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Dell 6K U3224KB Monitor
- Thread starter enc0re
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Just bought one of these directly from Dell for $2250 (was $2199 at Amazon on Thursday, but disappeared by Friday) and hooked it up today. Picture quality is outstanding; you won't be disappointed. Plug and play with 14" MBP M1--Just Worked™. Be mindful that the middle USB-C port on the back is an upstream only; plug peripherals into the USB-C furthest from the TB4. Wish there were more USB-C on the back but this thing still has a ton of ports.
The webcam presents a sharp but very overexposed image in my poorly lit office, and there are no adjustments available in the OSD. The "Dell Display and Peripheral Manager for macOS" is supposed to allow adjusting the camera, but I am really afraid of polluting my Mac with this software just to adjust the camera (plus I won't have privs to do it on my work laptop). Has anyone installed this?
The webcam presents a sharp but very overexposed image in my poorly lit office, and there are no adjustments available in the OSD. The "Dell Display and Peripheral Manager for macOS" is supposed to allow adjusting the camera, but I am really afraid of polluting my Mac with this software just to adjust the camera (plus I won't have privs to do it on my work laptop). Has anyone installed this?
Once a quarter they send you actual cash money to your paypal account. The cash back amount is the percentage shown times the pre-tax price of your purchase. You need to install the browser extension and/or begin your shopping trip from their site so they can set all of the cookies/trackers/whatever (you didn't think they're giving you this money for free right?). You also might need to disable any adblocking/privacy stuff while you're making the purchase. The annoying bit is that sometimes (often?) your purchase doesn't show up on their site immediately so you have to wait to know whether it "counts" for cash back purposes. I'd consider Rakuten cash back to be YMMV for this reason. For the couple hundred dollars this will potentially save me, it's worth the roll of the dice, but I'm not counting on it.
I'm pretty sure others in the thread are using DDPM without serious complaint. I plan to use it because I need to connect my Mac Studio and my secondary PC and I'd like to make use of the monitor's built-in KVM functionality, which (I believe) requires that Dell's software be installed on one or both computers. I also would like to have access to controls to adjust the webcam on my primary computer, which is the Studio.
Got my monitor up and running last night, and the image quality appears excellent to me so far. Grain of salt: my eyesight is not what it used to be and I'm coming from running non-native resolution on a 27" 4K display, so my opinion on image quality is not worth a ton. Other thoughts: KVM switching works exactly as I'd like it to--I don't need to keep DDPM running if I don't want to for that to work properly. Both Mac and PC detected the proper resolution/refresh/bit-depth automatically (TB4 for Mac and HDMI 2.1 for PC). Built-in speakers are fine. I don't think the sound quality is equal to the size. Speaking of which, the forehead is massive and quite jarring at first, but it does begin to fade into the background with use since your eyes are largely concentrating on the enormous screen.
In my very brief testing, it appears that some of the camera settings persist when you exit DDPM, such as the image preset including brightness, sharpness, and contrast. But the fancy move-the-camera around with your face bit does not, for whatever that's worth. Once I turned the brightness down, the webcam is an improvement in quality vs my Logitech C920.
Overall, it's a really nice monitor. At $2250 it's a screaming bargain compared to the XDR, and sorta maybe kinda worth the extra spend over the ASD depending on how you value the extra resolution and additional inputs vs. aesthetics and integration with the Apple world.
Glad you like it. I'm with you that it's a tough call vs. the ASD. I think on the whole I prefer the ASD mostly because of the gloss finish, totally integrated web cam/mic and better aesthetics. However 32" is really sweet. Glad to have both but would probably recommend the ASD in a lot of cases.
Yeah, I have some relatively uncommon wants/requirements that made the Dell the right choice for me. I was already running 5k resolution at 27” and wanted more usable space but didn’t have quite enough room on the desk for a dual monitor rig. And as mentioned above I have a PC that I use for occasional gaming that I needed to run through the same monitor. If these things do not apply to you, the ASD might be a better choice for sure.
Yep. In that case the Dell makes total sense. Both are solid products IMO.
