To help simplify your workflow even more, some 4K monitors come with built-in features like an automatic window-sizing tool. (It sections off parts of your screen that Windows programs will resize to on their own.) These monitors can also accept video signals from multiple sources and display them side by side ("picture by picture") or inlaid in a larger window ("picture in picture"). This can be useful if, say, you're working on a PC but you need to test your changes on a separately connected Mac at the same time.

Some specs are not as front-and-center as the display type or the refresh rate, but they'll affect how you work with your 4K display day to day. Adaptive sync aligns the refresh rate of the monitor with the frame-rate output of the video card on the fly, drawing a frame only when a full one is delivered rather than at a fixed rate. Though it's not essential for gamers who mostly play single-player, slow-paced titles, adaptive sync is great for anyone daring to take his or her skills into the online multiplayer arena in serious competition. Multitasking:A 4K monitor offers more screen real estate when compared to lower resolutions. A 720x720 pixel image, when seen on a 1080p display, may seem larger than the same image viewed on a 4K display. But both images will contain the exact same amount of detail, it’s just that there are more pixels available to the 4K gaming monitor. By harnessing this fact, you’ll be able to fit more windows onto the display and still find them perfectly usable and ideal for multitasking. VERTICAL ALIGNMENT (VA).VA panels are some of the oldest in the game, but they're still around because despite better, newer display technologies, they "just work." VA screens offer some of the highest contrast ratios apart from OLED models (more about them in a moment), and better viewing angles and color reproduction than TN panels. However, VA is the slowest of all display technologies, offering the pokiest response times and highest input-lag numbers. That makes them a bad bet for gaming. Of course, less scientifically, you can look at 4K panels of various sizes in a local store to see if you can tell the difference between them and similarly sized 1440p or 1080p monitors. But ideally you'll want to observe the same screen image, scaled the same amount, to get a meaningful comparison, and that may not always be practical.But before we get too deep into details, we should help you answer a key question: Is a 4K monitor right for you in the first place? Depending on what you do most with your monitor, and where you'll place it, the extra money you'd pay versus a lower-resolution display may not be necessary. You need both a compatible monitor and a compatible graphics card to enjoy G-Sync or FreeSync (for the GPU, a late-model Nvidia GeForce or AMD Radeon RX card respectively). Note that Nvidia has designated a subset of monitors as G-Sync Compatible; these work with the adaptive-sync tech of its cards despite not having the specific, exclusive G-Sync-enabling circuitry of earlier G-Sync displays. Terms Apply. Promotion ends 3 December 2023. Items are subject to availability. Max 5 units per customer.

Color-gamut coverage is a key spec for many visual professionals. A number of elite 4K monitors cover 100% of the sRGB color gamut used online, as well as scoring nearly that high with the Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 gamuts used for photo and video imaging respectively. Keeping busy on a 4K monitor isn't much different from doing general work on a lower-resolution screen, but there's one key difference: effective screen space. Since a 4K monitor has four times as many pixels as a 1080p panel, this gives you in theory four times the elbow room to show application windows side by side. Although 4K OLED panels have been all the rage for several years in the TV market (and are increasingly popular laptop displays), it's only recently, as the price of this technology has begun to come down, that OLED computer monitors have begun to make a splash. In the past year, we've seen OLED-based gaming, professional, and even portable monitors. One note: To get a 4K display running above a 60Hz refresh rate (mostly of interest to gamers or game developers), you'll need a graphics card capable of outputting its signal over a DisplayPort 1.4b, 2.0, or 2.1 cable; or an HDMI 2.1 cable .

Resolution / Refresh Rate

Another benefit is extra workspace. Even if your ultimate output isn't in 4K, working on a 4K panel can let you see your content at full resolution while leaving screen space for control menus, color palettes, video timelines, and other creation tools. Of course, you could relegate that stuff to a second monitor, but a 4K panel can enable single-display workflows that were impossible or awkward before. ADAPTIVE-SYNC TECH.Nvidia's G-Sync and AMD's FreeSync and FreeSync2 are all flavors of what are known as adaptive sync technologies. Without getting too deep into the weeds, they're designed to prevent stuttering and screen tearing (screen draws with parts of the image misaligned). These maladies can occur on monitors—gaming-focused or otherwise—in fast-moving action scenes.