Dell first unveiled its UltraSharp U3224KB 6K monitor back in early January at the CES 2023 trade show - this professional-grade 31.5-inch screen boasts Thunderbolt 4 connectivity and sports an impressive IPS Black panel (courtesy of LG Display) capable of displaying a super dense 6144 x 3456 pixel resolution. Today the North American technology company has announced that its U3224KB model is available to purchase at a price of $3,199 (CA $4,289.99).

The UltraSharp's competitive pricing undercuts the nearest competition by $1000 - Apple's Pro Display XDR is marginally better in terms of specifications, but potential buyers will get landed with a $5000 bill for the privilege of owning it. Dell is hoping that a bunch of handy features on its offering - including an in-built KVM, 4K HDR webcam, plenty of type USB-C & A ports, a Thunderbolt 4 port and dual 14 W speakers - will be enough to steal some professional clients from Team Cupertino.

For those of you that find a 4K monitor to lack in resolution, but 8K being a bit too pricey, Dell announced a 6K option at CES in the shape of the 32-inch U3224KB monitor. The IPS Black panel features a 6144 x 3456 pixel resolution with 178 degree viewing angles, a contrast ratio of 2000:1 and it's also VESA DisplayHDR 600 certified. As this is a professional monitor, it offers a colour gamut that meets 99 percent of the DCI-P3 colour space, as well as 100 percent of the sRGB and Rec. 709 standards.

On the connectivity side, it supports Thunderbolt 4, with one input and one throughput, which includes 140 W power delivery, the highest we've seen to date from a monitor. It also has a pair of additional pop-out front facing USB-C ports, which can deliver 15 W of power, as well as a USB-A port, all of which are able to deliver data speeds of up to 10 Gbps and four rear mounted USB-A ports. Display inputs consist of one HDMI 2.1, one mini DP 2.1, one USB-C with unknown DisplayPort standard support, as well as one of the Thunderbolt 4 ports. Finally the U3224KB also features an RJ45 jack for Ethernet connectivity.

AMD's upcoming Radeon RX 7000 series of graphics cards based on the RDNA 3 architecture are supposed to feature next-generation protocols all over the board. Today, according to a patch committed to the Linux kernel, we have information about display output choices AMD will present to consumers in the upcoming products. According to a Twitter user @Kepler_L2, who discovered this patch, we know that AMD will bundle DisplayPort 2.0 technology with UHBR 20 transmission mode. The UHBR 20 standard can provide a maximum of 80 Gbps bi-directional bandwidth, representing the highest bandwidth in a display output connector currently available. With this technology, a sample RDNA 3 GPU could display 16K resolution with Display Stream Compression, 10K without compression, or two 8K HDR screens running at 120 Hz refresh rate. All of this will be handled by Display Controller Next (DCN) engine for media.

The availability of DisplayPort 2.0 capable monitors is a story of its own. VESA noted that they should come at the end of 2021; however, they got delayed due to the lack of devices supporting this output. Having AMD's RDNA 3 cards as the newest product to support these monitors, we would likely see the market adapt to demand and few available products as the transition to the latest standard is in the process.

We are delighted to introduced the brand new CalDigit Thunderbolt Station 4, or TS4, offering a staggering 18 ports of connectivity in order to expand even the most demanding of workflows. This powerful new dock is available from today in the US, UK, EU, and available in the Rest of the World in Mid-March 2022. First introduced in 2013, the Thunderbolt Station line of docks have become highly acclaimed, and considered amongst the best in the docking category. The TS4 continues this trend by introducing class-leading features not available on other Thunderbolt 4 docks.

With 18 ports of connectivity, the TS4 leads the way in the wealth of connectivity options it provides. At a time when other Thunderbolt 4 docks on the market generally offer in the realm of 11 ports, the TS4 not only provides more ports, it represents incredible value. Included in the TS4's 18 ports is a full size DisplayPort 1.4 connector. The majority of Thunderbolt 4 docks at this time do not include a built-in video port. The TS4 makes it easier to connect a monitor directly to the dock without the need for an adapter.

The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) today announced that it has released version 2.0 of the DisplayPort (DP) audio/video standard. DP 2.0 is the first major update to the DisplayPort standard since March 2016, and provides up to a 3X increase in data bandwidth performance compared to the previous version of DisplayPort (DP 1.4a), as well as new capabilities to address the future performance requirements of traditional displays. These include beyond 8K resolutions, higher refresh rates and high dynamic range (HDR) support at higher resolutions, improved support for multiple display configurations, as well as improved user experience with augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR) displays, including support for 4K-and-beyond VR resolutions.

The advantages of DP 2.0 are enjoyed across both the native DP connector as well as the USB Type-C connector, which carries the DP audio/video signal through DisplayPort Alt Mode. DP 2.0 is backward compatible with previous versions of DisplayPort and incorporates all of the key features of DP 1.4a, including support for visually lossless Display Stream Compression (DSC) with Forward Error Correction (FEC), HDR metadata transport, and other advanced features. The increased video bandwidth performance of DP 2.0 carried over the USB-C connector enables simultaneous higher-speed USB data transfer without compromising display performance. DP 2.0 leverages the Thunderbolt 3 physical interface (PHY) layer while maintaining the flexibility of DP protocol in order to boost the data bandwidth and promote convergence across industry-leading IO standards.

Apple today introduced the all-new Mac Pro, a completely redesigned, breakthrough workstation for pros who push the limits of what a Mac can do, and unveiled Apple Pro Display XDR, the world's best pro display. Designed for maximum performance, expansion and configurability, the all-new Mac Pro features workstation-class Xeon processors up to 28 cores, a high-performance memory system with a massive 1.5TB capacity, eight PCIe expansion slots and a graphics architecture featuring the world's most powerful graphics card. It also introduces Apple Afterburner, a game-changing accelerator card that enables playback of three streams of 8K ProRes RAW video simultaneously.

Pro Display XDR features a massive 32-inch Retina 6K display with gorgeous P3 wide and 10-bit color, an extreme 1,600 nits of peak brightness, an incredible 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and a superwide viewing angle, all at a breakthrough price point. Together, the new Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR are the most powerful tools Apple has ever put in the hands of pro customers and will change pro workflows forever.