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Samsung Launches $3,500 'Odyssey Ark' 55-Inch Curved Gaming Display
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That response time and refresh rate are great, but 55" is too big. Only reason I even upgraded to a 28" 4k monitor was because that was the smallest and most affordable option. Only thing is it doesn't have HDR, so I'm not getting the most out of my Xbox Series X. Planning on upgrading within the next 6 months, but I would never go that large for gaming. If you sit up close, you have to move your eyes and head more. If you sit at the recommended distance, you basically give up the advantage of the response time. I play on the highest sensitivity for most FPS games and notice things like that.
Agreed. I didn't know they had curved screens in vertical orientation. What's neat about the one pictured is it can rotate 90 degrees to accommodate landscape and portrait modes!
Three times as expensive as a 43” - 55” OLED TV.
If this monitor were 8K, it would be interesting.
As for neck strain, I don’t see a problem, in landscape orientation. I run a triple wide 4K 24” setup and i don’t feel any discomfort from looking side-to-side. That’s equivalent to a (curved) 72” TV in width.
As for the portrait mode, I think it could work if the monitor were mounted in such a way that the bottom of the screen were visually aligned with the back edge of your keyboard. In other words, the display would actually have to curve below the desk height where the keyboard is.
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If this monitor were 8K, it would be interesting.
As for neck strain, I don’t see a problem, in landscape orientation. I run a triple wide 4K 24” setup and i don’t feel any discomfort from looking side-to-side. That’s equivalent to a (curved) 72” TV in width.
As for the portrait mode, I think it could work if the monitor were mounted in such a way that the bottom of the screen were visually aligned with the back edge of your keyboard. In other words, the display would actually have to curve below the desk height where the keyboard is.
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I got 24” 4K IPS monitors for $200 each five years ago.
Yup. There were plenty available at that time. Not so anymore. I believe there is only 1 model outside the Apple ecosystem - LG is selling off the remaining stock of their last 4K 24" monitor (produced in 2015 or 2016) and it is a) not available in Canada and b) pretty low quality.
These are all ripped off of Apple patents.
That’s why Samsung is failing.
Apple at least puts purpose to their patents.
I wouldn't say Samsung is failing - I recognize they put a lot of efforts into making things different in the domain of displays.
But what gets on my nerves is : I KNOW they're gonna sell quite a lot of Arks, but 80 ppi at 3 feet from the face ? I just don't know how they can get away with that. The more I think about it, the vertical mode is made for productivity, which is completely useless, because with such a low pixel density it's clearly just a gaming display and not made for productivity.
Yep. Either make it 6K at that width, or make it a 2160p ultrawide that's 55".
Why does nobody make a curved 2160p ultrawide that runs at >60Hz? The latest DisplayPort and HDMI can handle it just fine. That's all I want. I want to replace my two 4K 27" panels with one.
That one display looks like an April fools joke.
[Edit]: Oh, it is the same monitor just rotated. I like that.
[Edit]: Oh, it is the same monitor just rotated. I like that.
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5k is overpriced, but it's not a gimmick—it's needed to get Retina pixel density (220 ppi for externals) on a standard 27" monitor. And MacOS really needs Retina to look good. I'm running a 27" 5k and 4k side by side, and the 5k (which is Retina) is noticeably sharper. In addition, Apple's original rationale for 5k is that is allowed 4k native video editing with enough real estate left over for the UI.
Good explanation for tall mode, though it seems a pricey way to achieve that. If all you need are separate windows for chat and stream, that could be done with a 2nd monitor placed above the first one.
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Ugh, that sucks. My 4K monitors don’t have great picture quality, but I don’t need high contrast, high gamut, and high accuracy for the office tasks I do. I look at a lot of PDFs, and the high resolution helps a lot with those, and I often need several things open at once, so I need a lot of real estate.
For gaming and TV/movies, where contrast and color matter, I used an OLED TV.
That means that if you want a “retina” monitor at a typical monitor viewing distance, you have one 24” option, two 27” options, and one 32” option. (The 24” is a bit below Retina, but close enough). Dell has their 8K (edit: never mind, looks like it’s been discontinued), but the PPI is quite a bit higher than Retina, and you really need some curvature to get the most out of an 8K screen.
I’m hoping 8K TVs catch on, just so the technology trickles down to desktop monitors. But at the distance an average person watches TV from, they don’t even get much more from 4K than they’d get from 1080P.
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I am not a gamer, so I would be interested to see how well this monitor works for things like coding/word processing. I currently use a Samsung 49" with a slight curve and like it overall, but for some, fonts are not that crisp as on "real" 4k+ monitors. The refresh rate doesn't matter to me.
The issue I see with a tall monitor like this is mounting a camera for video conferencing. Pretty much a must for me, and on my current monitor, it works ok on top of the monitor, but with this monitor, it may be too high.
And finally: Which Apple products can drive this monitor, particularly in the split screen configuration? Can I have two of them connected to my M1 Mac Mini and turn them into portrait mode for the ultimate productivity setup.
In general, I am a bit confused about how the split screen exactly works. Can it use two virtual screens of one device? Or only feeds from different devices? Can I run two cables from one Mac Mini to get two "screens"?
What is the weight of this? Can it work with monitor arms (I prefer them over stands, and finding one for my 49" Samsung was a challenge). Issues with standing desks?
Price: Too expensive for me right now. But in the future: maybe.
The issue I see with a tall monitor like this is mounting a camera for video conferencing. Pretty much a must for me, and on my current monitor, it works ok on top of the monitor, but with this monitor, it may be too high.
And finally: Which Apple products can drive this monitor, particularly in the split screen configuration? Can I have two of them connected to my M1 Mac Mini and turn them into portrait mode for the ultimate productivity setup
.In general, I am a bit confused about how the split screen exactly works. Can it use two virtual screens of one device? Or only feeds from different devices? Can I run two cables from one Mac Mini to get two "screens"?
What is the weight of this? Can it work with monitor arms (I prefer them over stands, and finding one for my 49" Samsung was a challenge). Issues with standing desks?
Price: Too expensive for me right now. But in the future: maybe.
The split screen option only allows one external source to be displayed at a time. The other “screens” are basically smart TV apps.
Having compared a 27” 4K monitor with the 27” 5K Studio Display I can’t agree.
There’s a noticeable improvement in sharpness on the Studio Display, plus it scales evenly to “looks like 2560 x 1440”.
Choosing that scaling on a 27” 4K gives a slight “fuzz” to thr picture since it’s an uneven scaling. Still better than a blurry 27” with 2560 x 1440 pixels, but can fully see the argument for 5K which makes me wonder why there aren’t more 5K displays/panels out there.
But I guess people don’t care that much or don’t see the difference?
no. 4K will always look sharp. for it to look bad, would have to sit closer than intended
If you're 4 feet away from the center of the screen, you are effectively 54" away from the edges of the screen. As you get closer, and/or the monitor gets bigger, that discrepancy becomes greater. The edges are effectively curved away from you at a 26° angle.
If you have an 8K display, you basically can't get close enough to the center of display that you can resolve pixels at the corners of the screen.
The Apple 6K is pushing against the limit of useful pixel density on a flat screen while still being useful from corner to corner.
As I first looked at the article (oooh, that's pretty), my wallet jumped out of my pants pocket, and is now running down the hall to hide in the corner of my office, screaming.
I'm not the target audience...
I'm not the target audience...