Dell UltraSharp 52 Thunderbolt Hub Monitor

A superb choice for anyone who currently finds themselves with three or more monitors sitting on their desk

- TIM DANTON

During February I visited a company that builds custom display setups. The kind you see in films, where a guard sits in front of an array of monitors showing streams from security cameras. One of the setups on show featured a pair of 21:9 monitors, one atop the other, while a 27in monitor in portrait mode sat on either side. Surely no-one actually has a setup like that, I asked? Oh yes, came the answer, especially in finance. It's this kind of power user Dell had in mind when designing the UltraSharp 52. Rather than put up with four different monitors with four different power supplies and ancillary clutter, they can simplify down to one screen

with five different video inputs: one Thunderbolt 4, two HDMI and two DisplayPort.

Big thinking

That’s the rationale. The reality check is how huge this monitor is when you're sat in front of it. I’m lucky enough to have a desk that measures 2m wide and 80cm deep, but even so the Dell towered over me. It comes with 90mm of height adjustment, meaning the top of the viewing area could shift from 567mm to 657mm above the desk. Even at the lower height, I had to look upwards to see anything on the top quarter of the screen, which isn’t ideal from an ergonomic point of view.

There is a practical side that comes with having such a huge screen: window management. Most of the time I used the monitor with my laptop as the sole source, giving me a ludicrous 6,144 x 2,560 pixels to play with. To help, Dell provides its Display and Peripheral Manager software. This automatically detects any connected monitor whether you're using HDMI, USB-C or a DisplayPort, giving access to all the major controls. Crucially for the Dell UltraSharp 52, it adds sophisticated window management. This works particularly well when you have different sources, as you can effectively split the monitor into sections as if they really were separate screens.