PC tech giant Intel says it’s possible that the price of 4K monitors to drop significantly, falling to under $400 by the end of this year.
Intel is partnering with PC display makers, including ViewSonic and TPV, to make its 4K monitor pricing ambitions a reality. That’s according to Kirk Skaugen, Intel’s PC Client Group senior vice president and general manager. Skaugen commented on the price of future 4K displays at Computex 2014 in Taipei, which is wrapping up today. TPV makes PC monitors under two names: AOC and Envision.
Intel is also partnering with PC OEMs like MSI to develop all-in-one PCs with 4K displays priced below $999 by the end of the year. However, it’s unclear how Intel and the firms that it’s partnering with plan to go about accomplishing these goals.
We suspect that the introduction of 5th-generation Intel Broadwell processors later this year will permit OEMs to lean on 4th-gen Haswell chips in these 4K all in ones. The Haswell processors will likely be priced lower than they currently are, as soon as Broadwell chips begin to hit the market, which in turn will allow MSI and other Intel partners to meet their pricing objectives.
Though the prospect of having a 4K monitor as part of your PC’s setup is tantalizing, it wasn’t until the last 6 months or so that they’ve become relatively affordable, with multiple manufacturers releasing 28-inch 4K displays for around $700. Although that’s a huge drop from the multi-kilobuck prices initially attached to 4K PC monitors, $700 is still way too much for many people to spend on just a display alone.
At this point, Dell, Asus, and Samsung have each introduced sub-$1,000 4K monitors to the market.
