Brett Danton has spent part of this week unboxing and playing with the new ASUS ProArt PA32KCX 8K Display, and he is seriously impressed.
The ASUS ProArt Display PA32KCX was first unveiled at NAB 2024 and is the world’s first 8K Mini LED professional monitor. It has taken a while to come to market, but filmmaker and director Brett Danton has one of the first units to roll off the production line and, judging from his first impressions, it seems to be well worth the wait.
Despite working very much at the high end of the industry, Danton says he was initially a bit of a naysayer when it comes to 8K. But he draws a parallel with the early days of 4K being dismissed because people were looking at it in HD. Once they looked at it on genuine 4K monitors, they tended to be converted.
“I turn the PA32KCX on and I can suddenly see what I’m shooting in 6K RAW and what the camera is fully capable of,” he says. “Suddenly I felt that I was looking at real world stuff. The brightness on it, and the contrast, and the blacks on it are phenomenal. In terms of the image quality, it is quite phenomenal.
“I was expecting to go, ‘Oh yeah, that's better’. I wasn't expecting to go, ‘Oh my God’. And I literally went, ‘Oh my God!’."
At 275 pixels per inch (PPI) it has more than double the PPI of a 32-inch 4K display and up to 300% more onscreen space compared to similarly-sized 4K UHD displays.
Danton has it hooked up to a couple of different machines from Renderboxes; one built for editing with 2x Nvidia RTX A6000 cards, the other for rendering out 3D kitted with 14x (yes, 14) A6000 cards.
A built-in motorized flip colorimeter makes it easy to maintain the display’s professional-level accuracy over the long term, and it supports auto/self-calibration to ensure that calibration never interferes with creative workflows. Danton sees all this as a huge timesaver, but crucially the monitor reflects the way his work is heading. First, the way it fits into HDR workflows is a definite advantage, second it helps with reinforcing virtual production pipelines.
“We’ve got images coming out of things like Resolve and Omniverse that we're rendering out now to go on volumetric walls, and most of those are 8k minimum native,” he says. “ So, we were always guessing what the final image quality looked like. Now I can finally see exactly what it will look like on those volume stage walls.”
There are other more unexpected advantages too, partly as a consequence of the bumped up resolution, partly as a consequence of the monitor’s LuxPixel Technology that includes Anti-Glare, Low-Reflection (AGLR) tech, and Eye Care+. “I only turned this on the other day and I’m already feeling a lot better with my eyes,” he says. “They’re not having to strain as much, and that’s a benefit I wasn’t expecting.”
It’s early days with the monitor yet, but at around $8000, he already considers it strong value compared to reference monitor alternatives. “The next leap in monitors from this is up around the $25,000 or $30,000 mark I’d imagine,” he says.
Simply put, for professional HDR, grading, and high-resolution workflows, it is already now his main monitor. “If they took it away, I'd have a heart attack,” he concludes.
Those lucky enough to be out at IBC can see what the fuss is about on the ASUS stand in Hall 11.