JapanNext has started to sell its new ultra-large 49” and 55” curved displays that feature an Ultra HD resolution, a low response time, AMD’s FreeSync dynamic refresh rate technology as well as HDCP 2.2 copyright protection. The monitors are not too expensive: they are currently available for less than $900.

Ultra-large displays are not so common but are not something extremely rare too. For example, companies like NEC offer displays with 40”+ diagonals for professional and industrial applications. Such monitors tend to be too expensive for personal use because they are built according to different standards asking for 24/7 operation and rated for maximum endurance. For many people displays larger than 40” are simply too big, but there are gamers as well as those need to keep a lot of information on their screens, who may want to have a huge monitor. Last year TPV (Philips) introduced two 40” and 43” UHD 4K monitors for prosumers that retail for less than $1000. This month a Japanese company called JapanNext introduced its JN-VC490UHD and JN-VC550UHD monitors that are even larger and support a dynamic refresh rate technology.

The JapanNext JN-VC490UHD (49”) and JN-VC550UHD (55”) displays are based on SVA panels (which may indicate that the manufacturer sources it from Samsung Display) with a 3840×2160 resolution, 250 nits brightness, a 6000:1 contrast ratio, a 60 Hz refresh rate and a 3-4 ms response time. The producer states that the display panels can reproduce 1.07 billion colors (listed online as 10-bit) and are rated to support 99% of the sRGB color gamut. The displays use ELED backlighting to ensure “flicker free” operation and JapanNext promote the panels as being 16mm thick.

JapanNext's 49" and 55" Curved UHD Displays
  JN-VC490UHD JN-VC550UHD
Panel SVA
Native Resolution 3840×2160
Maximum Refresh Rate 60 Hz
Freesync Support, but unknown range
Response Time 3 ms 4 ms
Brightness 250 cd/m²
Contrast 6000:1
Viewing Angles 178°/178° horizontal/vertical
Curvature unknown
Pixel Pitch 0.2825 mm 0.3171 mm
Pixel Density 90 ppi 80 ppi
Color Gamut sRGB: 99%
1.07 billion
Inputs 1 × DisplayPort 1.2
1 × HDMI 2.0
2 × HDMI 1.4
1 × D-Sub
Outputs 3.5 mm headphone output
SPDIF
USB Hub USB hub (?)
1 × USB Type-A upstream port
Audio 6 W × 2
audio in/out ports
Power Consumption (idle/active) Idle: 0.5 W
Active: 100 W
Idle: 0.5 W
Active: 108 W
Modes Warm, Cool, Norma, Standard,
Game 1/2/3, Movie, Photo
Price at Amazon.co.jp ¥82,970 ($725) ¥99,970 ($873)

In a bid to make the JN-VC490UHD and JN-VC550UHD monitors more appealing to gamers, JapanNext equipped the display with AMD’s FreeSync dynamic refresh technology (and there is AMD’s official FreeSync badge on the manufacturer’s website). Unfortunately JapanNext does not declare what refresh range it supports for FreeSync, which may be limited (40/45Hz to 60Hz or similar). Moreover, the units both fully support HDCP 2.2 technology, which is not common for monitors, but which is more commonly found on UHDTVs (given the dimensions of the JN-VC490UHD and JN-VC550UHD, it makes sense to compare them to TVs). Therefore, the 49” and 55” curved UHD displays could be used for Ultra HD Blu-ray playback (but HDR support is not formally declared however).

Connectivity is a yet another interesting peculiarity of the JapanNext displays. The monitors have two HDMI 1.4 inputs that support 3840×2160 resolution at 30 Hz, one DisplayPort 1.2 and one HDMI 2.0 that can both handle 4K at 60 Hz as well as one D-Sub connector (up to 2560×1440). The displays support PiP (picture-in-picture) and PBP (picture-by-picture) modes and some may use it to work with up to four different FHD PCs. As for audio, the displays are equipped with two 6 W stereo speakers, a 3.5-mm audio input, a headphone output and an SPDIF optical output for those who will use them with an audio decoder/receiver.

The ultra-large curved UHD displays for prosumers and gamers from JapanNext will attract attention from many people who primarily need large dimensions. While the pixel density of the JN-VC490UHD and JN-VC550UHD monitors is comparable to that of 24” and 28” FHD screens, it does mean that applications that lack high-PPI settings may not be disadvantaged on the new displays (it depends how close you sit). JapanNext makes no secret that many people will use its new products primarily to enjoy media content in their living rooms: because the TVs have so many inputs, users can attach multiple STBs to them. A bad news is that the devices only have one HDMI 2.0 header, so owners will have to choose whether to plug in one high-end HDMI 2.0 device.

