A Look At QD Vision's Color IQ And The Philips 276E6 Monitor: Quantum Dots for Wider Color Gamuts
by Brandon Chester on April 28, 2016 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Monitors
- Philips
- Quantum Dot
- QD Vision
Final Words
QD Vision's Color IQ tech certainly delivers. In the case of the Philips 276E6, it actually delivers more than what it promises. Technically the monitor doesn't meet the Adobe RGB spec, but this is mostly due to it exceeding it rather than falling short. The gamut that it achieves is clear evidence that this quantum dot technology can be employed in monitors with relatively low prices to achieve a wide color gamut, which is something that has only existed on a small group of premium monitors until now. Given that the Philips 276E6 shows oversaturation with its red primary, I would be interested in seeing Color IQ used in a monitor targeting the DCI-P3 color space which is about to become the canon color space for UltraHD content as we move away from sRGB on a path toward eventual Rec. 2020 support.
While the Philips 276E6 is certainly a successful demonstration of QD Vision's quantum dot technology, it's difficult to say that it's successful as a product in its own right. This is a combination of two factors, with one of them being primarily an external factor.
From the last two pages it's pretty clear that Windows is not ready at all for a transition to a world beyond sRGB, and even within that gamut it makes it quite a pain to do basic color corrections. For many years, vendors who ship wide gamut displays have identified this issue and provided a fix of sorts in the form of an sRGB monitor mode which constrains its gamut so the vast majority of content on the web will render correctly without relying on proper color management. With Philips being a new entrant to this space, it seems that they were either not aware of, or underestimated the necessity of such a feature. I want to stress that this isn't something that any of these vendors should have to do, but when the most widely used desktop operating system doesn't do a good job with color management, it's something you need to do to provide a good experience for your users. Philips hasn't helped this problem by also not even providing a proper ICC color profile so that applications that actually are color managed will work correctly.
The second factor is that the Philips 276E6 is just not where it needs to be in terms of uniformity and color accuracy. Based on my measurements of two of these monitors, it's clear that Philips is allowing a large degree of variance between units. Out of the box, it's hard to tell what settings provide the most accurate image. On my original unit it was the Adobe RGB preset, while on the second unit it's the 6500K preset. Regardless of which I chose, both monitors exhibited concerning issues with color accuracy, and both had an oversaturated red primary. I'm not the only reviewer to find this, and so it's probably true of all the units which is very disappointing.
Post-calibration numbers were better in some respects, but not others. The big shift in saturation accuracy with the 200 nit calibration was very surprising to me, and it may be best to not tweak the white point at the monitor level at all. Unfortunately, making more corrections through greyscale calibration means you reduce the tonal range of the monitor further by limiting the number of distinct levels for the red, green, and blue components, which can introduce color banding. On top of that, the fact that the Philips 276E6 is trying to target a low price point means that the idea of calibrating with a $1500 spectrophotometer using $3000 software is quite absurd, and the very large variance between panels means there's not even any point in me providing an ICC profile to be used in a general manner.
In the end, I think Philips simply has some things to learn about the wide gamut monitor market, and I'm still quite interested in seeing what future products they release, along with what future products will come from other manufacturers. Philips should definitely be applauded for taking the first step toward low-cost wide gamut displays, and if they can improve their panel accuracy and include a proper sRGB color mode they'll have a very compelling product on their hands. If 1920x1080 is the target resolution to manage cost I would probably opt for a smaller panel size as well, as the pixel density is just too low on a 27" panel.
On the software side, the companies that currently ship operating systems with essentially non-functioning color management need to get their act together. Wide gamut displays are coming, and not handling multiple color standards properly is incredibly detrimental to the user experience.
As for Color IQ, I think the technology has a bright future. It's clear that it can be added to displays with only a minimal impact on price to the consumer, and the advantages are significant. The tech can clearly push a wider red primary than the Adobe RGB standard specifies, so I'd like to see some DCI-P3 monitors using the tech so consumers can take advantage of upcoming UltraHD content that will support the wider color space. As a technology, I think Color IQ will probably exist alongside film-based quantum dot technologies, as edge-lit LCDs are never going to properly support HDR standards because of their inability to do proper local dimming, and a film solution is the only feasible way to use the tech in smartphones and tablets. However, with the majority of the TV and monitor market using edge-lit displays there's a huge opportunity here to bring wider color gamuts to the masses. While I cannot really recommend buying the Philips 276E6 in its current state, I'm looking forward to future products that use QD Vision's Color IQ technology, both from Philips and from other vendors that I anticipate will adopt this technology soon.
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Brandon Chester - Thursday, April 28, 2016 - link
Ryan was up very late doing some editing and must have made it when he expanded on my admittedly sparce placeholder title (Monitor Review). My apologies.Infy2 - Thursday, April 28, 2016 - link
The message of this article is for average Windows user to stay away from wide gamut monitors.Murloc - Thursday, April 28, 2016 - link
average user thinks oversaturation looks coolwatersb - Thursday, April 28, 2016 - link
Excellent. Thanks for this in-depth discussion. I know very little about color and color management.Yesterday, I was in an Apple Store and I compared wide-gamut images side by side on the new, 9.7-inch iPad Pro, the 12-inch one, and the 5K iMac. I used iconFactory's blog post for reference images. Wow. http://blog.iconfactory.com/2016/04/looking-at-the...
