Most consumers have been sitting on 1080p for quite some time, and with 4K monitors running into the thousands, that's not without good reason. A new partnership between Intel and Samsung is planning to shake that up at half the price of high-end monitors very soon.
According to some in-house research at Intel, in 2013 more than 90 percent of monitors were running at 1080p or less. Modern PCs can generally handle 4K for everyday tasks (gaming is a whole other story), and it's odd to see such a large sector of the tech field stuck with a standard that saw popular adoption almost a decade ago. With standard phones and tablets pushing resolutions quite a bit beyond 1080p, Intel's saying it's time the PC plays catch-up for once.
Intel's partnership wants to bring the cost of a 23.6-inch PLS 4K screen down to $399, from a rate of $800-$1000. The chip manufacturer has also been clear stating that they don't want to sacrifice quality to bring these price drops.
No release dates have been mentioned either, just that there is a clear plan to put desktop-class 4K monitors into more consumers' hands. One of the biggest roadblocks thus far has been the investment it takes to bump up the scale of production. If Intel is bankrolling a portion of that, there's no reason to expect these price drops to take too long. This could also play straight into a larger game plan by Intel. More consumers with bigger, better screens will be more likely to start picking up better and pricier chips. Regardless, cheaper products are good for everyone, so hopefully, we'll see the effects of the partnership sooner rather than later.
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