Nixeus VUE27D Monitor Review

With no adjustment beyond brightness, and only a single input, it is easy to get results from the VUE27D that should be repeatable for everyone. For all of this testing I use CalMAN 5.1.2 with an i1Pro spectrometer and a C6 colorimeter that I profile from the i1Pro. Our targets are 200 cd/m^2 of light output, a gamma of 2.2, and the sRGB color gamut.

The initial grayscale is very lacking in blue out of the box. The color temperature of 6032 is well below the target of 6504, which provides the warm, reddish tint of the grayscale. The overall gamma of 2.19 is very close to 2.2 but it isn’t flat.

Colors also have a red/green push with the CIE chart showing a drift towards that side of the chart. The color errors are certainly visible especially with shades of cyan that have a greenish tint to them.  The average errors for saturations and the color checker are relatively modest with skin tones and blue/cyan shades causing the largest errors. With no other controls available this is the performance most people should expect to see.

Calibrating with CalMAN v5.2.0 removes these issues. We have a slight color shift in the grayscale but nothing bad at all. Our gamma becomes neutral and the contrast ratio falls a bit from 1000:1 to 900:1 but is still good for IPS. Color errors are almost completely corrected for and no samples at all pass the dE2000 level of 3.0 that people consider visible.

Calibrating for 80 cd/m2 of light and the sRGB gamma curve produces similar results. The Contrast ratio is worse as the backlight does not go low enough to hit this target easily. The grayscale and gamma are both very good and the colors are also far improved.  If you have the ability to calibrate the VUE27D it has the potential to produce very accurate images.

The most recent release of CalMAN also adds the ability to test color accuracy for ICC aware applications. All the other tests involve just modifying the video card or monitor LUT, so we see how every application will work. If you are using Photoshop or other color critical work, your application is almost certainly ICC aware and can use profiles to be even more accurate.

For those applications the VUE27D can produce numbers better than anything I’ve seen to date. This is also the first monitor tested to use this ICC ability so there is nothing to compare it to. However if you are someone that can calibrate their display to get an ICC profile, and who uses ICC aware applications, the VUE27D will look virtually flawless.

If you don’t have any calibration hardware or software, the VUE27D is pretty decent out of the box. Skin tones and oceans will have a bit of a tint to them, but not a giant one. If you can calibrate it, then you’ll get fantastic results from all applications, ICC aware or not.