Dell Sent Wendell a New Monitor for the Studio: Dell UltraSharp 52 Thunderbolt Hub Monitor - U5226KW

It's the Ultrasharp 5226 KW. It's 6K. It's ultra wide. It's 52 in. This is an upgrade that Dell sent for the studio because I'm working on some projects. And they said, "What is that?" Referring to that. That's a Korean monitor that I imported when we started the channel like a million years ago. And they said, "You need an upgrade." And I said, "No, I don't." and they said, "Yes, you do." And that is this. Oh my gosh, it's very heavy. IPS 99% DCIP, 300% sRGB. It's a Thunderbolt. It has two HDMI, two display port, lots of hub built in, built-in networking. This is the monitor. Let's unbox it cuz I'm out of breath carrying it up two flights of stairs. One, two, three. Ah. Ah. Ah. Dell in the ultra premium display stand market. Not charging $1,000 for the display stand is good. Very unlike Apple. Apple is never going to stop catching heat for that. And rightfully so. Looks like we get HDMI display port, Thunderbolt 4, and type A to type C USB as our cable bundle. I'm pretty excited to review this monitor, but we'll see if Dell is still in good standing by the time they're done. That is a very large Visa plate. Good lord. Ultimately, this thing's going to be mounted there. No bleach. No. And in case you're wondering about the curve, it's a 4200R curve. Fancy. Look at that built-in hub. Two type C's and one type A. English service tag. Power consumption will increase. Yes, we always want to do that. Like to switch the auto brightness. No. Would you like to set up a USB KVM for multiple PCs? Two, three, four PCs? We'll do this later. We can do it later in media USB. It's still going to work very similar to my old setup where I had, you know, four up display. This is stretching a 4K signal into 6K, which I'm pretty sure I could probably fix. Yes. Excellent. So then I can have more inputs over here. But this is one input that's already divided into four pieces. So yeah, it's fun. So I've got some testing to do on this monitor. And if it does well, I'm going to mount it on the wall to replace this one. 52 in corner to corner. 6K by 2560. So it's as tall as a 27 in is wide. Think of it like four 27 inch monitors on their side if you want to. And yeah, that's basically what we're working with. So 21 by9 21 by9 aspect ratio. Uh also 120 Hz. So it's IPS, but it's 120 Hz. So, very high refresh, full bandwidth. Really excited to test that. So, I think this is going to be a lot of fun. Let's get started. Now, our testing scenario here is a little unusual, or at least I like to actually use it as a professional grade monitor. I mean, this is obviously a monitor that is aimed at like executives, day traders, like business class type monitors. But, it still has 120 Hz refresh rate. So, on our test bench here, I have four GB10 machines set up. This is the Spark platform. It's a four node cluster connected to a switch. We've been running lots of test jobs with that on the level one text forum. There's a how-to guide where you can set up your, you know, two Dell GB10 sparks in a cluster with NCCL with a direct crossover cable. Should definitely check that out. And if you want to run jobs, you know, like AI testing or whatever, uh, definitely hit us up in the forum because we've been running a lot of different stuff for community members. And now it's a four node cluster setup. So the monitor will accept up to four inputs. I've actually got five here, but what I'm doing is I'm mxing my own, you know, the four GB10s into a 4K input. And then I'm also using the side input for my laptop. Now, this 140 watt Thunderbolt charging, that particular laptop has a really temperamental 140 watt input. It takes one of the the new relatively odd voltages in order to charge, but I'm happy to report it works. It works fine. You can charge it. The bundled Thunderbolt 4 cable with this monitor is also a really good quality. I can get 120 Hz with it through the laptop, which is amazing, and 140 watt charging and 10 GB USBC for uh machines that don't have Thunderbolt capabilities, but that do have USBC with display port alt mode. So, very nice to see. The other nice thing with this setup is picture by picture, picturein picture. So, picture-bypicture options on this monitor are surprisingly well polished. That is something that I always test and it always feels like an afterthought on basically every other monitor that I test to the point that it's it's it's it's kind of a worthless feature because if you actually use picturein picture or picture by picture, it tends to be a frustrating experience. In this setup, I've been using it with a 4K input plus the side. Now, the monitor actually will report a resolution that is reasonable when you're doing these sort of oddball picture bypictur layouts. And there's a bunch of different preconfigured layouts that you can run with this monitor. It doesn't just support, you know, 50x 50. Um, on competing monitors, pretty much the only picture bypictur mode that works is when you evenly split the display in half and you can use the the display in two half modes. This is like uh you know 6633 7525 those are all options that are in the onscreen display. And when the laptop which is connected through that Thunderbolt 140 watt charging connection that's what's in the right column there um sees the resolution it sees 2560x 1536x10 resolution. This monitor don't think of it so much as like one giant monitor. Think of it as two monitors in one. Or if you're into 2560 x44 monitors, it's four 2560 x440 monitors turned in portrait mode all next to one another. So that's fantastic. The horizontal desk space footprint that it takes up is 4 ft. It's just about 48 in. But