Porsche’s $1,800 PC monitor is actually cheap for what you get
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- Start date
Interesting because I never think of PD products as ever being cost competitive. I do happen to own one of their mechanical pencils but, yeah, I paid too much. lol
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Well, it at least looks like Porsche put at least a small amount more thought into the design of this than they did the early LaCie hard drives, which were basically brushed stainless blocks with small notches and an LED light in them.
And at least you can (remove / retract / fold back / hide) the Frankenstein style headset hooks . . . right?
And at least you can (remove / retract / fold back / hide) the Frankenstein style headset hooks . . . right?
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I know this isn't exactly a review but would be great to get an on the ground description of how the screen looks and performs in use. None of the promo photos even show it turned on?
Love the stand. Lol, thank Apple somehow made the stand the top talking point these days.
Love the stand. Lol, thank Apple somehow made the stand the top talking point these days.
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What's the next size up with similar specs? I want this type of monitor but larger than 32". Currently using a crummy old 42" 4k without HDR or high-quality panel.
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Stochastic
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Alienware sells a 34-inch, ultrawide OLED monitor for $1300. That makes this panel interesting but less appealing by comparison.
I'm hoping OLED and mini LED monitors drop to under $1000 in the coming years. For now, there's still an early adopter tax to be paid.
I'm hoping OLED and mini LED monitors drop to under $1000 in the coming years. For now, there's still an early adopter tax to be paid.
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Why not grab the 42" LG OLED at this point? It's going to be cheaper than any of the alternatives.
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I'm a computer tech that's been working in the consumer space for 15+ years now, and I've encountered Porsche Design computer equipment exactly once in that time.
A client brought 2 USB hard drives in. 3.5" form factor, completely dead. The 12v power supplies with them tested fine. I pulled the internal drives out of the USB enclosures. They were standard 3.5" SATA HDDs, I think Toshiba, but they may have been Hitachi or Western Digital. I don't remember.
I connected them to a bench desktop configured for SATA hot swap. I've used the system hundreds of times before and since without incident. I was holding the drive in my hand, PCB up to avoid touching it. As I connected the power, one of the chips burst into flame.
Yes, the drive literally burst into flame in my hand.
Granted, it only burned for a second, and it certainly didn't harm me in any way (though the smoke was pretty acrid).
After getting over the sheer shock, I connected a drive I didn't care about to the same connectors. Worked fine, no issues at all.
Then I tried the next Porsche drive. It ALSO burst into flames, exact same chip.
I never did figure out who made the USB controller. I'm not sure if the client did something truly crazy to the drives, or what may have actually happened. I'm not sure if I should blame Porsche Design for sourcing bad parts, or the drive maker or what. But its never happened to me before or since. Some cursory web searches revealed no similar incidents occurring, so it was probably an isolated incident.
But still, it left a rather strong impression of Porsche Design on me.
A client brought 2 USB hard drives in. 3.5" form factor, completely dead. The 12v power supplies with them tested fine. I pulled the internal drives out of the USB enclosures. They were standard 3.5" SATA HDDs, I think Toshiba, but they may have been Hitachi or Western Digital. I don't remember.
I connected them to a bench desktop configured for SATA hot swap. I've used the system hundreds of times before and since without incident. I was holding the drive in my hand, PCB up to avoid touching it. As I connected the power, one of the chips burst into flame.
Yes, the drive literally burst into flame in my hand.
Granted, it only burned for a second, and it certainly didn't harm me in any way (though the smoke was pretty acrid).
After getting over the sheer shock, I connected a drive I didn't care about to the same connectors. Worked fine, no issues at all.
Then I tried the next Porsche drive. It ALSO burst into flames, exact same chip.
I never did figure out who made the USB controller. I'm not sure if the client did something truly crazy to the drives, or what may have actually happened. I'm not sure if I should blame Porsche Design for sourcing bad parts, or the drive maker or what. But its never happened to me before or since. Some cursory web searches revealed no similar incidents occurring, so it was probably an isolated incident.
But still, it left a rather strong impression of Porsche Design on me.
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ConnertheCat
Ars Centurion
The PPI on that will be significantly lower than the Porsche listed here; which is already pretty low (4k @ 32 inches) - the Dell is 109 to the Porsche's 141. Compare that to the new Apple display which is sitting at 217. Each of these devices certainly has their market, but I don't think you can really compare them at all (the Dell is clearly for gamers, the Apple clearly for designers, the Porsche… for … uh… someone?).
(PPI are rough estimates, probably off by a few percent as we don't have exact figures)
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I think if you are going that big your best bet may be to simply go with a TV that works well as a monitor. Rtings.com usually has some info about which TVs work best that way. Personally I'm pretty happy with my 32" 4k monitor and wouldn't have space for anything bigger.
