Dell UltraSharp U4323QE review: The big-screen office KVM king

Dell’s U4323QE is the company’s latest UltraSharp 43 monitor, replacing the highly regarded U4320Q in its lineup of productivity displays. It’s not quite the biggest screen Dell has to offer – that’s the huge 49in U4924DW – but that model has an ultrawide 32:9 format that won’t be the default choice for most users. For home productivity, a flat 16:9 affair like this one makes more sense, and it’s also cheaper: the U4924DW will set you back £1,224, while the U4323QE is £210 less.

That’s not to say that the U4323QE is a compromise. An evolution of the very successful U4320Q, it builds on a strong set of features, and adds some new refinements that make it a strong contender for all sorts of desktop productivity roles.

Dell UltraSharp U4323QE review: What do you get for your money?

The UltraSharp U4323QE is designed to be the hub of your office setup. The large 43in IPS panel – well, 42.5in to be precise – has a 4K resolution, while the housing provides connections for up to four input devices through the USB hub, plus an RJ45 Ethernet jack.

Physically the U432QE is pretty similar to the outgoing U4320Q. The key differences are the stand, which is now silver rather than black, the I/O ports, which are now more abundant and repositioned, and the controls, which replace the old fiddly four-button arrangement with a superior single joystick.

Like the old model, the new UltraSharp 43 is still a weighty beast, at 18.2kg. Even so, it’s easier to set up than many large monitors I’ve tested; the stand fixes to the rear of the cabinet with a quick-release mechanism, which conceals 100mm and 200mm Vesa mounts below it.

The stand itself is a pretty basic affair but is usefully compact, measuring just 240mm deep and tapering from 320mm wide at the back to 260mm at the front. Adjustability is quite good for a monitor this big, with 20° of swivel to either side, 60mm of height adjustability and tilt from -5° to +20°.

For navigating the UltraSharp’s onscreen display (OSD), the mini-joystick is located on the back of the monitor on the right-hand side, next to the power button. It’s a relatively painless way of managing the monitor, especially since you can select which shortcut buttons appear on the screen when you push the joystick, although some sort of remote control would have been even more accessible.

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Dell UltraSharp U4323QE review: What connections does it have?

Grab a cup of coffee – this is going to take a while. At the rear of the UltraSharp 43, you’ll find two HDMI 2.1 and two DisplayPort 1.4 video inputs, four USB Type-C ports, four USB Type-A ports, a gigabit Ethernet port and a 3.5mm audio jack.

That’s a lot of flexibility, and there’s more: one of those Type-C ports supports DP Alt Mode video input and 90W PD charging, as well as regular 10Gbits/sec USB connections. Add in the other three data-only ports and you can connect a total of four computers to the UltraSharp U4323QE in KVM mode and use the same keyboard and mouse with all of them; a menu in the OSD lets you match which Type-C ports work with which video inputs.

The three downstream USB Type-A ports on the rear also support fast 10Gbits/sec connections, as do an additional pair of downstream ports – one Type-A and one Type-C – that you’ll find in a spring-loaded drop-down housing below the lower left of the display. These both support 15W charging, too, and are easy to access when you’re sitting in front of the monitor.

That’s just as well, as accessing the rear connections can be a pain. The limited height adjustment of the stand means that the downward-facing ports are never more than 240mm from your worktop; I had to drag my desk away from the wall to access the rear ports (I found this more manageable than trying to manhandle an 18.5kg monitor).

Dell UltraSharp U4323QE review: How good is the image quality?

The UltraSharp is designed for office productivity rather than creative work or gaming. I measured a solid maximum brightness of 327cd/m2, with a contrast ratio of 1,117:1. That’s certainly nothing to complain about, although note that the UltraSharp U4323QE doesn’t support HDR input in any form.

Colour coverage is decent, too. I measured 95.8% sRGB coverage, with 66% coverage of the Adobe RGB colour space and 67.9% of DCI-P3. There are two built-in colour profiles to choose from – sRGB and YCbCr – and with the former enabled I measured a Delta E of 3.3, which is just about good enough that you shouldn’t notice any inaccuracies. Saturation and balance looked fine to my eye; although the UltraSharp’s overall performance is mediocre compared to specialist displays, it’s wholly adequate for the intended usage.

Similarly, this isn’t a gaming monitor. With a refresh rate of 60Hz and a response time of 8ms GtG, motion handling is very average, with a fair amount of smearing and ghosting apparent in my standard tests. You can adjust the response time from 8ms to 5ms, but that just adds inverse ghosting to bright moving objects, while doing nothing to improve any other aspect of motion handling.

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Dell UltraSharp U4323QE review: Are there any other features I should know about?

The UltraSharp U4323QE’s party trick is its ability to combine multiple inputs. You can dive into the OSD and choose from eight different partition layouts, to view one, two, three or four desktop instances at once. There are also eight picture-in-picture options, although these only change the position and size of a single superimposed image.

The optional Dell Display Manager for Windows allows you to snap multiple apps into place on your desktop, too. It works much like the FancyZones utility in the Microsoft Store, with nearly 50 preset layouts and the option to create your own.

It’s when displaying four Full HD desktops that the U4323QE really comes into its own. As I write this, I’m looking at two Windows systems, my Chromebook and the desktop view on my Motorola smartphone all together, bouncing my keyboard and mouse between them by tapping the joystick on the rear of the monitor. It’s a joy to behold.

Another hidden strength of the U4323QE is its integrated audio. Buried in the bottom of the cabinet are two 8W speakers, and boy are they loud. Measured against a pink noise source at a 1m distance, they put out 88.8dB(A), which makes them the loudest monitor speakers I’ve encountered. The sound quality is good, too, with plenty of solid bass and lots of detail and space: watching the final Dune 2 trailer in 4K on the U4323QE with the volume turned up to maximum really was a bit of a Maxell moment.

Considering the UltraSharp U4323QE’s ambition of being the hub of your office environment and the price Dell is asking for it, it’s just a little surprising that it doesn’t have a built-in webcam – or at least ship with one of Dell’s standalone cameras, like the decent little WB3023 webcam.

Dell UltraSharp U4323QE review: Should I buy it?

The new UltraSharp is a big old Hector and no mistake, but it’s more than good enough for its intended job, and the speaker system is fantastic. It brings several worthwhile updates over the outgoing model – notably expanded KVM support, redesigned OSD controls and improved port positioning at the front – and adds an RJ45 network connector.

Arguably, it would benefit from wider colour coverage and maybe a higher refresh rate, but neither of those is what I’d call mission-critical for the intended market, and such upgrades would probably have led to an increase in price. As things stand, a shade over £1,000 really is not at all bad for such a highly specified 4K whopper.

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