it's actually less of a desk footprint than two 4K monitors. So you might say, "Oh, my desk is not large enough to handle this." If you have two 4K monitors, this actually takes up slightly less room. It's also very slightly less pixels than two 4K monitors. Two 4K monitors is about 16 1.5 million pixels. This is about 15 1/2 million pixels. You lose just under a million pixels when you go with this layout, but it's taller. So, you lose a little bit of horizontal resolution, but you gain some vertical resolution, which I think is a reasonable trade-off. And that also means that the monitor isn't quite as wide. So, your arguments about, oh, my desk isn't large enough kind of fall apart if you're a dual monitor person. So, let's talk about the KVM aspect of this monitor. You can have one keyboard and mouse receiver plugged into the monitor, and the monitor can based on the input you've selected, move the input around. Uh, it is less clunky on this monitor than most other monitors that I've tested, but those three USBC inputs on the back of the monitor, they are just USBC. There's not any kind of like fancy circuitry or stuff in here to handle like using those as an input or more extra 10 gig ports or whatever. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's got ample 10 gig ports, both on the back of the monitor and a nifty little front drop down thing for USB ports, but in the OSD, you pick which USBC, which up to three USBC inputs go with which display port or HDMI input. And so, you can run up to four inputs and then pick which USBC, but you're going to be connecting HDMI and USBC. It doesn't support display port alt mode. One of the things that I tried to do with my GB10 cluster was hook them up directly to the monitor and that doesn't work. And so that's why I'm well at least through USBC you'd need to use HDMI and then you'd need to use an active for two of your get two HDMI use you know two of the members would go straight in HDMI. Uh two of them would have to have an active HDMI to display port adapter going the other way because those are not necessarily reversible depending on the physical adapter that you're using. And so those would connect two with display port, two with HDMI, in other words. And that would work. And then you could run four of them, but in a quadrant, sure, that would be fine. It's slightly odd resolutions because again, 6K 2560, 6144x 2560. So that's a lot of words to explain that like the the best use case for the multi-input is the executive that has a desktop and a laptop and they can switch between the desktop and the laptop. They can have their desktop and their laptop side by side and they can have a reasonable facility for moving their keyboard and mouse connection from their desktop to the laptop and vice versa. If you're thinking like it help desk or uh you know a workbench type configuration like what I'm doing here it's not enough of a KVM feature for those kinds of use cases in my opinion. You're probably better off using a setup like mine where you're using extra hardware to handle even more inputs. This is really like I say, you know, business class executive, but also because you're dealing with executives, they won't they don't really have a lot of patience for things that don't work perfectly. And this is one of the best implementations of mouse and keyboard switching built into the monitor as well as uh multiple input computer handling when we're talking about like the laptop desktop use case than most other monitors that I've tested. Let's talk about color accuracy and brightness. Now, before we get to the brightness and color accuracy part, there's still the fundamental limitation. Bandwidth. It's Thunderbolt. It's 40 Gbit. Yeah, that's not enough. Again, this is why I say the Thunderbolt 5 is too little too late. This is 6K 120 Hz. You're going to need all of the bandwidth for the display. And the like to Dell's credit, they handle that very well in the firmware. So, I plugged into my laptop. It is a Thunderbolt connection. And the laptop is a strict halo, so it can definitely drive uh 120 Hz, you know, 30 bit, all the all the fixings. The monitor in the OSC comes up and says, "Oh, do you want to optimize for bandwidth for the display or USB?" And so it has to drop down to USB 2.0 speeds when you're driving 6K 120 Hz through that Thunderbolt connection. Now, nothing stops me from using a second connection. So like my laptop has multiple ports. If I use USBC to display port that I can get my full 120 Hz 6K plus my 40 GB connection and that would be the desirable connection. This incidentally is why most of the modern docking stations like actual dedicated docking stations from Dell have multiple USBC connections and you can use that. This monitor comes with a USB A to C cable. You can you can use that if your laptop has a type A port and connect USBC and type A and then have the best of both worlds because you got the Thunderbolt connection for all of your downstream stuff which I think is the highest and best use of Thunderbolt rather than using Thunderbolt as a display interface which sounds counterintuitive but is actually where we are in 2026. And then you're going to use all of the features of your monitor because all of those 10 gig ports are not going to be competing with one another. It's not as as uh bandwidth constrained as a 10 GB USB hub. You've got that 40 gig connection from the monitor to your laptop and then you got those multiple 10 gig ports that the monitor offers and there's no display going on. So there's nothing to compete with bandwidth. The display connection is using the other connection which is fabulous. Don't underestimate what USBC to display port cables are able to