“The Dell 75 4K Interactive Touch Monitor is made for collaboration and the office”
- Beautiful, 4K IPS panel
- Lots of inking and collaboration capabilities
- Can adjust screen for different heights
- Lots of ports
- Bulky compared to Surface Hub
- No dedicated area to dock laptops
- Stand and mounts not included in price
Dell is known for its monitors and laptops. We’ve seen super-thin USB–C monitors, a massive 55 inch OLED gaming display, as well as revolutionary laptops like the ultra-thin XPS 13. But with the recent announcement of Microsoft’s Surface Hub 2S, Dell has also been exploring and looking to innovate the collaboration space — changing the way you interact with coworkers during office meetings.
Enter the Dell 75 4K Interactive Touch Monitor. At $6,000, it is an expensive display that’s probably not for your home — but it will definitely make for a good replacement to that boring whiteboard in your office. Even better? It could even change the way you run meetings.
Get together to look at this beautiful display
As soon as I entered the room with the Dell 75
The key feature on the Dell 75
Sitting across the room from the display, it felt like being in a theater. I could make out the finest details showing on the screen, down to the text on a soda can. Like
Leave your markers at home
But there’s more to the Dell 75
My photographer and I scribbled on the display simultaneously — him with the pen and me with my fingers.
To try it out my both my photographer and I scribbled on the display simultaneously — him with the pen and me with my fingers. It’s something I’ve seen on the Surface Hub before, but I was still amazed. Just like a whiteboard in a conference room, we also could each erase ink with just our palms, without having to click a button on screen.
Two passive styluses are included with the price of the monitor, but up to four can also be used. The stylus is just a curved chunk of plastic with a 2mm precision tip. While the black and bulky aesthetics is not as fancy as the silver Surface Hub 2 Pen, it does not use batteries, and there isn’t anywhere to dock it to the display. Still, that just means anyone can grab one from a desk and right away get inking on the display without having to worry about charging.
Dell also aimed to simulate the pen to paper with the experience of inking on the monitor, and it felt exactly like that. When dragging my fingers and the pen across the screen, the tiniest bit of resistance held the pen back, like a pencil hitting the pages of a notebook. There’s no lag whatsoever.
How do you go about doing all this collaboration? Well, Dell includes support for industry-standard collaboration software. In particular, Dell includes FlatFrog with the display, a piece of software that lets you import images and ink around them. That is something that can be very useful for showcasing and marking up important files during meetings. No more magnets and sticky notes needed to get your important items on the company whiteboard. Simply pull it up digitally, and keep it on the large 75-inch screen.
Dell aimed to simulate the pen to paper with the experience of inking on the monitor, and it felt exactly like that.
For ease of access, you can also quickly tile and arrange the items on the display with an Easy Arrange feature with the Dell Display Manager software. I tried it out, and it was nice to have the software automatically tile four open windows in squares, showing all my web browsing sessions.
The last collaboration experience I tried was the most unique. Pushing a button on the side of the screen will pull it down to a height of 100, 66, 50, or 33 percent. It’s similar to “reachability” on the iPhone. Dell calls it “Screen Drop,” and it’s intended to improve reachability and accessibility during meetings. It’s strange to see it in action as the top of the display gets dark as image on screen moves down, but I can see it being great for people of shorter heights, who can’t actually reach all the way to the top of the display to ink or touch it.
There is also another touch button running along the bottom of the screen to bring up a menu to control the display options. Like what we experienced with the Dell 27 USB-C display, it’s clean and efficient. Menus are easy to understand and are clearly labeled. You even can navigate with touch.
Connect an OptiPlex mini desktop, and enjoy?
One of the greatest strengths of Microsoft’s Surface Hub 2S is having all the computing power and Windows 10 integrated right inside a unit built into the display. An all-in-one solution, it is ultra-portable and you won’t need to worry about having to plug in a laptop or desktop to enjoy collaboration experiences. To my disappointment, that is the same area where the Dell 75
Yes, Dell did build a slot for an OptiPlex Micro PC right into the monitor, but it is not included with the price. It’s cool to see that the compact PCs could slots into the side, but to fully enjoy the collaboration and inking experiences you’ll still need to hook up your own PC and stay connected to power. There’s no battery backup or true portability like with the Surface Hub 2S.
There’s a ton of ports on the display that make up for that, but I didn’t see any place on the display where I could “house” an external laptop. Port selection includes 3 HDMI ports, 1 DisplayPort, 1 VGA port, 4 USB ports, 1 Audio in and Out Port, 1 RS232 Port, and 1 RJ-45 Jack. Instead, a laptop will have to sit at the side of the display, or on a table during collaboration. There’s a lot of questions, and we also weren’t certain if these touch features will still work with MacOS, or if a Chromebook is connected.
Get it for your office now, but with big cost
The Dell 75
Mounts and stands are also not included in the $6,000 price of the Dell 75
The Dell 75
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