Issues when using UHD (4K x 2K) and UHD+ (5K x 3K) displays

UHD & UHD+ display properties:

The newest Ultra-high-definition displays (UHD) are also called (4K x 2K) and Ultra-high definition plus (UHD+) displays are also called (5K x 3K) displays.

UHD displays have a nominal resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels (double the resolution of 1920 x 1080) and UHD+ displays have a nominal resolution of 5120 x 2880 (2.6666 x 1920 x 1080 resolution).

Both UHD and UHD+ give incredibly clear and crisp resolution for movies and photo imagery.

Usage issues of UHD & UHD+ displays

As each new high definition display enters the market, there are issues associated with these displays that occur because of how the display appearance is modified when you change from a lower resolution to an ultra-high resolution display. Ultra-High Definition displays have 2 to 2.6666 times the pixels of standard resolution displays.

This gives incredible resolution detail on  the screen but can cause images designed by fixed pixel amounts to display incredibly small and hard to see (these are known as Scaling issues). Images defined by screen percentage are not affected by the change to ultra-high resolution displays.

If there are a mix of scalable and non-scalable items in a document or HTML page, this can cause display relationship disparity of the items which may render normally on a 1920 x 1080 display. Microsoft Office 2013/365 is designed to scale, but if the size of the embedded image in a Word document is defined by pixels instead of percentage, the image will render smaller than expected in most cases.

The most prevalent issues reported with these displays are as follows:

• Small text & small icons: Users need to be aware of the relationship of pixel defined resolutions and the result of using a higher definition (higher pixel concentration) display results in the standard size of both text and icons being reduced and may be unreadable.
• Images displayed to the top left of the window: This again is a result of using a higher definition (higher pixel concentration) display resulting in items that have a defined pixel size displaying in the top left of the window. Items defined by percentage of display area rather than pixels are unaffected by this.
• Correct resolution not displayed: There are many causes of this issue.
  • Graphics adapter is not UHD+/UHD compliant: Graphics adapters connected to UHD+/UHD resolution (5120 x 2880 or 3840 x 2160) displays should be confirmed that they support the default resolutions of the new displays and have the required port connections of the new display.
  • Display is not correctly connected to graphics adapter: UHD displays have specific connection requirements such as DisplayPort 1.2 compliance or reduced HDMI refresh rate. UHD+ has those same requirements in addition to the Dual DisplayPort connections (Required or 5120 x 2880 resolution).

Third Party Applications

Menus in third party applications may also display extremely small text. In many cases, the application itself may have scaling options in the program to allow the user to adjust the text size of the menus. One example is Adobe Photoshop (Figure 1):

Figure 1: Adobe Photoshop example of scaling settings

Dell has no control over the scaling capability of third party applications (Adobe, Corel, Game Manufacturers etc.) and the technical support team for the application should be contacted for scailing issues in their products.