By Mike McCarthy

Not long after Dell announced its newest top-end HDR monitor, the UltraSharp 32 HDR PremierColor UP3221Q back in early October, they sent me one to test out. The UP3221Q is an HDR1000-certified 31.5-inch UHD display with 1000 nits of brightness, displaying images from HDMI, DisplayPort or Thunderbolt inputs. It can display both HLG and HDR10 PQ content and has a built-in colorimeter for precise calibration.

The backlight is composed of over 2,000 independently controllable mini-LEDs (or dimming zones) to control the brightness in different areas of the screen, allowing higher overall contrast. This feature is what sets this $5K monitor apart from other lower-budget HDR displays. Its true 10-bit IPS panel claims to cover 99.8% of the DCI-P3 spectrum and 83% of the BT.2020 spectrum.

Testing It Out
I connected the DisplayPort input to my Nvidia GPU output and the HDMI input to my AJA Kona 5 card. GPU outputs of your operating system UI will always be HDR10 PQ, while I usually have my Kona 5 set to HLG output. I find that setup tends to work best from Adobe Premiere, especially with 60p content. This is my first DisplayPort HDR device. All of my previous HDR monitors and TVs have run on HDMI, usually over DisplayPort adapters from my Quadro cards, which have given me issues in the past.

Plugging in the DisplayPort cable and turning on HDR in the display settings worked immediately. I didn’t have to fiddle with the refresh rate and color format in the Nvidia Control Panel like I usually need to do to get my HDMI devices to work in HDR. The Kona output was already set to HLG because I had the SDI output running to another display for comparison. This allowed me to switch between inputs on the Dell in order to see my HLG video output or my HDR10 extended desktop.

The Dell monitor remembers that the DP is HDR10 and the HDMI is HLG as I switch between the inputs, which I really appreciate. The next step would be to get monitors to automatically identify which of those signals is coming in. I initially thought this unit did that, but now it appears that it just correctly guessed my HDR10 PQ because that’s the default. It does automatically switch between SDR and HDR modes when the incoming signal changes.

Thunderbolt
Besides the DisplayPort and dual HDMI 2.0 inputs, it also has a ThunderBolt 3-compatible USB-C port. This can drive the monitor from a DisplayPort-enabled USB port or from any Thunderbolt 3 (TB3) port and provides up to 90W of power for the host system. This also enables the two integrated USB ports — and in the case of Thunderbolt, a downstream pass-through port — to add more TB3 devices to the bus chain, with up to 15W of power to run them. The unit does not have integrated speakers, but it does have an analog audio output for sound coming from the HDMI or DP sources.

The monitor includes a USB-A to USB-C cable and a Thunderbolt 3 cable, which it says not to use in a non-Thunderbolt USB-C port. It also includes power, DisplayPort and HDMI cables (no Mini-DP option like previous Dell monitors have had). After testing DisplayPort and HDMI input with my desktop workstation, I connected the monitor to my Razer 15 laptop over Thunderbolt 3. The display works immediately when connected via Thunderbolt, but the USB ports and downstream TB3 port do not work until you explicitly allow access to them by approving the connection in Intel’s Thunderbolt utility.

The fact that the user is not prompted to do this upon connection and has to know to look in the utility is an ongoing issue that I have experienced on other systems as well. This is not a problem caused by this particular Dell display, or Dell at all, but potential users should be aware of it. I was able to use my 10GbE to TB3 adapter on the downstream port and, once enabled, my USB peripherals worked as well.

In order to enable HDR output, Windows wants users to connect the power adapter. While the display provides 90W of power over the TB3 cable, this isn’t enough for some larger power-hungry laptops like mine. Once I was plugged into the wall, HDR worked great. The Razer’s 15-inch HD screen is actually very bright, but it does not show nearly as much detail in the highlights as the Dell’s true HDR display. I displayed the same frame on both screens, and it was obvious that while the brightness levels were similar, the highlights were blown out much more on the SDR screen.

Next, I tried my HP ZBook X2 but with a slightly different experience. In this case, the Thunderbolt connection did power my device, but I was not able to activate HDR output to it, presumably due to the older Quadro M620 GPU and Intel 620 integrated graphics. But I was able to use the USB and TB3 ports once I approved the connection. I don’t recommend buying this monitor unless you have the proper hardware to drive it in HDR. In the case of video editors, that probably includes having a professional IO card, although eventually a good GPU should be all that is required.

On-Screen Controls
The monitor has a lot of options available to the user as well as extensive menus. The settings are controlled by a joystick on the back of the display, which is easy and intuitive to use but uncomfortably close to the power button. Pressing the joystick brings you to an initial quick menu for changing the input, color space and calibration. Pushing the joystick up brings you to a more traditional two-column menu to control the rest of the monitor’s settings.

The one thing I didn’t like about the menu was that when changing inputs (which I did a lot), the UI always defaulted to the “Auto” option on the left, not the currently selected input denoted by a checkbox. I would always reflexively push left to select the previous input, which actually closes the whole menu. Instead, I need to push to the right from Auto until I get to the input I want.

On a related note, leaving “Auto Select” enabled in the “Input Source” menu caused the display to switch away from HDMI every time my Kona card changed resolutions or frame rates. Something similar would happen when rebooting if I was sharing the monitor between a laptop and desktop. So I would disable “Auto Select” if you ever expect to have simultaneous inputs, and that will no longer be a problem.

