LG DualUp Monitor review: The 16:18 monitor you didn’t know you needed

Have you ever been thinking about buying a new monitor and wishing the store had one with a 16:18 aspect ratio? Of course not. No one has. But LG thought we needed one, and here we are with the new DualUp Monitor; and I’m shocked at how easy it is to call it one of the best monitors around.

First of all, it’s actually just a good monitor, with a wide color gamut and accurate colors out of the box. It’s got a high resolution too, so it’s really not missing anything.

And then there’s the aspect ratio, which lends itself nicely to any content that scrolls vertically. You can also nicely stack two windows on top of each other.

LG DualUp Monitor

The LG DualUp Monitor has a 16:18 aspect ratio, making it the size and shape of two 16:9 screens on top of each other

Features:

Pros: Cons:

See at Best Buy

Navigate this review:

• LG DualUp Monitor pricing and availability
• LG DualUp Monitor: Specs
• The screen: What can you do with a 16:18 display?
  • Display quality
  • The LG Ergo Stand
  • The unique 16:18 form factor
• Should you buy the LG DualUp Monitor?

LG DualUp Monitor pricing and availability

• The LG DualUp Monitor is available now for $699.99

The LG DualUp Monitor went on sale in mid-June, and comes in at $699.99. There are no options for this item, such as colors or different configurations, so that’s really all you need you know. You can get it from vendors like Amazon, Best Buy, and LG.com.

LG DualUp Monitor: Specs

• 27.6-inch SDQHD (2560 x 2880) Nano IPS Display
• 3-Side Virtually Borderless Design
• DCI-P3 98% (Typ.), sRGB 135% (Typ.), 1.07B Colors
• HDR 10, Color Calibrated
• 300nits (Typ.) Brightness
• HDMI 2.0 x2, DisplayPort 1.4 x1, USB 2.0 1up, USB 3.0 2down, H/P out
• USB Type-C x1 (Power Delivery 90W)
• Live Color Low Blue Light, Ambient Light Sensor
• PBP (2 Source, 1 Source)
• Ergo Stand
  Extend/Retract 210mm, Swivel -335~335°,
  Height 130mm, Down Height 35mm, Pivot 90° (Counterclockwise),
  Tilt -25~25° Adjustable Stand
• 7W x 2ch Stereo Speakers (with Waves MaxxAudio)

The screen: What can you do with a 16:18 display?

• The LG DualUp has a 27.6-inch 16:18 display, which is the size of two 21.5-inch 16:9 displays stacked on top of each other
• It’s really good for vertical scrolling and for putting two wide apps on-screen at once

Display quality

As far as screen quality goes, it’s really good. I wanted to come right out of the gate and say that, because it’s really easy for companies to try something radically new, and in the effort to get there, abandon all of the rest of the things on the checklist of items that are needed for a good product. That’s not what happened here. The DualUp has an all-new form factor and it’s still a great monitor.

It supports 100% sRGB, 87% NTSC, 91% Adobe RGB, and 94% P3, which is pretty great overall.

Brightness maxed out at 344.3 nits, which is impressive since LG only promises 300 nits. It also exceeds the promised 1,000:1 contrast ratio, and it well exceeds the promised 700:1 minimum contrast ratio. As far as display quality goes, there’s some underpromising and overdelivering going on here.

The LG Ergo Stand

It supports USB-C, DisplayPort, and HDMI, as you’d expect, and interestingly, it comes with the LG Ergo Stand instead of a standard desktop monitor stand. At first, I hated that it didn’t come with a traditional monitor stand that sits on a desk, since that’s just what I’m used to.

However, the Ergo Stand grew on me rather quickly. It makes the screen easy to adjust, and it doesn’t take up space on my desk, freeing up room for other things (obviously it’s junk but we won’t talk about how consistently messy my desk is).

The LG DualUp changes what I want in a monitor.

Also, it’s nice and easy to adjust the height and angle of the screen, and you can rotate it too. However
you want to use it, you can. It’s really useful if you adjust your workflow throughout the day. For example, I use a standing desk, and I use it in different positions when standing and when sitting. I also adjust it sometimes for calls, since this is a tall display, and webcam angle can be an issue.

You can also rotate the display. It’s not uncommon for someone to take a 16:9 monitor and turn it to 9:16, but this monitor is actually designed for that portrait orientation. You can still rotate it from 16:18 to 18:16 if you want something just a bit wider.

The unique 16:18 form factor

Like I said in the very beginning of this article, I never imagined that I’d like a display with an aspect ratio like this, but here we are. It’s quite good. There are two key use cases. The first that I noticed was vertical scrolling. I’m a writer, so when I have a long draft, I can see more of it at a time than I can with a standard 16:9 display. You have to remember that in any CMS, there are also other blocks of things besides just the text editor, so more space means a better writing experience.

This goes for reading too, or just general web browsing. If you’re reading this review on an LG DualUp Monitor, you’ll just be able to see more at once. It also just feels natural to read in portrait orientation; I think that’s something that we’ve figured out with phones and tablets.

I was amazed at how easily the DualUp fit into my workflow.

The other key use case is snapping windows side-by-side, meaning top and bottom. This screen is 27.6 inches measured diagonally with a 16:18 aspect ratio, so it’s the same as two 21.5-inch monitors on top of each other. The downside is that a 21.5-inch monitor is really small, so that’s the width that you’re getting here.

But what’s cool is that you can put two 16:9 apps on top of each other. Now, of course you could do that with two monitors, but thanks to how snapping in Windows 11 works, you can adjust the sizes. Maybe you want the top window to take up two thirds of the screen and the bottom one to be smaller. With one monitor, it’s easier to do that.

Ultimately, the LG DualUp Monitor is really flexible and useful. I was amazed at how quickly and easily it fit into my workflow.

Should you buy the LG DualUp Monitor?

The LG DualUp Monitor is certainly unique, but it’s definitely not for everyone.

You should buy the LG DualUp Monitor if:

• You do a lot of vertical scrolling, whether that’s from reading, writing, and so on
• You find stacking apps on top of each other useful, at different sizes

You should NOT buy the LG DualUp Monitor if:

• You need a monitor that’s wider than a 21.5-inch 16:9 screen
• You want something more traditional

As mentioned earlier, the cool thing about stacking apps on top of each other on a monitor like this is that you can resize them. For example, the app on top can take up two thirds of the screen, something you can’t comfortably do with dual monitors. Of course, the big drawback is that the LG DualUp is the size of two small monitors.

The post LG DualUp Monitor review: The 16:18 monitor you didn’t know you needed appeared first on XDA.

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