DisplayLink has sure grown up since I took an in-depth look at it back in 2008, with the latest iteration now supporting 4K. We find this out via Club 3D, which claims to be giving the world its first-ever adapter of this sort. Up to this point, the company’s offered variations that have supported resolutions of up to 2560×1600.
In case you’re totally unaware of what DisplayLink is, it’s an adapter (that comes in the form of a box) that allows you to take advantage of the USB ports on your PC to add another monitor. This is perfect for those who don’t have a graphics card with spare ports, or notebooks which have limited ports to begin with. With this adapter, you could take something as modest as a netbook that has a USB 3.0 port, and use an external 4K monitor.
Because 4K is such a bandwidth-heavy resolution, the adapter requires that the display have DisplayPort – easily done if it’s an actual computer monitor rather than a television. Beyond that, it’ll only support up to 30Hz, which might not come as too much of a surprise given how it’s largely been the standard since 4K arrived on the scene (but that’s changing).
Club 3D hasn’t provided a price or even a release date for this latest adapter, so at this point all we can do is assume that it will cost “money”, and come out “soon”.