Monoprice IPS-Glass Panel Pro 27" LCD Monitor
by Chris Heinonen on October 22, 2013 2:40 AM ESTAs accurate as the post calibration numbers might be, to really be a professional display the Monoprice also would need to display good uniformity. If images looks different depending on where they are on the screen, that won’t work well for serious photo and print work. Before I even run the uniformity data I can see light leakage in all the corners that is very noticeable. I don’t work much against a black background as I do more spreadsheets and word processing, so I don’t see it as easily. If you watch a lot of movies or play a lot of games it will stand out more.
The White Uniformity is OK, but you can see the upper corners are dim while the lower corners are much brighter. The center of the screen produces very good numbers here but once you get to the edges some uniformity issues appear.
Black Uniformity really shows the scope of the issue. The upper corners have some noticeable changes, but the lower part of the screen really shows the problems in the uniformity. Black levels rise to be close to double that of the center of the display. Both bottom corners are bright and the left side has issues as well that can easily be seen. This is unfortunate but also a common complaint people have left in the reviews at Monoprice so I don’t believe it is confined to my sample.
These issues cause a big swing in contrast uniformity as expected. The two bright corners fall below 600:1, 33-43% lower than the center of the screen. The overall uniformity here is pretty poor and is the first place that the Monoprice display really shows its price point.
Those bright corners really cost the Monoprice when it comes to color uniformity as well. Most of the display is excellent, measuring very close to the center, but the corners really fall off. Two of them have average dE2000 errors of 2.0 or higher, so some colors will have visible errors, while the lower-left corner comes in at 3.17. Perhaps that corner will usually hold the start menu or some other, non-important content but it certainly won’t color match the center of the display.
If you’re able to use the Monoprice IPS-Glass Panel Pro and confine your critical work to the center portions of the screen you will see excellent overall results. Even for color critical work you’ll be able to use it without a worry. If you need that performance to extend all the way to the edges of the display as well then the Monoprice is going to fall short.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
41 Comments
View All Comments
jbm - Tuesday, October 22, 2013 - link
ASUS PB278Q is $553 on amazon.com right now. I'd buy that for sure over the Monoprice (in fact I have bought it and I am very happy with it). The PB278Q has a matte screen, is calibrated well, has all the inputs you will ever need AND comes with all the cables in the box (VGA, HDMI, DVI, Displayport) - which also needs to be figured into the price difference.Nfarce - Tuesday, October 22, 2013 - link
Nice monitor. If you are lucky enough to get one with no dead pixels or massive light bleeding problems. I tried three of them and returned them all. Two had dead pixels that were towards the middle of the screen and noticeable, and the third a massive light bleed problem in the lower right and left, probably an assembly defect with the bezel not fitting correctly. I gave up and am now spending time researching other 1440p options.jabber - Tuesday, October 22, 2013 - link
Buy some carbon fibre vinyl sheeting (or whatever) and cover the bezel in that.l_d_allan - Tuesday, October 22, 2013 - link
> Considering the color accuracy of this display after calibration, it seems like a cheap option for an image professional that wants color accuracy.I infer by "image professional" that you would include a serious Photoshop'er. At that level, I think they would expect closer to 100% coverage of the Adobe-98 gamut, rather than sRGB.
Or not?
foxalopex - Tuesday, October 22, 2013 - link
Last I recall Adobe-RGB is a wider colour space than standard sRGB which is closer to what most consumer monitors are tuned to. To display it usually requires a wide-spectrum backlight system which you are not going to find in a cheap monitor.From what I recall it depends on the application. Image Professionals who publish primarily to the Internet or to a consumer's computer will never need more than sRGB because that's what your customer's only capable of. Using Adobe-RGB would likely throw off the picture quite a bit because it won't look remotely correct in sRGB colorspace. I believe the Adobe-RGB users are probably printing images where there's a very wide colorspace or just archiving the pictures and trying to see as much as possible.
piroroadkill - Tuesday, October 22, 2013 - link
I think he's inferring that someone who wants colour accuracy probably wouldn't be looking at a cheap ass monitor.JDG1980 - Tuesday, October 22, 2013 - link
I'm hoping that Monoprice or one of the Korean vendors will soon release a 4K monitor that uses the inexpensive panel used on Seiki 4K TVs, but supports 60 Hz via DisplayPort. (The panel on the Seiki TVs can do that, it's just that they are limited to HDMI input, which only supports 30 Hz.)2560x1440 is OK, but surely we can do better now.
Nfarce - Tuesday, October 22, 2013 - link
Have you even looked at the performance hit on modern high end graphics cards that 4K monitors do? See Tom's review on Sept. 18 about it. At high graphics quality settings in games, a 4K monitor (2160p) brings a Titan GPU to its knees, barely making 30fps in games like BF3, and with Crysis 3, forget about it unless you go with two Titans. At some point, the law of diminishing returns steps in to what the eye can appreciate as resolutions move up anyway. But if you've got the money, sure, you *can* do better than 1440p - you just need to pony up for the GPU power to run it.iamlilysdad - Tuesday, October 22, 2013 - link
Not everybody is in it just for gaming.DanNeely - Wednesday, October 23, 2013 - link
The few games they benched with no AA gave good results on the single titan. I'd like to see more tests like that with a single 780. While 140DPI isn't enough to not benefit from AA; it's enough of an improvement over 100 that it's not as important.That said; my budgeting is assuming that when I jump on the 4k bandwagon that I'll need to add a second GPU to feed it at native resolution.