It also helps a ton that Apple fixed the issues that limited resolution/HDR on the Dell. Now that it's plug and play it's easier to recommend.
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I'll actually chime in here to say I too was worried about the Dell Display and Peripheral management software for macOS. I will say that I've so far been pleasantly surprised at how useful it's been and how robust it seems to be on macOS in particular. It seems as if it would be on par with the Windows version (though I haven't tried that), but you can tweak so many of the monitor's settings directly from their software, including dialing in the webcam color settings, which I find to be necessary as the auto white balance in the current firmware is not very good. It's likely because it's using web technologies, but it's also been light on resources when you're not using it.
Is it perfect, heck no. I wouldn't expect the UI to be great either. It's also not without its bugs at the moment, but it's quite functional and doesn't feel insanely bloated either.
Is it perfect, heck no. I wouldn't expect the UI to be great either. It's also not without its bugs at the moment, but it's quite functional and doesn't feel insanely bloated either.
I've not installed it. Does it do anything helpful beside the webcam (which I don't use)? All I'm using it for it's the screen. No audio, video, KVM, etc.
(Like others above I avoid installing much if any software on my Mac)
After 2 months of using this monitor, I've been constantly experiencing flickering and hurting my eyes with this monitor. It's still a huge distance apart from my Pro Display XDR. I tried updating firmware, switching laptops, but they all flicker. It's unfortunate and I can't warranty this since I got it open box.
Oof, sorry to hear that! Have you reached out to Dell? Maybe they'll honor the warranty regardless...
What resolution is everyone using this monitor at? I find the 6144x3456 (100%) way too small for real life, and the next smallest resolution, 3072x1728 is huge! I end up zooming out on every web page, but it doesn't help the massive UI. I installed BetterDisplay, but any resolution I choose between those two appears a bit blurry. Any suggestions?
Huh. 3072x1728 is the way I run it. Looks just like my ASDs just more real estate.
Unfortunately, I don't think a solution really exists... The 2 resolutions are 1 and 2x integer scaling factors and any resolution in between will force the system to use fractional scaling.
The reason integer scaling is sharp is because at 6144x3456@1x every pixel maps to one on-screen pixel (but the display is not realistically meant to be used this way). At 3072x1728@2x the system is able to map 4 on-screen pixels to render every pixel of the virtual 3072x1728 virtual resolution, hence the retina quality and sharpness.
Every resolution in between forces the system to perform render tricks because it can't map the virtual resolution to the on-screen resolution cleanly, leading to a slight loss in sharpness.
I'm also curious why you find the UI so big at 3072x1728? At this resolution on 32 inches, it's basically the same size it's always been on non retina displays with around 110ppi... (27 non. retina iMac, etc...)
So it's basically a choice between sharpness and UI size...
Yeah I guess I just like my UI smaller than Apple does. Prior to this monitor I used two 32” monitors at 4k at both home and work. Which makes the UI and text and everything slightly smaller due to the 3840x2160 resolution. I liked the size of everything better, but they didn’t work with my Mac so I got this instead. It’s beautiful but the resolution is just not quite the right size…
If you liked 32"@1x scaling, I can certainly understand why you find the UI too big... 4k on 32 inches @1x makes for pretty small UI elements.
I think I realized my “issue” here… when I’m hanging out and surfing the internet or editing photos or something for personal use, the built-in 2x scaling looks good. Looks beautiful, really.
What’s messing me up is work. It helps immensely to have more windows visible instead of flipping back and forth over and over (especially since I don’t know the Mac version of Windows alt+tab to go between windows of the *same* application). So for work I like the really tiny UI so I can have all my work windows up at once. Two monitors would help, but I can’t afford that with these lol.
If you don't mind the small UI, it may be worth it to look at 4k displays to run at 1x scaling...
You can get one of those for pretty cheap.
FWIW, as someone who has run 2 or more monitors on every machine I've had for nearly 20 years, there is simply no replacement for the convenience/comfort of use of multiple monitors, no matter what.