ASUS have officially announced the world's first consumer based 4k resolution monitor.

The PQ321 is a 31.5 inch panel but the company have to this point been low key about the pricing. We would expect the price to be between £3,000 and £3,500 when it hits these shores, so it is a hefty outlay. For those people currently running a 30 inch screen at 2560×1600, then be prepared to feel woefully inadequate. The new 4K panel will run at a whopping resolution of 3,847 x 2,160 pixels. We wouldn't expect this to be selling in huge quantities until the price drops significantly.

The 4k panel won't get much use as a purists high definition screen – there is still a huge shortage of native 4k HD movie media online. Gaming will be the way forward, targeting the wealthy audience who can afford high end video cards such as the GTX Titan, GTX690 and AMD HD7990, or those people running high end SLI and CrossfireX configurations.

Comments have been made about running standard applications in Windows 8 which aren't known to scale well. ASUS will be pushing the panel to the professional creative audience instead of the average desktop computer or gaming enthusiast. We do know the wealthy gaming enthusiast will already be counting the pennies for a purchase as soon as possible however.

Asus claim the panel will be the thinnest 4K UHD monitor available, with no part of the screen exceeding 35mm in total thickness.

It has 10 bit colour support, with a 176 degree viewing angle display, likely to be IPS with IZGO tech for the ultra small transistors required which need to make up the 4k display. It can be connected via two HDMI connectors, or a single DisplayPort connector.

It also has built in speakers, which we imagine will be underpowered and weak – who uses them anyway?

Kitguru says: Got your credit card handy?

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