What Do You Want From A Display?
That question is really what it all boils down to; what features do you absolutely have to have and what are you willing to pay for it? This particular display hits a lot of most people want in a general purpose display. It isn’t curved nor ultrawide for gamers, but that is what their Dark Matter and Zero-G lines do; which we should see in a future review. The colour gamut won’t overly impress graphic artists, but they won’t be shopping for a $360 monitor in the first place.
HDR fans will also be a little disappointed, while it does offer an HDR10 toggle it still only offers HDR400. Intel and NVIDIA can handle 10-bit colour and HDR, but remember if you run AMD you can’t have both. If you enable HDR10 on the display with 10-bit enabled in the driver it will be still be disabled in Windows, though the monitor will still try, and your screen will randomly toggle between two brightness levels; not specific to this display but something you need to remember. The fact that it disables a number of options when HDR is enabled is a casualty of the price point, a more talented display is going to cost you more.
If you are looking for a way to expand the screen size on a laptop you work on then the CrystalPro monitor series is an easy bet. USB-C connectivity means it will work with your laptop without needing a display cable adapter, and if that laptop doesn’t have a discrete GPU then the 65W of power delivery means you won’t need a second power cable either. Since it also turns your monitor into a USB hub for your mouse and keyboard, it frees up the limited ports on your laptop itself to make your day easier. The fact you can instantly switch from landscape to portrait and back right out of the box may be very useful as well.
If you do have a desktop or a mobile discrete card, you won’t be able to charge off of the monitor but once the workday is over DLSS or FSR allow you to upscale your game to play at 4k, or at least a little better resolution than your GPU can handle natively. It will also make your TV and movies look a lot better. If the IPS panel isn’t your cup of tea, the 32″ CrystalDisplay monitor is VA and has an MSRP of $399.99 which is not a big jump in price.
As of posting both are currently on sale, the 28″ CrystalDisplay monitor is currently $289.99 while the 32″ is a mere $20 more. It’s hard not to recommend them at those prices.
