Ok so I took my own advice about a week ago and I’m now typing this while looking at a totally amazing 39″, 4k display! I have a pretty big desk which is a very good thing, because the panel ain’t small.
Random thoughts:
1. Amazon Global rocked. I found the panel for $479 USD, ordered it with guaranteed delivery to Australia for a total of $685 AUD and was able to track it’s progress online via Smyrna, Cincinnati, and then Brisbane. It didn’t come on time however – the last bit of the trip via Australia Post was delayed. I emailed Amazon and within hours they emailed to apologise and refunded the delivery fee in it’s entirety! It then showed up the next day while I was out.
2. The box looked a little battered but the contents were fine. Very fine.
3. It’s less than 1/4th the cost of anything else so I had no expectations about styling and build quality, both of which I am uncharacteristically up-to-date with. Through work, I have to kill some time every week in an electronics store while a client shops so I always check out the TVs. The Seiki is much thicker than the current crop of premium panels but it’s reasonably light and I would describe the build quality as reasonable and the styling as non-descript, which I prefer. As with the interior of a car though, after the initial interest, how much time do you spend really focusing on it? Exactly.
3. Setting it up took a while but that was almost entirely due to the wholesale changes to my office area that it required! I’ve removed three 19 to 22 inch LCDs, two book shelves and a massive collection of dusty CDs and DVDs that I really need to copy and chuck. One or two LCDs might come back but I’ve got to say that the “One massive screen in the middle of the desk” look is the kind of over-kill minimalism that could grow on me. Overkill minimalism. You heard it here first folks lol.
4. Plugged in the single HDMI, sticky-taped a dodgy US-Aussie adaptor to the power plug, checked that 240V was OK (someone had said so online, thought I’d better make sure lol) and turned everything on. I missed the POST screen etc due to the panel’s power up routine but then a faulty Windows desktop appeared with a little version of my desktop background picture in the middle. Hmmm. At least something is – hang on – ermahgerd – it’s a normal, non-faulty desktop, with all the normal stuff so tiny around the edges that I didn’t notice it at first! Wow. Instant nerd-gasm. Instantly glad I took a punt on the Amazon thing. Instantly formulating the message to accompany the picture I’ll be sending to my mates.
5. Yep, I am in flavour country. I don’t have any 4k content yet but I’ve just tried Flight Sim X and it ran beautifully at full resolution. I’ve got a 2gig GTX 770 video card so I was a bit surprised at first but FSX is one of those graphics apps that relies more on the CPU than the graphics processing unit. I started by turning everything but the resolution down, it ran great, then I started running it again with progressively higher graphics settings. I favour smoothness over outright graphics beauty but the thing was running well with all the filters etc turned up. Awesome.
6. 3840 x 2160. Those numbers are impressive but the recent improvements in hand held devices means that I’m less impressed that I might have been. If anything, panels have been lagging in recent years so people like Seiki will shake things up. My panel would have been $479 USD delivered in the US. At the $685 you would pay for it delivered here, the closest cost competitors are an Asus or LG for the same sort of dollars (from the cheapest, enthusiast shops) and they’re 32″, running 3.7 megapixels compared to 39″, running 8.3 megapixels! The closest true competitor is an Asus PQ321QE with a full 3840×2160 but it costs $4361, before delivery. Assuming this thing lasts a while, I’ve done stupendously well.
7. There is going to be a fair adjustment period now, getting used to a large panel again. I used to run a 32″ 1080 TV and it was major culture shock. Due to that experience, this will be easier. It’s a good problem to have. Big panels put out so much light that when the image on the screen changes, it can have a big effect on the lighting in the room and how “glarey” it seems. With my old one I turned the brightness down to minimum and lowered the colour temperature so the whites weren’t so bright… again, a good problem to have :-)
