, выше подавляющего большинства недорогих моделей. Как выяснилось, параметры яркости зависят и от режима автоматической обработки изображения, выставленной в меню U28D590D, включающем оптимизацию картинки для офисной работы, игр, либо просмотра фильмов. Не исключено, что при определённом сочетании параметров заявленные цифры удастся-таки получить. Динамический контраст, заявленный как «бесконечность» (что в некотором смысле логично, ведь при полностью выключенной подсветке яркость экрана стремится к нулю), бывает полезен лишь в ограниченных случаях, поскольку светодиодная подсветка экрана здесь не секционная, а краевая. Также на чёрном фоне заметно некоторое «протекание» подсветки по краям, хотя мы думаем, что этот эффект будет варьироваться от экземпляра к экземпляру, так как зависит от качества сборки.
Результаты тестирования
| Яркость, кд/м² | 327 |
| Контрастность | 612:1 |
| Отклонение цветопередачи по CIE 2000, % | 14 |
| Цветовой охват sRGB, % | 87 |
Что же касается качества цветопередачи, то отклонение от эталона по стандарту CIE 2000 составило около 14%, а цветовой охват sRGB – 87%. Это заметно превосходит большинство офисных дисплеев, имеющих яркость не более 300 кд/м² и охват 70-80%, но в то же время не дотягивает до уровня профессиональных. Зачем в такой ситуации 10-битный цвет – вопрос открытый, так как в нашем случае разницы по сравнению с 8 битами заметно не будет. Может быть, что без такого повышения качества контроллера матрицы не удалось бы реализовать упомянутую функцию MagicAngle, а может, разработчики решили таким образом «выжать» из неё максимум возможного?
Так или иначе, но любое улучшение можно только приветствовать, если оно не поднимает цену до заоблачных высот. Но здесь, как мы видим, цена вполне демократична. Конечно, 25 тыс. «деревянных» превышает среднюю стоимость дисплея сопоставимой диагонали с разрешением Full HD, но заметно ниже других Ultra HD мониторов, а также телевизоров формата 4k, являющихся единственной альтернативой нашему девайсу. Жаль, что производитель использовал недорогую технологию матрицы и «жёсткую» подставку без регулировок, но зато он попытался скомпенсировать это некоторыми новыми функциями. Поэтому можно сказать, что такой компромисс между ценой и возможностями ставит U28D590D в практически не занятую «бюджетную» нишу нового класса устройств ультравысокой чёткости.
И если дальше технологии будут развиваться подобным образом, то совсем скоро устройства 4k, а может быть, даже 8k – дальнейшего улучшения стандарта, станут для нас с вами такими же привычными, как Full HD. Поживём – увидим!
Для измерений характеристик дисплея использовался спектрофотометр X-Rite i1Publish Pro 2, предоставленный дистрибьютерской компанией «Графитек».