On Thursday during the National Association of Broadcasters conference, Dell introduced three new monitors for professionals: the UltraSharp 27 4K HDR Monitor (UP2718Q), the UltraSharp 27 4K Monitor (U2718Q), and the UltraSharp 25 Monitor (U2518D). Dell lists the UP2718Q as the company’s first HDR10 display with UHD Alliance Premium Certification. It also supports a wide number of color spaces to fit the needs of every digital artist, photographer, and ad designer.
HDR10 is essentially the latest version of the High Dynamic Range standard. HDR10 is based on the wide-gamut Rec. 2020 color space and a 10-bit color depth to provide rich colors, bright whites, and deep blacks. HDR10 began to make its way into 4K HDTVs during 2015 in units such as the Sony X930C, the LG OLED E6, the Samsung KS9800, and more. HDR10 monitors are still very rare. LG’s 32UD99 is the only other monitor we know of to support HDR10. Sold at $1,000, LG’s monitor is less expensive, but doesn’t make strong claims about support for professional content creation.
Here are the hardware specs for the upcoming UltraSharp 27 4K HDR Monitor:
| Model number: | UP2718Q |
| Screen size: | 27 inches |
| Resolution: | 3,840 x 2,160 @ 60Hz |
| Color depth: | 1.07 billion |
| Color spaces: | Rec. 2020 (76.9 percent) Adobe RGB (100 percent) sRGB (100 percent) REC 709 (100 percent) DCI-P3 (97.7 percent) |
| Peak brightness: | 1,000 nits |
| Contrast ratio: | 20,000:1 |
| Ports: | 2x HDMI 2.0a 1x DisplayPort 1.4 1x Mini DisplayPort 1.4 2x USB 3.1 Gen1 (upstream) 4x USB 3.1 Gen1 (two ports offer charge) |
| Availability: | May 23 |
| Price: | $2,000 |
In addition to the monitor listed above, Dell also introduced the UltraSharp 27 4K Monitor (U2718Q) slated for a release in mid-July, for $700. The third panel of the freshly-baked trio is the UltraSharp 25 Monitor (U2518D) for $500, which will arrive during the mid-July window as well. None of these three additional panels support HDR10, though they do boast thin bezels.
The three new UltraSharp panels follow the release of Dell’s UltraSharp 32 8K Monitor (UP3218K), which costs a stunning $5,000 and the Dell Precision 5720 All-in-One workstation, which is$1,700. Some of the 5720’s ingredients include a seventh-generation Intel Core i5-7500 processor, 8GB of DDR4 memory clocked at 2,400MHz, 500GB of storage, a discrete AMD Radeon Pro WX 4150 graphics card, and a 27-inch screen with a touch-capable option.
Dell also plans to release its Canvas 27, a Surface Studio competitor, in early July for a mere $1,800. It’s essentially a PC crammed into a 27-inch tablet form factor that sits flat on the desktop. And while the Canvas 27 has a built-in touch screen (2,560 x 1,440), the device is meant to be connected to a large display so it can pretend it’s a huge digital artboard while shoving the updated images onto the external monitor. The Canvas 27 also includes totem and pen-based input capabilities.
“Adobe has developed totem functionality for intuitive timeline scrubbing in Premiere Pro for a Canvas environment. Dell is now expanding this early evaluation program to work with more partners and customers in preparation for global availability,” the company said on Thursday.
Given that Dell isn’t even rolling out the U2718Q and the U2518D panels until July, a few months may need to pass before Dell spills the beans regarding the hardware details of these just-announced displays. Consider this as a teaser for now until Dell finalizes the hardware details and/or throws open the product pages online.
