Friday 12 September 2014

The first purpose-designed curved desktop monitor arrives...

So finally, in Sept 2014, Mars has lined up with Jupiter and manufacturers have worked out that desktop monitors can be larger, this means they have to be higher resolution, and the size means a curve makes sense...

Congratulations to LG, who actually have a 34" product, their 34UC97 3440x1440 QHD 21:9 curved display:
As predicted here, you need to test with a straight edge to actually detect the curvature but you have to expect the manufacturers to be very conservative at first...

Dell have been teasing with a curved display, also 34", the Ultrasharp U3415W curved LCD monitor
In a slightly farcical piece of marketing, Dell have worked out they need two of these monitors side-by-side for you to see they are actually curved. (By the way, for games, 2 monitors generally sucks because the join is right in front of the player - you need 3 monitors to avoid that).

Good to see monitor sizes creep up to 34", but this is IMHO still rather missing the point of increasing digital desk ratio, and desktop monitors should get significantly larger (and more curved).

The question is whether buyers take these relatively expensive products or just buy a 4K TV and stick that on their desk. (Seriously, the possibility of this option should reduce the price of fancy new monitors...)