Out of the box the monitor was reasonably bright, although not obnoxiously so compared to some models. There was a cool-green tint to the image. Average gamma tracking was good and the image appeared vibrant with strong saturation and variety. The image below shows the gamma tracking under our ‘Test Settings’. You can see good adherence to the ‘2.2’ target curve.



The monitor also includes three ‘Low Blue Light’ settings of varying strength; ‘Weak’, ‘Medium’ and ‘Strong’. These are fairly easy to access once you enter the OSD, although we would’ve preferred them to be assigned to a hotkey so they are even easier to enable or disable. The ‘Strong’ setting proved to be an effective LBL setting and did the trick for us in terms of limiting blue light exposure in the evening and preventing disruption to sleep. It’s important to reduce exposure to blue light in the hours leading up towards sleep as it is disruptive to sleep hormones and acts as an important alertness signal for the body. We used this setting for our own viewing comfort in the evening, but not for any specific testing beyond that involving the setting itself.





We lowered brightness and made some changes to the colour channels to form our ‘Test Settings’. Note that these settings are just a suggestion and not going to be optimal in all cases due to inter-unit variation and personal preferences. Given the good gamma tracking and taking into account inter-unit variation and other points raised in our ICC profile article, we won’t be providing any for this monitor. They’re unnecessary and likely to be counter-productive when applied on other systems and with other units of the same monitor model. Assume any setting not mentioned, including contrast and ‘Gamma’, was left at default. Also note the driver tweak for Nvidia users noted earlier (above the table), which was applied when using our Nvidia GPU. We’ve also included the ‘Overdrive’ setting and refresh rate set in Windows, just for reference. Although this didn’t have a noteworthy impact on static image quality.





Brightness= 60 (according to preferences and lighting) Brightness= 60 (according to preferences and lighting) Color Temp= User R= 50 G= 44 B= 45 Overdrive= Off Refresh rate (Windows setting)= 75Hz



A BasICColor SQUID 3 (X-Rite i1Display Pro) was used to measure the luminance of white and black using a range of monitor settings. From these values, static contrast ratios were calculated. Results are show in the table below, with blue highlights indicating the results using our ‘Test Settings’. Black highlights indicate the highest white luminance, lowest black luminance and highest contrast ratio recorded. Assume any setting not mentioned was left at default, with the exceptions already noted in the calibration section.

The average static contrast with only brightness adjusted was 1359:1 with only brightness adjusted, excluding the result at ‘0%’ brightness which lacks sufficient precision due to rounding. Whilst it doesn’t reach the black depth of VA models such as this model’s predecessor, it’s still exceptional for the panel type. The specified 1200:1 contrast ratio looked somewhat suspect and optimistic on paper given the usual 1000:1 specified for IPS-type panels, but the actual monitor exceeded this specification quite comfortably. Good contrast was maintained with the ‘Low Blue Light’ setting active, even at the ‘Strong’ level. And only dropped a bit under our ‘Test Settings’ but remained pleasing for a non-VA LCD panel at 1277:1. The maximum white luminance recorded was 285 cd/m² whilst the minimum white luminance recorded was 34 cd/m², yielding a 251 cd/m² luminance adjustment range.

The monitor also features a Dynamic Contrast setting called ‘DCR’, which gives the backlight the freedom to adjust itself based on the overall level of light vs. dark in the image. This locks off control of all other settings in the ‘Luminance’ section of the menu (‘Brightness’, ‘Contrast’, ‘Eco Mode’ and ‘Gamma’). The backlight is dimmed as a single unit (BLU – Backlight Unit), so it works on the screen as a whole rather than accounting properly for intricate mixtures of shades. The mode did work in that the backlight adjusted rapidly to changes in scene brightness. It also dimmed quite effectively for very dark content, but tended towards a perhaps inappropriately bright level for mixed content. We prefer manual control over the backlight on models where it is all controlled as an individual unit, more so when the static contrast performance is as strong as it is here.





PWM (Pulse Width Modulation)

The monitor does not use PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) to regulate brightness using any brightness setting. Instead, DC (Direct Current) is used to dim the backlight. The backlight is therefore considered ‘flicker-free’, which will come as welcome news to those who are worried about side-effects from PWM usage.





Luminance uniformity