NEC PA242W Monitor Review
by Chris Heinonen on September 27, 2013 9:00 AM ESTNEC offers their own calibration software, SpectraView, for their monitors. Most software packages like CalMAN work with the video card LUTs to improve calibration, and the monitor LUTs if they can access them. The NEC PA242W contains a 14-bit, 3D LUT that allows you to correct the output to be almost perfect. Using SpectraView, NEC will reset your video-card LUT to be neutral and rely only on the monitor LUT so it will work correctly afterwards on almost any PC.
You can use a wide variety of meters with SpectraView but I chose to use my i1Pro. It isn’t as good at low-light as the C6, but it's more color accurate. The C6 is accurate if you profile it, but the NEC software does not allow for this. Once connected you choose your targets (D65 white point, 2.2 gamma, 200 cd/m^2, and sRGB gamut here) and then the software calibrates the PA242W. The calibration is also much quicker than CalMAN, which is nice. You can save multiple different targets in the SpectraView software and then load them back up later if you need to work in multiple environments.
After the calibration I measured again with CalMAN using the same settings as before to see if this works better than CalMAN on its own. To see how this performs I had CalMAN measure far more points than usual, which takes a long time.
|
CalMAN Calibrated, 200 cd/m^2 |
SpectraView, 200 cd/m^2 |
|
| White Level (cd/m^2) | 204.14 | 200.6 |
| Black Level (cd/m^2) | 0.366 | 0.3827 |
| Contrast Ratio | 558:1 | 524:1 |
| Gamma (Average) | 2.1437 | 2.1596 |
| Color Temperature | 6426K | 6458K |
| Grayscale dE2000 | 0.6504 | 0.706 |
| Color Checker dE2000 | 0.6392 | 0.8781 |
| Saturations dE2000 | 0.6722 | 0.7461 |
The NEC software produces very similar results. The contrast level is a little worse, but the light output level is slightly more accurate. Everything else is close enough as to be a draw where this is concerned.
Average saturation and color checker dE2000 errors are below 0.9, which is incredibly impressive. No individual measurements rise over a dE2000 of 2.0, and that means you should have no visible errors now. None.
When I re-ran the NEC Calibration and targeted 80 cd/m^2 instead of 200, the results are not nearly as good. This might be due to using the i1Pro and it not performing as well in lower-light situations. It also might just be that the method the software uses is not as effective at lower light targets. With these I find the CalMAN calibration to perform better.
The SpectraView software also allows you to save your calibrations and recall them. You can select your saved settings from a drop-down list and it will reload the LUT into the monitor. If you're regularly moving from sRGB to AdobeRGB or other colorspaces and back, this makes it easy to do so. It also avoids using the video card to make it more reliable than other methods.
After using the SpectraView software and seeing what it can do, I’d suggest it should be considered possibly essential for this display. The ability to save and recall multiple presets makes working with the monitor with different media, or lighting conditions, simple and easy. There is no worrying about the display not being setup ideally for whatever environment you need to work in. Also worth noting is that by going directly to the monitor LUTs, the final calibrated colors will be used regardless of what program you run; this isn't always the case with video card LUTs, as games and videos will sometimes bypass those, and it's one more feature that sets a display like the PA242W apart from consumer models.
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risa2000 - Friday, September 27, 2013 - link
I have some "cheap" Eizo and cannot complain, all my friends who are amateur photographers have Eizos, it is kind of benchmark here (Europe), but I have never seen a review of anything Eizo here. So either they do not sell them in US, or Anand has some itch about them.cheinonen - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Eizo has never contacted me about a review sample, nor have I heard back from them the times I have tried to contact them. I have nothing against Eizo, and I'd love to review some of them, but they've never provided the opportunity. That's all.foxalopex - Friday, September 27, 2013 - link
Awesome, I actually own this monitor. I bought it about a week ago as PA242W-BK-SK kit which includes NEC's rebranded X-rite Calibrator. I have to agree with Anandtech's review, it's an absolutely amazing monitor for any colour accurate work. Doing some research according to specifications, it uses the newest developed AH-IPS panels from LG (2011) and brand new backlight technology so it is definitely state of the art.I wonder if Anandtech is using the latest updated SpectraView software because there are a few settings which might help. (Didn't try the previous version which came with the monitor) I recall a special check box in the settings for low cadela settings which averages out the readings which helps weaker sensors work better and a slower 52 point setting that is suppose to get better results.
