Dell UP3218K: What Real Users Say About the 8K IPS Gamble

The reviews on this monitor are absolutely brutal. This was a very early 8K display - one which had it's fair share of issues. Given the price though, I think this is an easy thing to overlook if you need this kind of resolution

Dell is actually being humble about the original price here. It was actually closer to $5,000 rather than $4,000 when it came out in 2017. lol

For workflows like writing software where pixel count is far more important than color accuracy these are excellent. I have some 2014 vintage UltraSharps as my workstation monitors because they were cheap 4K panels in 2018, and even 12 years later the horrific color accuracy just doesn't matter at all when the only color on my screen is syntax highlighting and the Office Ribbon.

This is an editors monitor. If you have to make a joke about it, this monitor is clearly not targeted at you.

This monitor needs two DP cables connected to achieve 8K@60fps. It has 10-bit color and comes pre-calibrated. However with a peak brightness of 400 nits it's not real HDR.

After doing extensive research, I would say stay away unless you have $200 to burn and don't care. Multiple threads on Dell support forums and reddit. It's a 7 yo monitor. Requires BOTH DP ports to be used to get to the 8k resolution (@60Hz).

4k for text is underrated. I switched from a 27 inch 4k60 to a 27 inch 1440p144 because the 4k60 died, and the loss in text sharpness is real

It's 60Hz though. I feel like for a gamer this just doesn't make sense.

I will use them to view pictures, not for video or gaming.

Just thought it was interesting to note that this is retina at 12" or greater away while 4k in this size is 24". So the only way you get anything out of the 8k is if you sit within 24" of your 31 inch monitor, which is a field of vision of like 70 degrees haha.

Beast of a monitor, and it's glossy! Too rich for my blood though. My 4K 27" IPS cost me ~$300. I could buy 8 more of those for the price of one of these...

I bought a UP3218K in 2020 and a couple of months later it stopped working. After getting a replacement the replacement monitor started acting up again in 2021. They sent me a replacement... The 2021 replacement only lasted 1.5 years and started having problems again, so I had to send it in again in 2023. Got it replaced and now in the end of 2024 it is acting up AGAIN! But now they won't help me anymore because the replacement is a couple of months older than 1 year. This monitor cost 5000$. It broke 3 times and they won't care anymore.

If you think of it as an 18 month, $200 rental of a type of screen that would cost way more to usually get it makes more sense. I guess you are paying 10 bucks a month to use an 8k monitor. It might last for a year, it might last for two... who knows!

As someone who runs 4K on 100% scaling I'd find the extra pixels on 8K slightly useful

prob a price mistake, but don't want it @ 60hz

Pretty good deal for high end content creators

I remember reading about this thing back in the Winter 2017 Dell mailer. If my order doesn't get cancelled and I can at least get 2 years out of this thing, this'll be nuts to have.

I think you probably have to have pretty bad judgement to buy an 8k monitor that your system cannot run and from which you see no tangible benefit from. Then even worse judgement to want to buy it again, despite seeing how terrible an idea it is.

according to Apple, 5k at 27 inches from a comfortable viewing angle is good enough that you can't see any pixels, so i suppose 8k at 31 inches is all you'll ever need? i still rather wait for micro led before dropping so much money on THE FINAL MONITOR.

Damn, 275 PPI. Pretty close to phone display density.

The 5FPS gameplay proves we're not ready to game on 8K panels quite yet, but looks beautiful

wow finally its come down from 5k. A fair price to consider would be twice the price of current 4k 32inch monitors.

Order was cancelled. No warning, no apology coupon, nothing. For a nearly decade old monitor with as many downsides as this one Dell sure wasn't willing to let it go easy.

In for one now I have to figure how to get two DP out of my Mac Studio.

Linus says 8k doesnt matter unless it's on a 'giant cover your entire wall' sized display.

The only reason I would want to get this monitor is because it's glossy.

We have a few of these floating around at work. Someone with no budget must've thought it would be a good idea to buy them. We also have really shitty Windows 7 HP EliteBook laptops without discrete graphics that can't even run them properly. Hell even the workstation-class desktops can barely push them.

I was fortunate to own one of these for a few months. I was able to run CS:GO on my Ryzen 5 1600 and RX 580 at native resolution. Got about 20 frames/second. Absolutely crazy. Thing got also ridiculously hot, literally weighed like 32 pounds and would have an issue of not always turning on with the power button and needed a full power cycle. But despite all those problems, boy did it look nice. Still not worth it IMO, but then again, I'm not the target audience for this.

Doesn't matter it's 8K at 32". For that price I want OLED...

I have a 24" 4K and I can see aliasing and individual pixels in it. I do sit pretty close (about 18").

Dell UP3218K: Bought the first one a few years back, started having flickering bars 18 months after purchase. Completely unusable within 24 months. Got a brand new one 15 months ago, bars started after 9 months, now borderline unusable. Dell acts like this is news to them each time. There are multiple reports from loads of users of the same problem.

For all the beauty this monitor has, it also has its problems... it's a complete disaster (unfortunately, because the combination of 8K resolution and 32-inch size is unmatched). I've already replaced this monitor with Dell about 7 times. All sorts of problems (vertical lines, flickering, half of the screen being dead)... and that's completely ignoring the 'aesthetic' issues of IPS panels (light leakage, lack of uniformity, etc.).

They don't send new monitors as replacements, they send refurbished ones. Which are basically cleaned up warranty failures. So once your monitor fails, all the replacements are very likely to also fail. I've owned 4 or 5 of these monitors (brand new) and each one of them has failed within a few years. The replacements have also failed, but earlier.

I have the same UP3218K monitor - and it quickly developed flickering lines on the bottom, which makes the taskbar unusable - had to move it to the top edge. I am really pissed off, that such a high-end gear does constantly fails - and judging by the internet reports, it actually never worked properly. DELL should offer a buy-back of this crap for their initial price.

Well that settles that.. I was literally about to place my order for the 31 inch ultra sharp and I decided to do some last minute reading. So glad I did. Thanks for sharing!! I will be going with a 4k OLed monitor! I have the gtx 5090 and i9, so I know I can use the 8k, but no way I wanna go through that nightmare with Dell telling me to kick rocks.

I have two of them and both work. I switch to 4k resolution to play games. I originally bought the RTX 3090 for that, but the Nvidia CPUs can't do integer scaling on more than one output and this monitor needs two inputs. So I bought the Radeon RX 6900 XT, where the integer scaling is not perfect (still a bit blurry), but it's quite good.

I have had one for a month now and I love it. Love the high pixel count BUT my Apple iMac 5K that is 5 years old still looks better.

Running Windows at 100% scaling on one of these is hilarious, could barely read the menus the text was so small. But gotta say, even playing 8K YouTube videos on it was a real treat, was really surprised how much of a difference compared to 4K it was, especially given the relatively small panel size for the resolution.

for a $3000 monitor, the contrast is still trash and IPS is not a good fit for this thing at all.

Just so you know when you ask for a replacement from Dell they will send you a product that IS NOT NEW. So it may be defective too in some way or been used before. That's what I dealt with in 2018 when I bought their 2K monitor and it had a hotpixel. They sent me refurbished (not new) monitors instead.

60hz lmfao

The replacement monitor is one year old, correct, but the warranty started when you purchased the original monitor. The reviews for your 8k monitor are really bad, it seems like most people have had problems with it.