I was asked to take a look at the ASUS PA32U monitor - a 32" display that (when I first saw it last year) was initially an sRGB, Adobe RGB, HDR10 high-end graphics/gaming monitor. It comes in at sub £2k and so is expensive for home or office use but almost free from a film/TV perspective. Most interetsingly it could hit >1,000Cdm-2 peak white and unlike OLED displays (typ. Sony BVM-X300) it doesn't suffer ABL as more than a small percentage of the display hits peak white.
I gave the manufacturer a few pointers - essentially if it is going to have any application in film and TV it should at least support HLG and DolbyPQ. So, just before christmas a new itteration of the monitor arrived and here is a little video.
A few things to note;
- Terrible "blooming" near black; if it was a CRT it would be akin to bad internal reflection within the tube.
- The blue primary is not as good as it should be - it can't even hit 100% of rec.709
- Ironically, however, it does manage 84% of rec.2020 - just shows you can't get too hung up on very saturated colours,
- There is some sort of noise-coring going on; you should be able to disable that in the menues.
4 comments:
Couldn't find another way to contact you, so here I am posting a comment on this article.
Have you tested or heard anything about the SWIT FM-21HDR
21.5-inch High Bright HDR Production LCD Monitor ??
Daniel Perez
WhyOnSet Madrid
danibam@whyonset.com
+34 647595858
Daniel, hello - by coincidence the company I work for (until the end of January 2019!) has been approached to be the UK reseller for SWIT. So, I looked at the specifications etc and that display looks like a single IPS panel so will probably behave much like this ASUS, or at best and Eizo CG319.
It does appear that if you want a 1,000 Cdm-2 mastering display in 2019 you have to spend more than £20k (say $30k) for an Eizo CG3145, a Sony BVM-X300 or X310 or may a Canon DP-V2402. Getting good blacks and high light output cannot be done cheaply yet.
Hi Phil,
You have calibrated a few of my monitors over the years!
I stumbled upon this video after searching for information on this monitor: ProArt PA32UCX. I think that it maybe a newer version of the monitor that you tested in the video, is that the case? The Asus website claims all sorts of things and the monitor is mentioned on the Dolby website. It's at a price point that seems too good to be true. Could this be the sub 20k (or even 3K!) master monitor that ticks all the boxes? I hope so as 20k is a bit beyond my budget. I could buy 2 cars for that cash!
Yes, the new one is still a single-layer IPS display with a zone-dimmed backlight; it is what it is - I can't see how you can have good blacks and no-blooming if you build a monitor that way?
I think the best display (which doesn't hit 1,000Cd/m2, so can't be used for Dolby Mastering) is the Eizo CG319X - I made a video about it's internal calibration features here;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB6HFOBJU2c&feature=youtu.be
Sony have just launched a couple of on-set monitors that can hit the magic 1,000Cd/m2 but (and by their own admission) they poor blacks for HDR work and they are £10,000.
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