At CES this week, Dell unveiled a few nifty ideas for work and play. The most eye-catching, especially for artists, is the Dell Canvas, a digital artist's workstation in the same realm as the Surface Studio that Microsoft showed off a few months ago. Also on show was a 32-inch monitor packing in 8K resolution, a wirelessly chargeable 2-in-1, and a refresh of the company's other laptops, all-in-ones (AIOs) and monitors.
To replace the old keyboard and mouse setup, the Dell Canvas can register input from a variety of sources. For starters, it's basically a big touchscreen, so users can prod and drag at it with their fingers, the included stylus, or a combination of those, and the Canvas will detect up to 20 points of touch at a time. Removable knobs that Dell calls Totems come standard, adding an extra button and a dial-turning input to the device. However, unlike the Surface Dial, the Totems aren't wireless and need to be in contact with the display to work.
Depending on how hunched over you like to work, the Canvas can be laid flat on the desk or propped up on an angle of up to 40 degrees. The screen itself is 27 inches with a resolution of 2,560 x 1,440, reproducing over a billion colors across 100 percent of the Adobe RGB color gamut. On the software side of things, it runs on Windows 10 devices (sorry, Mac creatives) and is apparently compatible with art programs from companies like Adobe, Autodesk, Microsoft, AVID, Dassault Systems and SolidWorks.
While consumers are starting to pay more attention to 4K, manufacturers are setting their sights on 8K. Dell's UltraSharp 32 isn't the first computer monitor to display in 8K – that honor goes to Japan Display's 17-inch screen a couple years ago – but it does look like the biggest, at 32 inches, and will probably be the first you could actually buy. That is, if you have a spare US$5,000 lying around. With that price tag and few consumer applications, this sort of screen is more suited to commercial use, like medical imaging and photo and video editing, where the image can be zoomed in and out without losing detail.
Among the other announcements are the Latitude 7285, a 12-inch 2-in-1 that can be wirelessly charged when placed on a mat. Several new monitors, including the Dell 27 Ultrathin and the 24 and 27 InfinityEdge Monitors, can display in high-dynamic range (HDR), and in the audio department, Dell says its XPS 27 AIO is the best sounding All-in-one out there, with 10 speakers blasting 50 W per channel. Meanwhile, the Precision 7720 is a "mobile workstation" (read: business-focused laptop) designed specifically for developing VR content, and other products in the XPS, Inspiron and Alienware lines are getting a tune-up, with the inclusion of Intel's 7th-gen processors and newer GPUs from Nvidia and AMD.
The XPS 27 AIO is available now for $1,499. Both InfinityEdge monitors are due February 23, with the 24 costing $289, and the 27 starting at $379. The Precision 7720 releases February 28 beginning at $1,699, and the 27 Ultrathin Monitor launches March 23 for $699. That same day, the Dell UltraSharp 32 Ultra HD 8K Monitor also launches for $4,999, and the Dell Canvas will follow on March 30, for $1,799. Others, like the Latitude 7285, will be detailed at a later date.
Source: Dell
