Can Lenovo P40 effectively drive 4K Sony television?

DLBezaire

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Can the Lenovo P40 Yoga drive a 4K Sony television? Before plunking down $2k+, I'd sure appreciate hearing some experts review my plan.

I want to use a 40" TV as a computer monitor. It will also be used to watch BluRay movies and occasionally even some over-the-air television shows. Computer applications include browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, photo editing, and some video editing, but no gaming.

Sony's 43-Inch 4K Ultra HD TV (XBR43X830C; 2015 Model) looks ideal because of its size and the review it gets.

I want to drive the TV with Lenovo's ThinkPad P40 Yoga PC (Intel Core i7-6500U; 16GB; 1TB SSD; 14-inch Full HD) because of its size, flexibility, weight, keyboard, etc. It contains the NVIDIA Quadro M500M 2GB graphics chip.

The issue is that the TV has only HDMI inputs, and the computer's 4K support is limited to its miniDisplayPort according to this review.

I see a Sabrent Mini DisplayPort to HDMI Adapter that claims 4K support which would seem to close the gap.

As a neophyte, I'm sure there are caveats and gotchas that I don't forsee. Can some of you with more expertise please let me know if my plan looks workable? Do you seen any pitfalls?

Thank you!
 
From the review you linked:
The maximum resolution of the HDMI port is Full HD (1920x1080 pixels, 60 Hz) according to the spec sheet, while the Mini-DisplayPort can also drive 4K displays at 60 Hz

The only problem I foresee providing the display port to HDMI adaptor does what it says on the tin is HDCP support, only really an issue when it comes to playing copy protected video. There is also the question of sound, but for your use I'm not sure this is a concern for you.

As for pitfalls I'm not sure. I think unless you sit close to the screen the scaling of items in applications isn't going to be so great at UHD resolution, you also run the risk of perhaps not knowing how colour/chroma will be transmitted when using that adaptor, for example, will it pass full range 4:4:4 RGB to the TV?

Then there's the TV itself. I notice rtings haven't tested the input lag of the TV when feeding UHD. With some TVs this increases from the figures quoted for 1080p.

I obviously don't know the intricacies of your work but I would consider either a 1080p TV instead like the Sony W8 series or perhaps look to find a laptop that has a HDMI port capable of UHD. The standard needed for UHD at 60hz is HDMI 2.0.

I'm not saying what you're looking at won't work, there's a good chance it will. I'm just not sure if it will bring any other niggles to the table.

PS I thought I'd mention here in the UK model numbers differ slightly but since it seems a generic question I guess it doesn't matter.
 

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