LG teases a monstrous 34-inch, 5K, 21:9 monitor ahead of CES

There are new 4K and QHD monitors, too, though we’re still missing some details.

Jeff Dunn – Dec 21, 2017 2:49 pm | 84

Credit: LG

Brace yourself: the deluge of product announcements for next month’s Consumer Electronics Show has begun.

LG took its turn in the spotlight on Thursday, announcing a trio of new monitors that’ll be showcased in full at the upcoming trade show. The star of the bunch is likely the 34WK95U, a 34-inch ultrawide monitor with a (roughly) 21:9 aspect ratio and a 5K resolution. Well, sort of 5K—that resolution is technically 5,120 x 2,160, meaning it has the same number of vertical pixels as a 4K monitor but adds pixels horizontally.

The device will include a Thunderbolt 3 port and what appear to be fairly slim bezels, too. The idea here is to court professionals who need to have several windows open at once, edit images and videos with precision, and so on. Here’s hoping it doesn’t suffer from any technical issues like its last high-profile 5K monitor.

There’s a new 32-inch 4K monitor, too. The 32UK950 will also carry a Thunderbolt 3 port, which LG says will allow it to chain two 4K monitors at once—a detail not specified for the 5K model—and “provide enough charge to power a 60W notebook.” The company says it’ll cover 98 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut and, like the 5K panel above, utilize its “Nano IPS” color boosting tech, which it rolled out in select TVs earlier in the year. We’ll have to see the panels in action before saying if that’s anything more than jargon, though.

LG says that both panels will also support “HDR 600,” but it’s not clear if the company is referring to VESA’s DisplayHDR 600 spec or its own thing. The former was announced last week by the computer display standards body; it sits in the middle of three new high-dynamic range standards and requires at least 600 nits of peak brightness (plus 10-bit color, among other specs). Samsung announced that its massive 49-inch CHG90 monitor was compliant with the DisplayHDR 600 spec earlier this week.

Whatever the case, it’ll be hard to say either monitor will be capable of true HDR the way TV-based standards like HDR10 and Dolby Vision are. Both of those specs reach at least 1,000 nits and are thus capable of facilitating the higher contrast ratios needed to take advantage of HDR content more fully. That said, sitting a foot away from a screen that bright probably wouldn’t be much fun for your eyes.

LG briefly mentioned a new QHD gaming monitor that will support Nvidia G-Sync in its press release, too. In general, there’s still plenty we don’t know about all three monitors—namely, when they’re coming and how much they’ll cost. The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, but we’ll likely get more details once CES kicks off next month.