give you in terms of bandwidth and everything else. But the on-creen display for this monitor handled that really well. Now brightness 400 nits. 400 nits and a 2,000 to1 contrast ratio. This is a little bit of a trap. So, yes, the monitor can achieve those numbers. Basically, I measured uh 390 for the the the uh brightness in the worst case scenario. The brightness uniformity is surprisingly good. This is an IPS type panel, but this is a modern IPS type panel. The 2000 to1 contrast ratio was a little more difficult to achieve. Um, I think it's it's it's just under the 2000 to1 contrast ratio. It's not quite there. You will have to fiddle with the on-creen display. But the most important thing, well, there's two things. One, firmware update from Dell. This monitor ships and it has a firmware update or my monitor has a firmware update. Your monitor probably has the firmware update already, but mine had a firmware update and that improved things quite a bit. The second thing is power save mode. you have to turn that off in the OSD in order to get the advertised brightness and contrast ratio. And that kind of makes sense cuz it's like, oh, the monitor has to be under this really absurd level of power, but it's a 52-in monitor blasting light into your face. Like there's there's even if it's insanely efficient, um it's going to be problematic converting that many electrons to photons with the technology that we have in 2026. So, you're going to want to turn power save off. And then when you do that, all sorts of magical things happen. And so, yes, once you do all that, the contrast ratio and 400 nits brightness is pretty close. Uh, color gamut and color coverage. It is 95% of the Adobe RGB, which is pretty darn that darn good. Now, you get it out of the box and you think a professional monitor of this grade, it should definitely come with a color calibration report, right? Dell, they've moved beyond paper. It's built into the OSD. You can go look at it. It's 15 pages in the OSD. Not a terribly convenient format. I wish there was a way to download that over USB, but it does show what the factory calibration of the monitor was like for DCIP3 and basically every other setting under the sun that you would expect from a professionally calibrated monitor. It's neat that they store that in the firmware. I was not expecting that. I didn't catch that at first, but it's in the OSD, which is pretty nice. is 98.7% of the DCI P3 which is quite good and also 120% of just general RGB coverage. Subjectively the clarity and sharpness is topnotch. The pixel the PPI I was a little worried about because it's less PPI than 4K at 32 in. 4K at 32 in is my favorite pixel density especially for 100% scaling. This is a little less density which means the pixels are a little larger. So, uh, perhaps for those aging executive eyes or somebody that sits slightly farther away from the display, it would probably look better to their eyes, even though technically it's not quite as sharp, but the matte finish on the display and uh, the physical fit and finish of the display were not detractors for that level of sharpness. It was honestly surprising how sharp it was given my expectations and given my experiences with monitors that have a similar pixel density. So, this even though it's not quite in my sweet spot of, you know, 4K and a 32- in uh pixel density, which I think is like perfect for 100% scaling, this looks fantastic at 100% scaling. Uh, very sharp, very clear. No complaints there. The curve, I'll talk about the curve for a second. I'm not generally one who likes a curved monitor, but the curve on this is so subtle at 52 in. You don't notice. Um unlike the, you know, the Samsung monitors that wrap around your head, you don't notice the curve on this really just because of the size. And I was using this at an ordinary desk distance. Other uses like gaming, this is a joy to game on. It's 21x9. Not every game is set up to handle 21x9. Generally, I like to game on 16x9 displays, but an IPS panel that has a response time this good at 120 Hz is phenomenal. So, the gaming experience on this leaves nothing to be desired. Uh, personally, I really like gaming on OLED displays. An OLED has an absurdly fast response time. I can definitely feel a difference in the IPS response time at 120 Hz and an OLED response time at 120 Hz. But this is one of the fastest feeling IPS displays that I've ever used. So, that's nice. Now, to be sure, this monitor doesn't have gaming features like adding a reticle or an FPS counter or anything like that. It's even a little clunky with the aspect ratio switcher. So, like if you send this a 16x9 signal, it will stretch it out to 21x9. And there's a way to turn that off, but it turns it off uh globally. And so, um, little things like that can be a little clunky, but those are features that are aimed at more the gamer side of things. And the OSD is already kind of complicated enough. So, I I think they've sort of simplified the, you know, their their use case is obviously not the gamer. So, what are the downsides with this display? There's not really a ton. I mean, it is it is kind of a large display, and you have to be ready for that, but ultimately it doesn't take up more room than two 4K displays. Uh Dell handles the situation where Thunderbolt just isn't enough bandwidth to drive a bunch of 10 gig USB ports plus 6K 120 Hz at the same time. They handle that like a champ and that's fine. I would have liked to have had the brightness and contrast ratio be oversp spec like if you turn the brightness and the contrast all the way up that you could get uh slightly better than spec whereas the monitor comes really close. I hesitate to use the word struggle, but the monitor