This is becoming a real thing for popular consumer devices. Interesting times!
theduckofdeath - Thursday, April 28, 2016 - link
The only thing I'm getting from this review is, I have a strong feeling that markets with stronger marketing regulations will soon nerf the Quantum Dot term the same way "LED" displays were a few years ago. The marketing implies that QD is as advanced as OLED while the displays clearly still use edge lighting with all of its issues.saratoga4 - Thursday, April 28, 2016 - link
The marketing on hype on QD is particularly ridiculous given that they're essentially a cost-reduction measure designed to save a few dollars on multi-color LEDs or OLED while (hopefully) being good enough.Murloc - Thursday, April 28, 2016 - link
80$ is not a few.A new thing or a cost reduction are the same thing in this case: consumers will have something they didn't have before.
saratoga4 - Thursday, April 28, 2016 - link
Going from 1 type of LED to 2 types of LED in an array doesn't anywhere near $80. The savings is much larger compared to OLED, but OLED has other advantages beyond gamut that QDs can't match anyway.name99 - Thursday, April 28, 2016 - link
I think you're missing the larger picture.Of course any technology can be cost-cut to the point where it is a joke, and Phillips seem to have done that here. OK, Phillips being stupid, nothing new there. But that's not interesting.
The more interesting aspect is that we are moving towards richer monitor technology. It started with retina (sorry HiDPI !) displays, now we're going to wider gamut. At some point wider gamut is going to move to something like 16 bits per pixel rather than 8 (or occasionally 10 or 12), along with maybe even 4 phosphors. And at some point the standard device frame rate is going to up to 120fps.
OK, so with this hardware background, it's now interesting to contemplate the SW background.
In one corner we have MS. Apparently still incapable of handling color correction after all these years, and incapable of handling the UI. Ad that to their HiDPI support. They seem unlikely to adapt well to this new world...
In the second corner we have Android. Not clear to me how much better off they are. They have handled DPI a lot better, which is a good start. As far as I know there is still no color correction built into Android; but the larger issue is one of how easily their architecture would allow for inserting color correction. Can they do it in such a way that all (or at least most) apps just do the right thing? And would it rely on the phone OEMs to create drivers and lookup tables that most of them would screw up?
In the third corner we have Apple which seems perfectly positioned for all this (meaning that they will likely drive it). They've been happy to push hiDPI (including on OSX as fast as Intel's built-in GPU's allows it ---which wasn't very fast, suggesting that maybe they'd be better off with another vendor for OSX SoCs, but that's a different issue), and they're now pushing color accuracy both on the camera side (TrueTone flash, high dynamic range sensors) and the screen side (new iPad Pro screen, presumably to spread throughout the product line as manufacturing volumes and power budgets allow).
I fully expect them to stay on this path for a while, never actually stating technical phrases like "full Adobe RGB Gamut" but constantly subtly pointing out in their keynotes and advertising "Our colors look good, and look correct, across ALL our devices --- photos on your iPhone look exactly the same on your iMac. Good luck getting that consistency with photo from your Android phone on your Windows screen."
From this point of view, then, the relevance and interest of QD technology is whether it allows larger gamut to move to iPhone this year or at least soon.
jlabelle - Friday, April 29, 2016 - link
- Apparently still incapable of handling color correction after all these years, and incapable of handling the UI. Ad that to their HiDPI support. They seem unlikely to adapt well to this new world... -such statement is not correct and the article describes it pretty clearly. Beyond the way to set it up (which, yes, is somehow confusing), the real issue is simply that many programs are not color managed.
This is not only limited to Windows and OS X is suffering of the same issue so it has nothing to do with Windows per see but the programs you are using.
The issue behind is that some default program on Windows are not color managed. It seems it is the issue with Store app (like it is for iOS apps that make iPad useless for photo editing for instance). So some important apps like Photo and Edge do not take care of that. That is a big issue.
But many programs does.
That is why there are 3 different cases :
1/ Use a screen very accurate within sRGB gamut out of the box - only use sRGB images --> no issue anymore but obviously you will never display any image beyond sRGB
2/ Use a screen with sRGB gamut (or a wide gamut screen that you switch to sRGB mode) with calibrated with an ICC profile set as default (as described) - use only sRGB images --> here, you will have perfect color accuracy for all applications color managed. In case of applications not color managed (Edge, Photo, Chrome...), you will have the color inaccuracy of the screen default (because ICC profile not applied) BUT you will not have images under or over saturated. Therefore, the impact will still be minimal for the user.
3/ use a wide gamut screen : then, you have no other choice that carefully use color managed application --> for every application color managed, display will be fine and you will take advantage of the wider gamut. For all others, the images will appear oversaturated.
It is such an issue that I used to have a wide color gamut DELL U2711 screen.
1/ first, you only have a good accuracy in color managed applications but in others, everything is oversatured.
2/ Second, while shooting FF DSLR in aRGB, I may have seen less than 10 pictures out of 70 000 where you could see in an direct A-B comparison a tiny difference between the sRGB version and aRGB. In real world, it is VERY unlikely to go beyond sRGB.
3/ Third, even if you keep for you aRGB versions of your pictures (to take advantage of your screen), you have to have a sRGB copy because when you share it outside, other people will face the issue on non color managed application that your pictures will be completely washed out. And even many online print shop only take sRGB.
At the end of the day, it is so much a hassle for virtually almost 0 visual benefit (speaking of photo of real color in the nature) that I now have a Dell U2313UH which is a sRGB gamut screen.
Bottom line : wide gamut screen currently is a chore and NOT recommended. And not only Windows, nowhere because even if your browser is displaying correctly the image (Safari, Firefox with a certain flag activated), what is the point then to have a wide color gamut screen to see sRGB pictures ?