14 DAY TRIAL // LCD screens can be made in multiple ways, but the backlighting usually determined the worth and price differences, at least until LED stopped being so much more expensive than CCFL.
Display makers are experimenting with the other layers of liquid crystal displays though. Sharp, for example, has the IGZO technology.
Short for Indium gallium zinc oxide, IGZO is a semiconductor material that can be used as the channel for a transparent thin-film transistor.
It allows for smaller pixels, making it easy to reach higher resolutions than HD and Full HD.
That is why ASUS chose to use IGZO technology when it made the PQ321 True 4K UHD monitor.
While there are already quite a few UHD TVs out there, and on the way, the same cannot be said about monitors.
Obviously, ASUS was less than impressed with this, hence the new PQ321.
The PQ321 has a native resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels. A resolution that four Full HD panels would be able to attain if they were stacked side by side.
The screen size is a surprising 31.5 inches (diagonal), meaning that the pixel density is of 140 pi (pixels per inch). The aspect ratio is 16:9, so nothing odd there.
10-bit RGB “deep color” is supported, along with 176-degree wide viewing angles (not quite 178 but close enough), 35mm thickness (at most, making it the thinnest UHD monitor yet), 8ms gray-to-gray response time, and 350cd/m2 brightness.
Furthermore, ASUS' PQ321 True 4K UHD Monitor gets a DisplayPort input, dual-HDMI (with picture-in-picture), 2W stereo speakers, and a stand with full height, swivel, and tilt adjustment. As a bonus feature, it is possible to mount the thing on a wall.
ASUS will reveal the True 4K UHD Monitor models at Computex 2013 in Taipei, next week. In addition to the 31.5-inch version, a 39-inch monitor will be shown as well.