struggles to meet its uh advertised uh brightness in terms of nits and contrast ratio, and it did take a little bit of fiddling in the OSD in order to do that. It does have built-in color profiles to help you pick the color profile that makes sense, and that is important if you're going to do graded work. Uh, and that is the other thing, the price point. It's it's a Dell. It's a Dell price point. They're they're aiming at commercial sales. and aiming at commercial sales. Dells has this sort of structure in place for sales. And so I hope you're going through an official Dell rep or uh a Dell supplier or something like that and you're not just ordering this off of the Dell website because generally if you order these through your corporation or your corporate contact or you're ordering these as part of a larger order, uh there's some negotiation to be had. So uh you know different sales channels for that sort of thing. At the same time, if you are buying a monitor like this for uh, you know, an executive that has lots of, let's call them power toys and you don't want any headache, it's probably worth the price of admission to not have to deal with the executive support factor because this monitor may be easier to support than some of the others. Uh, certainly, you know, uh, for some of the other big names and monitors, they obviously have not gone through that. I mean, just finding basic bugs like brightness and contrast control that we have found in some of the other OLED monitors that we reviewed and some of those firmware bugs have never been fixed. U Dell will not be able to get away with those shenanigans in that scenario because of the commercial aspects of their clientele. So, that's nice, but at the same time, Dell is not going to, you know, have gaming features and high-end bells and whistles. It does have an overclock feature. An overdriver feature is the one thing in the onscreen display that it does have that is kind of gaming. But I wouldn't recommend that you turn it on. It uh negatively impacts the picture quality and the picture clarity. Like don't not worth it. Not worth it. You're not buying this gaming this monitor for gaming and it already runs better at 120 Hz. So just live with 120 Hz. There's two other OSD options I would call out. One of them is fast wake up. has a little leaf on it. You generally don't want things with a leaf. You want to turn that off, especially if you got external imaging stuff that you're dealing with. Another thing that was a little surprising about this monitor is that it only had a 1 Gbit built-in Ethernet. Now, this is meant to be a monitor that has a built-in docking station. Basically, that's the Thunderbolt. That's the pitch here. It's like you buy this, you don't have to buy a docking station. It's 1 GB. In 2026, I'm sort of surprised they didn't use a 2 and 1/2 gig adapter, but with all the 10 Gbit USB ports, you can just add a USB adapter that's 2 and 1/2 GB and that would be fine. Or even a 5 GB USB adapter, that would also be fine. But 1 GB in 2026 on a modern piece of hardware like this, just generally surprised it's not 2 and 1/2 gig given the cost difference between one and 2 and 1/2 gig on the Ethernet side is minuscule. Now, the onscreen display also has a diagnostics mode, which is really nice. And this is also really rare. This is maybe worth the price of admission. again, commercial use, which will show you what sort of connection you have for USB, if it's USB 2 or if it's USB 10 GB, what mode you've set for the Thunderbolt, whether or not you've got charging, what the state of the other ports is. It's very uh extensive. It also shows you whether or not you're using display stream compression. This is very important for different devices that you may have connected. I've got a a particularly temperamental GPD Win laptop as far as Thunderbolt goes and everything like that. It was one of the very first ones where AMD was figuring out how to get the the USB Thunderbolt like protocol compatibility down and so it's very very temperamental and that was useful for figuring out odd things it was doing before I got it working correctly by using the diagnostic screen on the OSD. So very nice to see that from Dell. The overall monitor input latency is just on the order of about 3 milliseconds. Curiously, it's 3 milliseconds at the top of the display and 2 milliseconds at the bottom of the display. Very impressive. I wonder what those level one. This has been a quick look at the Dell Ultrasharp 52 in. They've got this in some other sizes. Hopefully they have the same design philosophy and uh that sort of thing. If there's another size that's really popular, maybe there's a 16x9 version. Be tempted to pick that up after my experience with this monitor. Elbow level one. If you have any questions or I miss anything, hit me up in the forum. Uh answer other questions or do other tests there. Happy to do it. And if you have a job you want to run on our Dell GB10 cluster with Dell Pro Max with GB10 or Nvidia Spark Dell machines, uh, you know, AI, AI, AI, let me know. All right, I'm signing out. I'll see you in the level one forums. Blanch, I'm so sorry.

Dell saw what Wendell had been working with in the studio and decided it was time for Wendell to have an upgrade. You can find us... Twitter - https://twitter.com/level1techs Twitch - https://twitch.tv/teampgp Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/level1 For all our social links, websites, and more, check out our link tree! https://linktr.ee/level1techs Thank you for watching! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *IMPORTANT* Any email lacking “level1techs.com” should be ignored and immediately reported to Queries@level1techs.com.