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Samsung QN700B 65-inch 8k

It's HUUUUUUUGE!

Some history and background

For a long time, over two (2) years, I've been thinking about it. I've had price alerts on several models for months. But lets roll back a little.

Circa 2000 it became a possibility to actually attach several displays to one computer. Using normal money. Before that the GPU:s only had a single VGA connector for a single display and that was it. At least for a regular user with a regular money. My first dual display setup was two (2) Samtron 96P 19-inch CRTs with 1600x1200 resolution each. I thought that was a bare minimum. Before that the norm was 1280x1024 in 15-17-inch, and my first display was 14" 1024x768. So that is where I'm coming from, and there has never been enough desktop real estate, as anyone working with code or even heavy Excel can tell you.

In mid-2000s came the first LCD displays. Those were again 1024x768 or 1280x1024 and they were pretty expensive, and I felt like it was actually a downgrade, so I never jumped into that train. Instead, I replaced one of those Samtrons with a 21" Samsung CRT witha a huge 2048x1536 resolution, which felt unreal at the time. And it was. I was happy with it for several years.

Then at some point in the late 2000s, came first Full HD or 1920x1200 LCD:s. Then I decided that it was time to give up on CRT, and I started to wait that those LCD prices would come down. Finally, after a long time, I got myself an Acer 1920x1200 24-inch display, with HDMI and everything. No speakers, though. It was a good display, even though it was a downgrade resolition-wise, and I was happy with it for several yeard. At some point a paired it with a Samsung 22-inch Full HD TV as a second display, but especially the vertical resolution was never enough.

So, for years I was drooling for a Dell 4k display when I first saw one. But it was REALLY expensive, like several thousand euros. Far out of my reach. I was considering a 4k TV as my main display, since those were cheaper and there were a lot of options, but I decided to wait. And I waited, all the way until AOC released a 28-inch model and the price came under 300 euros. It was time to upgrade! And for a little while I was happy, in fact I was so happu that I bought another one few months later.

The only drawback with these AOC:s was that they only support 4k@60 through DP, and I only had HDMI outputs. So basically I had to run them 4k@30 the whole time I had them, for almost 10 years. But it doesn't matter when coding and on desktop, you barely notice it, so it was fine.

So back to the beginning. You can probable already see a pattern here. I saw the Dell 32-inch 8k display and it's price tag, and also, running these 28-inch 4k-displays at 100% scaling is starting to feel a bit small at my age (40+), and also the vertical desktop real estate is starting to feel a bit tight. It was time to go 8k, but the problem is, there's only that small Dell display, and 55/65/75-inch TV:s out there.

When I began my research, somewhere around 2021/22, I was considering a 55-inch 8k TV from LG or Samsung. I was waiting for them to drop under 1000 euros and had those price alerts on several models. But it never happened. And the other thing, I did not have a PC capable of running 8k display, either. So basically I would need another 1000-2000 euros for a PC-upgrade. So I was pretty passive about the whole thing, and just waiting and looking around.

Then finally, at the end of 2023, things started to happen. I had some extra money, and also my old PC started acting up, so it was time to re-activate the whole 8jk ordeal. And I did. I did my research on the TV models, and there had been som 65-inch models dropping to under 1300 euros, so I knew there would be a deal soon.

And then it happened. Samsung QN700B 65-inch 999 euros. Order in. On the same day, a new PC order in. And after a week, I had my new setup!

Different models and options

Samsung has had an 8k TV lineup since 2021. There are QN700, 800 and 900 series, and there are some technical differences, but the price gaps are so huge that I didn't bother myself much on figuring those out. Since I was looking for a monitor, I won't be needing any AI upscaling features or nothing really, I'm only interested in the resolution. If you want to go into the rabbit hole, those 700/800/900 series have had new models every year, and the 2021 is model A, 2022 is model B, 2023 is model C and 2024 is model D. So this one is QN700B from 2022 and that's why it was so cheap. I probably would not have bought the A-model, there were some 800A:s on discount at the holidays, but this was pretty much the perfect option for me.

65-inch 8k TV as a monitor

I was worried about the size, of course. While 65-inch TV is basically four (4) 32-inch 4k display, you cannot adjust the big panel like you could with four display, so the viewing angles especially in the corners is a bit steep. It's hard to test beforehand, so I just went with it. 1000 euros for 65-inch TV is not much, and in the worst case (not usable as monitor) I could use it as a TV and continue with those AOC 4k displays for the time beign.

Fortunately, that was not the case. In short, this 65-inch 8k TV is just what I thought it would be. The viewing angles at the corners are bad but it's like 1/16th of the whole dispay, and I can keep messengers, calculators, calendars and things like that at the corners. With 4k displays I basically had two (2) 1920x2160 windows side by side on both monitors, and the vertical size was too small. So I configured the tiling to this one 8k desktop so that I would have 960px wide tiles on both sides and three (3) 1920px wide tiles in the middle, an 1:3 on the vertical, so basically I have three (3) 1920x1080 windows at the top middle, and three (3) 1920x3240 windows at the bottom. This is the way. I can have file explorer, gimp amd test browset at the top, putty/console at the sides, and big browser, console/code editor and another browser or console front and center, just perfect! And I still have plenty of space around for smaller windows.

I did have to try a battle station configuration with those old 4k displays and it is ridiculous. I honestly could not think anything to put on those side displays, so I took them out after a couple of weeks. My new PC supports four (4) displays so I had to try it, and if you would rather use 4k displays, it would be fine also. Maybe 55-inch 4k in the middle and a coulple of 28-inchers rotated at the sides. Depending on what you do.

I have bad news

I've been running Ubuntu as my main OS since mid-2000s, and would love to do that also with the new setup. I had high hopes since the new PC is an AMD system that everything would "just work", but that is not the case. Basically, you cannot get 8k@60 picture out from HDMI. You could MAYBE get it working from DP, but I don't have any on my PC nor the TV, and I will not waste my time trying with different cables and configs. I've got better things to do.

Funny thing, whey you boot up Ubuntu from live-USB and test it, it will give you 8k@30 out of the box, but when you install it, 4k is all you get. I would rather use 8k@30 than Windows 11 but for the time being, I have to get things done so I'm stuck with Windows 11 and taste of sick in my mouth.

Hopefully there is salvation in the future, but I've tried the newest Ubuntu 23.10 and also Kubuntu with no luck. I tried ChimeraOS as well, since it's made for AMD gaming rigs and Steamdeck, but it didn't work either. I will keep trying for as long as it takes, but since I have very limited time for tinkering, probably next time will be when Ubuntu 24.04 launches.

If I've understood correctly, the problem is with HDMI 2.1 standard, since it's not open source and something like that, but there is work being done on a daily basis, so hopefully in a next few months the issue will be resolved.

But it does work

On Windows 11 it works. But you need to adjust a bunch of settings on both the PC and the TV. In order to get 8k@60 working, the TV needs to be in Gaming Mode and PC needs to be on Freesync/G-sync mode to get the pure 4:4:4 picture out. Otherwise there will be an annoying net on top of the picture, and no way to get it off. But it does work as a monitor when you get the settings right, so it is in fact very usable as a monitor, if you need the desktop real estate of 7680x4320 pixels.