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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sweenish - Friday, September 27, 2013 - link
By your own admission, the monitor reviewed is fine as it does have the 1000:1 that you quote for a display being good. I know you say "at least," but that still makes all your complaining useless as this monitor meets your criteria.khanov - Sunday, September 29, 2013 - link
Hulk fail. :-(Hulk mad!
foxalopex - Friday, September 27, 2013 - link
Senti - I own this monitor so I can attest that you are right. What's striking about this monitor visually is that at first it doesn't look like it has a lot of contrast. That is the absolute white and absolute black colours are not as extreme as most monitors. At least until you put up a picture or run a movie that has very light and dark scenes. What you end up seeing is a lot of gradients of grey that are not pushed into absolute black or white. The results are amazing compared to what you would see in a normal monitor.Gothmoth - Friday, September 27, 2013 - link
we have pro eizo and quato monitors here, they are the best for photographers and designers and they have a contrast ratio of .. guess what.... 1000:1some noobs think higher contrast ratio numbers and maybe even dynamic contrast makes a monitor better... well they are wrong.
rabidwombatsquirrel - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
Well higher contrast ratios DO make a monitor better and I can't wait until we get OLED tech and 4k+ in these NEC displays since I do miss the extra deep blacks and contrast even for photos.That said screen uniformity, colors not going wonky looked at even a hint off angle, perfect primary location, perfect saturation and primary luminance tracking, wide gamut, etc. also matter a ton and these PA series do all that amazingly well (Eizo too, although they cost twice as much).
The internal 14bit 3D LUT in these PA monitors works wonders. And unlike with most wide gamut monitors you can pop it into a PERFECT sRGB emulation with not only just gamma 2.2 option but even sRGB TRC options as well, in fact, it does sRGB a lot better than virtually any sRGB monitor, almost all of which actually fall a bit short of sRGB primaries.
These are superb monitors!!!! That also said I can't wait until they get OLED into them for amazing blacks and contrast ratios and also 4k+ since the current res is bothersomely low (not that it's worse than 99.9999% of others, I just want the tablet/HDTV retina type stuff to appear in desktop monitors already).
rabidwombatsquirrel - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
Yeah being able to get low black levels is important and I surely wish IPS was better.That said, much of what you are saying is totally wrong! Dynamic range is not the ability to distinguish between various dark tones and various bright tones. And a low contrast ratio absolutely does not mean that dark tones appear crushed!!!! (unless you are using absolute calibration to pure black instead of relative, which doesn't work out all that well on anything other than OLED screens, although the top PVA and plasma could almost start to get away with it without crushing too much but even then you'll lose the ability to tell apart the very darkest tones) or that bright tones appear clipped!
A monitor with a poor contrast ratio tends to have blacks that are not all that dark and it's often easier to see into deep shadow details on them.
A monitor with superb calibration will leave the lowest steps all distinguishable if you use relative black level calibration while many cheap ones, even with intensely deep black levels and high contrast ratio, may crush all those tones together with no way to separate them and they might also clip the top end so the top few shades all look the same, that definitely isn't the case here.
Not measure here are things like saturation tracking curves and primary luminance tracking curves, many monitors appear to be perfectly calibrated but if you toss in these tests many will fail, some quite badly, here the lines are near perfect thanks to the 14bit 3D LUT.
rabidwombatsquirrel - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
My post above was supposed to be to Hulk not you Senti, sorry it got placed wrong.Death666Angel - Friday, September 27, 2013 - link
Well, NEC has been doing it like this for most of their high-ish end monitors for years and clearly they are much sought after. The way they make their displays so homogeneous is resulting in this "low" contrast ratio. I haven't ever seen anyone complain about contrast ratios above 500:1 in the professional space this is aimed at. I have also never seen anyone want an OLED display for their work, as you seem to desire. Also, last I checked, print contrast ratios are below 500:1 as are nearly all film/tv contrast ratios.chrnochime - Friday, September 27, 2013 - link
If you are as much an expert as you claim to be you wouldn't need to cast doubt into how good this monitor is when it comes to contrast, since you'd KNOW already. And if it's anywhere as bad as you think it is, NEC would not have people still buying them to warrant making this most recent iteration.ZeDestructor - Friday, September 27, 2013 - link
A 16:10 display! rare things these days..Nice results, but how does it compare to the similarly-targeted/specced Dell U2413, or even the older U2410?
Kinda dissapointed at the lack of 4K at 24" 16:10 (3840x2400), but I guess we still have to wait for the current stock of 1920x1200 panels to get pushed out and 4K stocks to build... Then again, with some good production, marketing, we could be having 8K at 20" already (my phone has 1920x1080 at 5", just scale up the panel)