NEC PA271W - When Accuracy and Consistency Matter
by Chris Heinonen on May 1, 2012 1:55 PM ESTNEC PA271W - Color Quality and Color Gamut
Targeted directly at designers and other graphics professionals, we’d expect to see excellent performance, hopefully before and after calibration from the NEC. For the initial measurements, with so many options available, I used the included ICC profile and set the monitor to sRGB mode as well as 200 nits of light output.
Pre-calibration we get an error of 7.07, which is a bit higher than I thought it would be, with a really high error in the grayscale. Overall this was OK, but I highly doubt many people will buy this display without choosing to calibrate it given its target market. Our target settings were a 2.2 gamma, D65 white point, and 200 nits of light output. ColorEyes Display Pro doesn’t give a color gamut option, so I assume it is targeting the native gamut of the display.
This is much better after a calibration, with an average dE of only 1.51 and a median dE of just under 1.1. You’ll notice the last color sample before pure white, a turquoise blue, has a much lower error here than on most displays. This is the shade of blue that actually lies outside of the sRGB colorspace and so most displays cannot reproduce it, leading to a very high dE there. The only panel to do better recently is the 30” NEC that has a true 10-bit panel.
As the print market is a main area for NEC to target with this display, its performance with 100 nits of light output is of more importance than usual. Here we find that the NEC performs almost identically to its 200 nits results, which is actually quite good. As many displays get better or worse as the light output changes, that indicates they will only perform at their best at a certain light level, whereas if you are consistent the user can set the light to match their environment. The NEC doesn’t run away from the competition in any of these tests, but it performs very well, and very consistently.
You won't be lacking for gamut here either, as the NEC covers over 109% of the AdobeRGB gamut, meaning that for any work you are doing, even including something like DCI Cinema, the NEC has you covered.
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sviola - Wednesday, May 2, 2012 - link
If it wasn't for LCDs, probably no one would have monitors/tvs bigger than 30" (and a CRT that size was huge and extremely heavy).DanNeely - Wednesday, May 2, 2012 - link
Rear projection TVs got into the 50/60" class.Mumrik - Wednesday, May 2, 2012 - link
And 32" was the standard size for a widescreen TV in the living room around here...ctbaars - Wednesday, May 2, 2012 - link
I remember the same kind of argument when we went from Vinyl to CD :/ I'm not quite buying it.Mumrik - Wednesday, May 2, 2012 - link
I'm still using a Sony FW900.To be honest, it's not in tip-top shape anymore - the picture could be sharper. I had hoped to be able to use it until OLED arrived in the mainstream (as it was supposed to do YEARS ago). At this point I'm starting to consider 24-27" IPS panels.
JohnMD1022 - Wednesday, May 2, 2012 - link
My NEC Multisync FE992 still performs flawlessly.When it begins to fail, I'll replace it.
Meanwhile, with each passing day, LCD technology improves and prices drop. :)
futrtrubl - Tuesday, May 1, 2012 - link
The numbers seem off for a couple of the displays with their minimum brightness settings drawing MORE power. That's the two NECs, the Apple and a Dell and BenQ.JarredWalton - Tuesday, May 1, 2012 - link
You are correct, sir! I've updated the chart so that the colors and min/max values are now correct.cheinonen - Tuesday, May 1, 2012 - link
Sorry about that, they got flipped in a version of the spreadsheet I use for the numbers and I thought they were fixed in the most recent one, but I'll update that again so it doesn't happen next time.asasa45454 - Tuesday, May 1, 2012 - link
Are you going to review them? They have input lag ~10ms, 2560x1440.