Dell Alienware AW5520QF OLED 55″ Display with 120Hz Refresh Rate
News piece now updated from 20/8/19 with new information.
Hopefully you’re already aware of the “Big Format Gaming Displays” (BFGD) that NVIDIA have been promoting over the last year or so, including at this year’s CES event in Las Vegas. Those are very large format 65″ LCD displays aimed at gaming, offering 4K resolutions, 144Hz refresh rate, NVIDIA G-sync and a 384-zone FALD backlight for HDR. The first of those 65″ BFGD’s to be available is expected to be the HP Omen X Emperium 65 which we talked about earlier this week. This week, Dell have announced their own large format gaming display in the form of the Alienware 55. Unlike the BFGD’s though, this is an OLED screen!
At the time of the original news piece, this screen was in the early design stage, with a lot of specs and features still to be determined. Dell stated that it will indeed be released later in 2019. We do have some more recent information though as of August 2019 which has been incorporated in to this news piece.
The Alienware 55 features an OLED panel with a 3840 x 2160 Ultra HD resolution, and offers premium performance that can be found in the TV market quite widely already, but that has not been available in the desktop display market in any meaningful way yet. Whether you could really call this screen a “monitor” is very questionable, it’s more of a TV without the built-in tuners and SmartTV features. We focus really on desktop monitors here at TFT Central, but thought this was an interesting screen to mention nevertheless.
One of the key things which separates this display from most OLED TV’s (but not all, given some more recent options) is the support for a 120Hz refresh rate, and adaptive sync variable refresh rates. This means the screen is ideal for gaming from systems and devices which support high refresh rates and VRR technologies. This means that the screen can work from both supported AMD FreeSync and NVIDIA G-sync systems. A 0.5ms response time spec is also offered, made possible thanks to the OLED technology.
The OLED panel offers superior deep blacks, amazing contrast ratio, high end HDR experience and amazing colours. There is a 130,000:1 contrast ratio specified thanks to the OLED panel. There is a 98.5% DCI-P3 colour gamut along with a 400 cd/m2 brightness spec. Oddly, the screen apparently won’t support HDR at all, but we’re not sure why this has been left off as the OLED technology seemed ideal for this kind of content.
The design of the screen is very striking, with ultra-thin bezels and a sleek design. There is a glossy screen coating with an anti-reflective finish. The back of the screen has a minimalist look, matching the company’s new “Legend” design and has a removable plastic section which hides the connection ports and VESA mounting holes. There are some RGB lighting features as well including a light strip across the back. A remote control is included to help make adjustment of the screen easier.
The stand offers tilt, height and swivel adjustments. For connections there are DisplayPort 1.4 (needed for 4K @ 120Hz), 3x HDMI 2.0, 4x USB 3.0, S/PDIF out and a headphone jack provided. There are also 2x 14W integrated speakers.
The screen should be available from 30th September 2019 in the USA, with an RRP of $3999.99, and 30th October 2019 in the UK at £3,199.99.
Update 13/11/19 – the screen is currently available from Amazon.com at $3599 USD, Amazon.de at 2186 Euro and from Amazon.co.uk at £3199.99
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