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Stochastic
Ars Scholae Palatinae
True, although in a gaming or multimedia monitor, PPI is less important to me than contrast, color accuracy, screen reflectivity, display latency, etc. For office or creative work, the extra sharpness of the Porsche might be nice to have. The Porsche may also have other advantages, but without reviews, I'm not sure what those might be.
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Maybe it's just me, but these seem like a cheap afterthought some designer threw in.
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I can see the use case: person wants a stand for their headphones, but figures that a stand on the desk is clutter, so they get a monitor with a built-in holster. Considering people buy TKL/sub-65% keyboards for the desk space savings, it's not too far-fetched.
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Add to that the fact that unless they are reasonably easy to remove and reinstall, don't even think of using these in a multi-monitor setup. (Although I admit that 32", regardless of aspect ratio, would make a massive setup if used side by side.)
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This Alienware only has a vertical resolution of 1400 pixels. Not really comparable to a 4k monitor. If this Porsche monitor was 27" I'd be into it. But 32" is too big for me.
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Seems a bit of a problem at the moment, the newer fancy 4k+ units are all over 27/28", but damn if I'm not pretty damn happy with 200+PPI (using 27" 5k monitors.)
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There's at least two pictures in the article of the monitor with the hooks retracted (the gallery picture alongside the Porsche steering wheel, and the monitor in portrait mode), and yet you're not the only one wondering if the hooks can be retracted. Why? I skim too, but I don't skim THAT badly.
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> Porsche Design's product page also says the PD32M can display an LED logo onto the desktop, but it doesn't provide further detail.
It looks like it projects a white P down onto the center of the metal base in the photo. (Haha they've even airbrushed in projector god rays)
It looks like it projects a white P down onto the center of the metal base in the photo. (Haha they've even airbrushed in projector god rays)
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thunderbird32
Ars Praetorian
I still have one of those LaCie drives. I was one of the seemingly few people who went all-in on Firewire on the PC side. They were pretty decent drives, as far as I recall.
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That checks with my experience too. Back in 2003 I worked at a Mac re-seller and the Porsche firewire external drives were super popular. They also had a 25% faillure rate within the first few months so we stopped stocking them.
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thunderbird32
Ars Praetorian
For me, I've only got so much room on my desk. I like having two monitors next to each other, and 32" displays would take up too much room. My current displays are 24" and that's close to maximum.
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"Accompanying the latter is a pair of hooks that extend out of the monitor's left and side to give you a place to hang your headset."
Damn. I was hoping that was some ultra-cool new development in speaker tech. In a way I was right but... Now I'm sad.
Damn. I was hoping that was some ultra-cool new development in speaker tech. In a way I was right but... Now I'm sad.
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Just going spec wise it seems the closest high-end equivalent is ASUS' PG32UQX, which is a $3000 display. The ASUS is a better panel, and a more capable monitor owing to it having a full gsync chipset onboard instead of just VESA/HDMI adaptive sync on a generic chipset. But for 1400 nits HDR with what I assume is at least a 1000-zone FALD backlight, and high refresh rate UHD resolution, that price is quite fair.
EDIT: Actually it may be the exact same panel as the ASUS. I was mixing it up in my head with the 27" version that uses the LG Display panel that is in a bunch of high-end monitors right now. But the PG32UQX also uses a panel from AU Optronics, and it may well be the exact same one. That would make the only real difference between them the inputs, and the full gsync support. That doesn't seem to be a great deal for the extra $1200.
EDIT: Actually it may be the exact same panel as the ASUS. I was mixing it up in my head with the 27" version that uses the LG Display panel that is in a bunch of high-end monitors right now. But the PG32UQX also uses a panel from AU Optronics, and it may well be the exact same one. That would make the only real difference between them the inputs, and the full gsync support. That doesn't seem to be a great deal for the extra $1200.
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It's probably a small niche, but I like the fact they seem to be keeping the "TV" use case in mind - it has a small remote, multiple inputs, built-in speakers and is large enough to be viewed at a distance. For me, that makes sense as my home office doubles as a gym, so I could plug in a chromecast and use it for netflix/youtube during workouts.
Samsung is going a similar direction with the M8, just with more smarts and less gamer-centric design. If someone could combine the refresh rate and higher image quality of the Porsche with the design of the M8, I'd be in.
Samsung is going a similar direction with the M8, just with more smarts and less gamer-centric design. If someone could combine the refresh rate and higher image quality of the Porsche with the design of the M8, I'd be in.
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They can luckily co-exist as you say
I would always pick the higher pixels per inch personally as I don't really game but stare at the screen for work. 4K on a 32" monitor at normal viewing distance would look like a blurry mess to me at this point though.
