LG 34UM95 Monitor Review
by Chris Heinonen on June 18, 2014 7:00 AM ESTAnother area where 21:9 displays have shined is in their uniformity. They have had some of the most uniform screens of anything I have tested to date. The LG 34UM95 proves to be a good performer here, but with a couple issues.
As soon as we look at white uniformity we see what the issue is going to be. The upper corners of the display are very dim in comparison to the rest of the screen. If you leave those corners out the rest of the display is very uniform with an all-white screen. The middle 60% of the display is within 3% and even the lower-corners are within 5%. It's those upper corners that are dim that cause a problem with the uniformity.
Black Uniformity is also good except for a bit of brightness in the lower-right corner. The upper corners are darker, which isn’t as much of an issue with black as compared to white. The lower-right corner has a significant rise in black level but very little change in white level. Excluding that point the rest of the display is quite good.
Other than the lower-right corner, the whole display has a contrast ratio of close to 1000:1 with a median of 979:1. The average is dragged down by the lower-right corner as you’d expect but overall the whole screen is good here.
Color Uniformity suffers as a result of the dim corners at the top of the screen. This causes all the color checker samples to miss their target luminance levels and dE2000 errors are higher as a result. As you can see in the center of the screen, uniformity is excellent, but those corners are just not good. The Median color error is only 1.27 but the average falls to 1.65 due to the poor performance in the corners. If you are doing photo work, you can use the center of the screen and be safe, which is basically a 27” display at that point, but avoid the edges due to the light issue.
It is a shame the two upper corners on the LG are so dim. Had they been closer to the rest of the display it would be an excellent performer for uniformity. As it is it only comes in as a very good display. The uniform area is still close to a full 27” QHD display in size, but that is making an excuse for those two corners.
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FroggyTaco - Wednesday, June 18, 2014 - link
Shopping this monitor @B&H I found a cheaper version. It appears to only lacking the TB option.LG 34UM65-P for $699 no TB ports
LG 34UM95-P for $999 has TB ports
FroggyTaco - Wednesday, June 18, 2014 - link
Nvm I failed to notice the resolution diff in my initial search.Pork@III - Wednesday, June 18, 2014 - link
"Very long array" :)cas1 - Wednesday, June 18, 2014 - link
What input was used when calculating input lag? I've seen other users report awful input lag on this monitor. Your review makes it seem amazing.Did you try DisplayPort 1.2 & did you have issues with it?
cheinonen - Thursday, June 19, 2014 - link
HDMI is used for input lag, as it is for every display. I have had no issues with DisplayPort 1.2 with it, and I've had DP 1.2 issues with other displays.japtor - Wednesday, June 18, 2014 - link
I'm wondering about the lack of internal LUT...cause this guy says there is one, is he just mistaken?:http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1213797-lg-34um9...
cheinonen - Thursday, June 19, 2014 - link
I tested the internal LUT with the HDMI input and doing it manually it does not improve the image. Instead it improves 100% saturations and causes issues at every other level. For the PC, accessing the LUT requires using the LG calibration software, which I mention in the review would not run for me. They have sent me a new sample and I'm going to try to do it again.japtor - Thursday, June 19, 2014 - link
Thanks, hope it works out.BTW according to this guy the display can also apparently work as a KVM with the TB and USB uplink port on separate machines:
http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=26774...
TrackSmart - Wednesday, June 18, 2014 - link
Nice review.A photo showing two documents side-by-side on the display might give readers a better sense of how a wide-aspect monitor compares to dual monitors for productivity. Maybe with something in the image for a sense of scale? In either case, your thoughts on productivity were quite helpful for those of us who don't watch movies on their computer screens.
GTVic - Wednesday, June 18, 2014 - link
A 20" 4:3 + 24" 16:10 dual monitor setup is a decent setup and wider. You would need 3:1 or 27:9 instead of 21:9 to match. So about 8" more width, 880 more pixels, giving 4320x1440.