The official price of the JapanNext JN-VC490UHD is ¥99,970 ($873), but Amazon.co.jp offers it for ¥82,970 ($725). The MSRP of the JapanNext JN-VC550UHD is unknown, but it is available for ¥99,970 ($873).

The manufacturer sells some of its displays in Europe via its own website, but the lineup there is not too wide. It is unknown whether JapanNext plans to make its JN-VC490UHD and JN-VC550UHD available outside of Japan.

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Source: PC Watch

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  • ATC9001 - Thursday, February 16, 2017 - link

    I'm impressed....that's a huge screen with 4k and the ability to easily do 4 monitors/screens as well is great! I wonder if it's easy to switch it windows to go from 4 screens 1920x1080 to 1 at full 4k though?
  • smorebuds - Thursday, February 16, 2017 - link

    Hopefully it either has a remote that's not shown, or one of the buttons in the back is a dedicated input menu. Having to scroll thru multiple levels of menus each time would suck. Being able to quickly flip from 4 screen "productivity mode" to 1 screen to launch a game would be really nice. :D
  • Kamus - Thursday, February 16, 2017 - link

    I'm sorry if i can't get too excited about this. Here's why:

    At the end of last year I bought a 40" 4K samsung TV for around $350 to use it has a monitor.

    It has a 10 bit panel. full Rec.709 color gamut support (which by the way, is 100% identical to sRGB, so I don't know what you mean by TVs having NTSC instead of sRGB)

    It also has a TV turner I'll never use, and an H.265 10 bit decoder at 60 FPS, which also does VP9 profile 2 at 10 bit and 60 FPS, along with smart TV features, which I do use a lot. (this would be like 120 dollars on a Roku box)

    It also has a VA panel, gets quite a bit more brighter than these monitors (around 430 nits), has HDR playback (using only the Rec.709 colorspace, but it looks amazing regardless, because even using just Rec.709 with added color volume results in much more vivid colors in HDR)

    It does not have freesync, and it also only does 60Hz and it's not curved, but it's a lot cheaper and more feature packed.

    If I use the TV as a monitor with a gamepad it's perfect. But if very close to it to use it as a PC monitor with mouse and keyboard, then it's a little too big... BUT!

    It's not a problem, because I can create a custom resolution to convert it to a budget 38" "ultrawide" monitor. And then it's just perfect (btw, the custom profile is 38", and the EXACT same resolution of the new LG ultrawide monitor that retails for 1600 bucks. Resolution ends up being 3840x1600)

    I'm not going to say there isn't value to this. But it's hard to get super excited about it either when you can get the similar product so much less.
  • Ian Cutress - Thursday, February 16, 2017 - link

    All that and no model number?
  • dreamcat4 - Thursday, February 16, 2017 - link

    Sounds like the Samsung KU6400. In which case that's a 21ms response time... which is actually pretty darned low for current TVs. Which are completely laughable. However still not as low as these JapanNext @ 4ms. Is that a difference to matter enough in gaming to be worth it? Not sure.
  • Kamus - Thursday, February 16, 2017 - link

    I think the 21ms are when in "game mode" which still allows for some processing.

    However, a firmware update turned "PC mode" (which has next to no processing) into a really low latency mode. I don't have measuring equipment, but it feels a hell of a lot lower than even "game mode".

    I wouldn't be surprised if the input lag is now on par with a monitor like that one when using PC mode. there are only 2 real drawbacks to this mode:

    There's no 3D LUT in this mode, so you have to cope with the native gamut, which actually isn't too bad. It does have some unwanted yellow and blue, but not nearly as bad as running a wide color gamut display with out a gamut profile.

    The other drawback to this mode, is that you can't strobe the backlight in this mode, which you also can't do under game mode by the way. Which sucks, because that does help a lot with how smooth games look at only 60hz.
  • Kamus - Thursday, February 16, 2017 - link

    Sorry about that. It's a 40" 4K 6 series. My particular model is the UN40KU6000FXZX.

    It's a Samsung VA panel on mine. on other sets you might see different panels, such as Sharp or others, they're all very similar though, with no big impact on performance.

    The problem for Samsung is that they source about 4 million panels a year from Sharp, but Sharp won't sell them a single more starting 2017 because they want to sell them on their own Televisions now.
  • geekman1024 - Thursday, February 16, 2017 - link

    uhm... why the model with faster response time, smaller pixel pitch, higher PPI and lower active power consumption is priced cheaper than the more inferior one?
  • geekman1024 - Thursday, February 16, 2017 - link

    Ah...Never mind, it's the screen size. Didn't see that in the table.
  • jackpro - Thursday, February 16, 2017 - link

    Samsung KU6300 VA 4K 60hz Chroma 444 8bit is awesome as a desktop no freesynch though 40" to 65". 55" would be good as at 40" I have to run Win10 at 150% magnification

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