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They can luckily co-exist as you say
I would always pick the higher pixels per inch personally as I don't really game but stare at the screen for work. 4K on a 32" monitor at normal viewing distance would look like a blurry mess to me at this point though.
I rather like my 4k 32" monitor. A 27" or 24" inch would be sharper or have better details but you can't really fit much if anymore information on the screen at that point. A 32" 4k monitor gives me more space to work with and can see more. More rows and columns in a spreadsheet or SQL table. More rows of SQL code etc. A 24" 4k monitor at 200% scaling should show the exact same amount of stuff as a 24" 1080p monitor just look better doing it. A 24" 1080p monitor (not that uncommon for desktop monitors) is ~92dpi. Even 22 inch 1080p is only 100 dpi. So 141dpi for a 32" 4k monitor isn't exactly low dpi and windows recommends 150% scaling for mine. You'd need a monitor in the mid 40's" to match the dpi of those old 22/24" 1080p monitors and run at 100% scaling without making things smaller.
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The PD/AOC claims their monitor does 1600 nits (although certified for only 1400 nits). Alienware's monitor is 1000 nits. This is a significant brightness difference. However, I don't think there's a lot of hdr content that will utilize these specs.
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Someone who doesn't want burn-in anxiety? Or needs a brighter-room solution. The LG OLEDs are great, but they struggle in bright rooms.
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Burn-in anxiety is nonsense
. Bright room maybe I get. Personally have no problem in a bright room with windows, but to each their own.
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It's possible the drives in question were doing some funny business with the 5V and 3.3V lines. Traditional hard drives from the IDE era only ever had access to 12V and 5V since that's what was on the 4-pin molex connector, so drives were designed to use only 12V (for the motor, typically) and 5V (for the logic).
When we moved to SATA we got a new power connector that added a 3.3V line that drives could use, but for legacy reasons many people needed/wanted to power their new SATA hard drives via adapters from the older connectors and thus drives couldn't rely on 3.3V being present in the connector. As a result, all hard drives I'm aware of sold bare into the consumer (and I suspect server) market were designed not to need/use the 3.3V rail nominally present in the SATA power connector, and still use just 12V and 5V.
In the pre-assembled USB external drive/enclosure space however, no such constraints exist so a manufacturer could have designed a drive to draw from 3.3V as a cost-saving measure of some sort if the USB side of the drive already had it available (or possibly a cheeky anti-consumer move to prevent drive shucking). A related problem occurred with late-model external enclosures with "white-label" drives that used an ill-thought-out newer version of the SATA spec that made two of the three 3.3V pins "reserved" and assigned the other one to a drive power-off feature. The end result was that putting these drives in systems whose power supplies properly followed the SATA spec we've had for ages and provided all three rails would cause the drives to never boot up, because the sleep signal was always asserted - very dumb design on the part of the SATA specification writers.
It's possible the drives you ran into did use the 3.3V rail in some way, but screwed up the design by, say, tying the 3.3V and 5V pins on the SATA connector together such that 3.3V logic on the controller board received 5V when hooked up to a "normal" SATA arrangement. It would work fine in their enclosure that only provides 3.3V, but would be a waiting time bomb if used elsewhere.
Alternatively, it's possible the drive needed both 5V and 3.3V to operate correctly and due to design flaws was set up in such a way that if 5V were present and 3.3V absent, the larger potential difference (5V instead of 5V-3.3V=1.7V) across certain parts of the controller might have exceeded the limits of some protective diode or other component causing the resulting short and fire. In the enclosure they could guarantee that 3.3V would always come up first to avoid this scenario (special power sequencing chips exist exactly to handle stuff like this if you can't otherwise avoid it in your design), but IMO your device should be designed for any combination of its power rails to come up in any possible sequence without at least damaging the device, even if it won't operate correctly.
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It seems like lot of money for a pretty low resolution monitor. I would buy a good 32" monitor but only at 5K.
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Need more reviews , not reviews of the spec/sell sheet.
Scharon please follow up with a review when it's available!
Looking for a replacement for my old Dell Dell 43"
and would consider 2x32" but having a single large screen without bezels is great.
Only downside is lower ppi. For my work devops it doesn't matter.
Though would be nice to have a 42" 5k or better display with hdr, faster response and much better brightness.
Scharon please follow up with a review when it's available!
Looking for a replacement for my old Dell Dell 43"
and would consider 2x32" but having a single large screen without bezels is great.
Only downside is lower ppi. For my work devops it doesn't matter.
Though would be nice to have a 42" 5k or better display with hdr, faster response and much better brightness.
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