4K Immensity

The moment I plugged the new Samsung 4k monitor (the U28D590D - what a name!) to my 3-year old Lenovo X220 laptop and it booted with less-than-optimal 2560x1600 resolution I thought "I knew - it won't be capable of running this thing". But a short search brought me the Intel knowledge base article about setting custom resolutions with graphic adapters. My X220 runs the old (by today's standard) Intel HD 3000 graphics card. To my surprise I was able to enter 3840x2160@30p and it all clicked! My tiny old laptop is now running this 4k monster at full resolution. 30 frames a second is not bad, as long as it is progressive (can only do this via DisplayPort or HDMI 1.4, which the machine does not have).

The experience of having more than 8 million pixels or screen real estate is awesome. I'm upgrading from Apple 27-inch cinema display and it feels like I have twice the space (which I have!). It also seems 4K resolution at 28 inch is maximum that makes sense. Anything more would be difficult to read without magnification.

The nice thing (comparing to the Apple) are two extra HDMI ports (alongside the primary DisplayPort) and the monitor can run the secondary sources in small overlay windows, which is helpful when configuring / debugging devices like set-top boxes or other HDMI - capable gadgets.

One thing I will be missing from Apple are the convenient brightness control keys on the Apple keyboard. The Samsung cannot be controlled via USB, you have to reach for the monitor's menu, which, as always, is a mediocre user experience.

I'm yet to see how this setup works in the long run, but so far it has been an awesome experience, especially editing CAD projects, large spreadsheets or just playing with Google Maps.