Performance - Part I
Testing methodology
A monitor review based on descriptive visual analysis will always have the underlying problem of subjectivity; assessments of panel quality will vary from user to user depending on their normative expectations. To get around this we’re deploying Datacolor’s Spyder 4 Elite professional monitor analyser to return a quantitative assessment of display quality.
These numerical results, we feel, add extra utility to our reviews allowing us to more accurately benchmark the following display characteristics:
- Colour Gamut relative to sRGB and AdobeRGB industry-standards
- Brightness levels and contrast ratios
- Colour uniformity
- Brightness uniformity
- Colour accuracy
The tests are run under two different scenarios: uncalibrated and calibrated. Uncalibrated performance equates to the ‘out-of-the-box’ settings a monitor ships with; this is the typical end-user experience as very few consumers engage in calibration of their displays before use. Calibrated performance is what results after the monitor has been put through the Spyder4Elite hardware-calibration process with the following parameters: 2.2 Gamma, 6500k colour temperature and 120 nits of brightness. These calibrated results demonstrate what the monitor is capable of when tuned correctly but the results have limited relevance to most consumers who will not calibrate their monitors.
Colour
Asus promises 100 per cent coverage of the sRGB gamut and our testing shows the MG279Q duly delivers on that claim. There's also 81 per cent of Adobe RGB and these gamut figures hold consistent after calibration and some tweaking options have been applied.
Colour accuracy is class-leading with a Delta-E less than 1, which is a true testament to the quality of the panel used. Most factory-calibrated displays targeting professional users will often aim for a Delta-E figure of around 1. Consumer-grade calibration with the Spyder 4 Elite increased the Delta-E value slightly, making colour accuracy worse, so the MG279Q looks like a great option for photographers and videographers who'd like to save on expensive calibration equipment or services.
The uniformity of colour on the MG279Q also happened to be among the best we've ever tested, leading to another strength of the panel.
