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. We also make use of the Leo Bodnar video signal input lag tester which allows us to test the combined input latency of a specific monitor at the 1080p resolution with 60Hz operation only (a limitation of the testing equipment).
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
- Input latency
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
99 per cent of sRGB and 80 per cent of Adobe RGB is a solid result that aligns almost perfectly with the LG 34UC97, suggesting the panel used is the same, aside from a few firmware tweaks. Calibration causes the sRGB to drop slightly despite the gamut's coverage increasing into the green and red regions.
Colour accuracy was very strong out-of-the-box on our sample; calibration made no difference to the average Delta-E but did slightly reduce the peak inaccuracy.
The panel's colour uniformity characteristics were also very impressive, measuring in at no higher than 3.8 Delta-E uncalibrated and 2.3 calibrated. For reference we recorded uniformity fluctuations as high as 7.3 Delta-E on BenQ's XR3501 curved 21:9 display.
