NEC PA242W Monitor Review
by Chris Heinonen on September 27, 2013 9:00 AM ESTUpdated 10/2/2013: Talking to NEC after this went live it was found that the review unit had a feature, Metamerism, enabled. This helps to match it to other displays, but also caused the pre-calibration numbers and non-SpectraView numbers, to be incorrect. I'm currently re-running the pre-calibration numbers on the NEC now and updating the pages as fast as possible. The end result is that the NEC performs far, far better out-of-the-box than initially thought.
Be prepared, as there is a lot of bench test data coming here. For my pre-calibration settings I used the sRGB color gamut, a color temperature of 6500K, and a gamma setting of 2.2.
|
Pre-Calibration (re-tested) |
Post-Calibration, 200 cd/m^2 |
Post-Calibration, 80 cd/m^2 |
|
| White Level (cd/m^2) | 197.0 | 204.14 | 80.79 |
| Black Level (cd/m^2) | 0.3457 | 0.366 | 0.1479 |
| Contrast Ratio | 570:1 | 558:1 | 546:1 |
| Gamma (Average) | 2.2633 | 2.1437 | 2.3734 |
| Color Temperature | 6460K | 6426K | 6442K |
| Grayscale dE2000 | 1.573 | 0.6504 | 0.6473 |
| Color Checker dE2000 | 1.0198 | 0.6392 | 0.5331 |
| Saturations dE2000 | 0.9682 | 0.6722 | 0.5675 |
Out of the box the NEC is practically perfect. The grayscale has a little bit of an error but one that should barely be visible if at all. The gamma has a small peak at 95% but no huge issues at all. The colors are reference quality and there is nothing to complain about with them. If this was a post-calibration result I would say it is amazing. The fact that it is a pre-calibration one makes it even that much more incredible.
Post calibration, aside from a dip in the gamma at 90-95%, everything else improves and becomes practically perfect. Yes, the overall error levels can be lower but you couldn't see it. None of the 96 samples in the large color checker chart even come close to a dE2000 of 2, much less the visible limit of 3. The average error of 0.63 is the lowest I've ever seen. It's perfect.
When targeting 80 cd/m^2 and the sRGB gamma target we see similar performance. The gamma curve isn’t perfect but really everything else is. The color checker chart hits an average dE2000 of 0.53 here which is even better, but not visible. What you see on the screen is what you are supposed to see.
With Metamerism turned off, the NEC measures perfectly. The only improvement I could see is in contrast ratio, but they might be letting that suffer to coax more reliable overall performance of the panel which is a trade-off that would be worth it for their target markets. Perhaps once OLED gets affordable we can see something better, but until then this is really, really good.
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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)