The monitor offers a number of other high-end features for various use cases. In the Display menu, there is an Aspect Ratio setting. This isn’t something I would normally mess with, but in this case, it offers some interesting options. The monitor can accept 4096×2160 signals, even though it has a 3840×2160 panel. The Aspect Ratio menu gives three options for how this mismatch can be handled. Setting it to 16:9 will squeeze the image horizontally to fit the content on the screen. Setting it to 17:9 will scale it down and letterbox it, maintaining the aspect ratio, while choosing Pixel-For-Pixel will crop off the extra pixels on the sides. All of those options have their uses, and Dell did a good job of including that level of support for Cinema 4K resolutions on its UHD resolution panel.

Cinema Masking offers the option to letterbox the image at 1.85, 2.35 or 2.39, with (my favorite) varying levels of opacity for that mask. I usually accomplish this in software by adding an image layer to my timeline, but this feature achieves the same result without further taxing my graphics card. It can also overlay markers for various aspect ratios, action and title safe boundaries, or others. (The “crosshairs” option might be applicable to HDR gamers.) They can be set to red, green, blue or gray. My only complaint here is that only one marker can be activated at a time. It would be great to check as many as you want; for example, both action and title safe can be simultaneously useful.

There are also options to control over-scan, response time, sharpness, blue-channel-only and other features. There is also a Picture-By-Picture (PBP) mode, which allows you to view data from two different inputs. Activating this mode changes the default resolution in Windows to 1920×2160, but that can be overridden. Whatever you send to it, the monitor will scale it to one side of the screen so it can be compared to whatever is coming in from the other selected input. The two inputs can be displayed in different color spaces, or a single input can be displayed twice in different color spaces. But using this mode appears to totally disable HDR support, and the only use I would have for this feature would be viewing an image in both SDR and HDR simultaneously. I believe this function is really targeted at graphics artists looking at proofs in different color spaces for print and web.

Calibration
The calibration and validation functions are simple from a user’s perspective. They can be run on a set schedule, or they can easily be initiated from the onscreen menu. Once started, the inputs are ignored and the built-in calibration engine feeds various color patches to the screen. The colorimeter sensor pops up from behind a panel at the bottom of the screen to evaluate the on-screen image. The mechanism operating that sensor is more complicated than the rotating dropdown in the HP DreamColor I tested in the past, but the result is a slicker bezel. The calibration process takes a while, about 10 minutes for each color space that the user selects to calibrate.

As an HDR Reference Display
The image quality and brightness of the screen is great, and not too far behind the much more expensive Canon reference monitor that I have been testing recently. But there are quite a few differences between the two products. The Dell is designed as a computer monitor, and as such, it supports DisplayPort and Thunderbolt inputs instead of SDI. Both can accept the HDMI output from my GPU or Kona 5 card, but I have really grown to appreciate the signal analysis tools on the Canon display.

I believe similar functionality could be achieved when using this Dell display as a full-screen HDR video monitor — pass the HDMI signal through a small video monitor before looping to the display itself, or passing an SDI feed to one separately from the Kona card would definitely work. Small monitors designed to be connected to on-set cameras frequently have waveform and other analysis tools that could provide similar function, but I have not had a chance to try this idea yet.

The difference in peak brightness is noticeable with the right content, specifically targeted at 2,000 nits, but most HDR content is currently being targeted at 1,000-nit displays because few end users will be able to view anything brighter than that for quite a while. So this unit should surpass the needs of most artists working in HDR, especially those in the broadcast space, where HLG content and UHD resolution are the most popular way to work. The  Dell unit also takes about 10 seconds to re-sync when waking up or changing resolutions, which seems longer than most monitors. And the built-in colorimeter, of course, should allow it to reliably maintain its accuracy for color-critical tasks.

Usage
This unit comes with a nice folding glare hood, which, when used, really makes it look professional. The hood is shaped to form to the bezel and is held firmly in place by magnets. Without the hood, this unit pairs well with my similarly priced https://postperspective.com/review-dells-8k-lcd-monitor, as they are the same size screen. Both include fully adjustable stands and have loosely similar bezels. The HDR unit is thicker at the bottom due to the integrated colorimeter. When the 8K is set to UHD resolution, or 200% scaling at 8K, its 140PPI matches this HDR display seamlessly. While I have grown to like my 8K display more and more over the last three years — as more software continues to provide better support for its high-DPI screen — it’s not for everyone.

The color accuracy and dynamic range offered by the UP3221Q will probably be a greater benefit to a majority of high-end content creators, but I still find my UP3218K to be the optimal UI monitor for my specific needs. That is also because my Adobe applications currently only support HDR on the dedicated hardware outputs. Once those applications are HDR-aware within the OS, artists will be able to operate in HDR directly within their application panels. This will greatly increase the potential value of an HDR display like this as a UI monitor.

Final Thoughts
This is a well-designed, top-of-the-line monitor targeting users for whom color accuracy is critical and high dynamic range is a necessity. Some video creators would be better served by an HDR TV, but if your space doesn’t allow for that, or you need HDR in your UI, this is a top choice.

In my opinion, VFX artists who are compositing HDR content should be viewing their work in HDR as they are working. Users in the print and design space may never fully use the HDR functionality, but they might want the accurate color reproduction capabilities and the functionality to compare their images in multiple color spaces at once. My recommendation would be to make sure you need this before you buy it, but for those who do need it, I don’t think you will be disappointed by its performance.

Mike McCarthy is an online editor/workflow consultant with 10 years of experience on feature films and commercials. He has been involved in pioneering new solutions for tapeless workflows, DSLR filmmaking and multi-screen and surround video experiences. Check out his site.