That said, I agree with their conclusions. It's only major weakness is that the black level isn't as black as it could be. But it more than makes up for it in that you can actually see gradients of grey. It's hard to explain but to the eyes it's a weird thing to see. At first you can't see as much contrast as some high end LCD TVs but at the same time you see tremendously more details in the gradients from the light to dark areas. This is what makes it spectacular as a professional LCD monitor and valuable for photographic work.
That said, I know some of you mentioning this is too expensive. It isn't for the folks who know what it's used for. After all you wouldn't take an F1 car (which probably be beat by a cheapo truck) to do offroad rally racing with.
chrnochime - Friday, September 27, 2013 - link
Agreed. This is a tool for amateur/professional photographers/photo work, not for gaming. And really, it's the same price of a titan, which definitely will depreciate a lot faster in several years while this depreciates a lot less and will still be a great tool to use.hmcindie - Monday, September 30, 2013 - link
I disagree. What you are seeing is something you really shouldn't see that well. The problem in color grading with a monitor with very low contrast (such as this) is that you tend to overcompensate your curves and do very contrasty looks. With a display that can actually do good contrast ratios, it will just look quite different. I have no idea why these monitors are billed as professional. I have a couple NECs and EIZOs at work and they are not all that. There is a reason all our serious grading is done with plasmas (though those suck at desktop work).foxalopex - Monday, September 30, 2013 - link
I guess you don't do much work as a photographer then. A known problem in photography is that the average photographer will over saturate and over contrast pictures compared to what is really there. Someone who's very serious into photography and isn't trying to go for an entirely artistic impression is usually trying to get the the photo to as close to real life as possible. Working with raw photos, one of the problems you realize is that if you over-boost the contrast, it might look visually better to a casual viewer but you end up losing a lot of details in the images. This is something you see all the time with cheaper digicams. They produce vibrant, over contrasted pictures expected by the consumer while a professional digital camera doesn't but has amazing true dynamic range. Monitors can be like that too. NEC's and Eizo's are well loved because they display a large range of colors. Cheap monitors tend to over saturate and over contrast because while they look good, they are not very accurate. When you mean plasma, I assume a TV. A TV is optimized to crank out as much light as possible. You can't do that without sacrificing some of the quality in the image. NEC's and Eizo's are meant to be used in low light environments so they don't need to be super bright.hmcindie - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
I actually do quite a lot of work as a photographer and as a color grader. NEC and Eizo have horrible dynamic range as monitors. They color performance is good, but nothing dramatically different from example my home monitor which is the HP2740w (calibrated). For example the 2grand Eizo I'm using at work has worse light bleed in the corners. So no, I do not agree that these things are worth the money. We use Panasonic Plasmas for grading at work and at home I have the Pioneer Kuro (last model before discontinued) and it blows away any NEC or EIZO. The difference in dynamic range and color fidelity is not even close. It's not about saturation, it's about accuracy.Alan G - Friday, September 27, 2013 - link
Those of us who are photographers swear by NEC monitors and the Spectraview callibration system (though I sometimes use the ArgyllCMS software which offers more flexibility and has the added feature of being free). The most important thing for us is to get an image on our display that will most closely resemble the print that comes out of our printer so that we can use Soft Proofing in Photoshop or Lightroom to make the necessary corrections. I'm worried that your test settings will misinform those potential users who might be photographers but have never had a monitor like this one. 200 cd/m^2 is really very high. Almost everyone that I know is somewhere in the 110-140 range depending on the lighting of their work room. I drop the contrast down to 250:1 as well. It may be that folks who do video editing work with higher settings because their end display is far different from a photographic print.These niggles aside, it's good to see NEC come out with a new display. My P221W is still working well after five years and the color is still faithful. I'll likely be getting this new one next year.
cheinonen - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
We do everything at 200 cd/m2, as that was a more common setting for general use, and at 80 cd/m2, which is the sRGB standard. Adding 140 cd/m2 would be possible but also add a lot of extra work to the reviews and I feel that 80 and 200 covers it fairly well.birdsoneview - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Looks great for photo, graphics, and visual effects work, but for film/video editing that input lag is unacceptable.