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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AssBall - Sunday, September 29, 2013 - link
Wrong. It is perfectly acceptable.foxalopex - Monday, September 30, 2013 - link
Input lag? The monitor is rated for 27 ms which works out to 37 fps. Video is typically only shot at 25 or 29.97 fps. While a gamer might need more than this, video certainly isn't this fast.marqs - Monday, September 30, 2013 - link
Input lag consists of signal processing latency and pixel response time, of which only the latter limits the practical fps. By enabling overdrive the response time should improve by a couple of ms. Btw, I think the latency charts wrongly claim to be against an CRT, if the results are taken from averaging the results from Leo Bodnar lag tester (which results to ~7.5ms for a lagless CRT). The real input lag for PA242W should be around 20ms with default settings.cbelle - Monday, September 30, 2013 - link
720/60 is a standard used by many including ABC, ESPN and FOX in the US. So this is still could be an issue to video and music editors (video sync playback).Not horrendous but not great either. But if it can be lowered to 20ms that would be nice.
For video editing I think it still lacks 10 bit, SDI and video production specific needs. It is nice alternative for home editing but not sure in a suite or in the field.
Bitmambo - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
When will Anandtech test Eizo displays and see whether the significant price gap is justified ? One area that is hardly if ever addressed in display reviews is the bit depth of the DAC circuits, and the resultant impact on signal aliasing (Mach banding) and the quality of gradients, the signal-to-noise ratio. Uniformity, linearity, brightness, contrast ratio, response time and gamut are not all there is to display technology. Speaking of contrast ratio, we need numbers, that are not biased by the absolute blackness of the display, since anything below 1% brightness will multiply the factor enormously for not huge perceptual gain. A linearity plot showing the length of the straight portion of the gamma-corrected display should help compare display performance. Look at what the folks at Digital Photography Review do to compare cameras.TheRealAnalogkid - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
...and people look at me weird because I have a second Sony GDM-FW900 Monitor in the closet for after the one I'm using dies. I'll miss them when they're gone; maybe tech will make something comparable by then.Kathrine647 - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
like Gregory said I am alarmed that a stay at home mom able to earn $5886 in 1 month on the internet. visit their website............B u z z 5 5 . com open the link without spacesCSMR - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
1920x1200 on a 24" is low resolution. 24" tend to be this resolution and you can see all the very large pixels. I would not recommend 24" screens for profesisonal use until manufacturers start increasing the resolution. 1440p would be perfect on this screen size.mrstonecold - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Does anybody now if this screen uses an active cooling element (fan) like the new eizo screens cx240 and the cg246. I'm in the market to replace my primary screen (dell u2410) and I prefer a quiet work environment. Thx.foxalopex - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
The NEC-PA242W is absolutely silent, there is no fan. It doesn't even have a high pitched whine which is nice. The monitor is pretty thick partially for passive cooling I suspect as looking into the cooling vents at the top, you can see a massive airspace behind the actual panel hardware itself.