Dell’s new 40in ultrawide UHD U4021QW is the ultimate WFH accessory

As a rule of thumb, if you want an ultrawide monitor, you have to compromise on resolution. There are a couple of exceptions to this, but generally speaking 4K resolution and above is reserved for standard 16:9 monitors.

That’s what makes Dell’s new UltraSharp 40 – or U4021QW to use its more unwieldy model number – so interesting, and the proud winner of a CES 2021 Innovation Award.

It’s a 40in ultrawide curved monitor with what is known as a 5K2K resolution – that’s 5,120 x 2,160. That’s not quite 5K thanks to its 21:9 aspect ratio, but with around 140 pixels per inch, the screen is comparable to a 32in 4K display, only with plenty more room to play with.

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It’s pitched squarely at content creators and creative professionals, with Dell making a big deal about its colour accuracy. The company claims that the 10-bit display covers 100% of the sRGB and 98% of the DCI-P3 colour spectrums, allowing it to accurately produce 1.07 billion shades.

It’s also rich in connectivity options, which I’ll list below, to avoid an awkward run-on sentence where I desperately search for synonyms of the word “port”:

• 2 x HDMI 2.0
• 1 x Thunderbolt 3
• 1 x DisplayPort 1.4
• 4 x USB-A
• 1 x USB-B upstream
• 1 x USB-C
• 1 x Ethernet
• 1 x 3.5mm headphone/audio jack

The monitor has a 2500R curvature, built-in KVM functionality and internal 9W speakers but, despite its many selling points, it does have a few drawbacks compared to smaller, lower-resolution screens. The 5ms response time is fine, but it’s 60Hz making it less smooth than some and its peak brightness reportedly only hits 300 nits, which is a little on the low side.

All the same with such a shortage of options for ultrawide UHD, the U4021QW certainly will certainly have a ready-made market when it launches on January 28 – even if its $2,100 (~£1,555) price tag will put it out of the reach of most budgets.