Issues When Using UHD (4K x 2K) and UHD+ (5K x 3K) Displays

UHD and 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). 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 video and photo imagery.

Usage issues of UHD and 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. The change to ultra-high resolution displays does not affect images defined by screen percentage.

If there are both scalable and non-scalable items mixed in a document or HTML page, this can cause display relationship disparity of the items which may render properly 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 renders smaller than expected usually.

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

• Small text and small icons: Users must 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 upper 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 upper 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 small text. Often, 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.). The technical support team for the application should be contacted for scaling issues in their products.