[ryobg]

Chiming in with my new BenQ EX3210U. I’m still in a process of calibration and research, but so far I can report:

At SDR, D65, 2.2 gamma, 160 cd luminance:

* Colour deltas in the centre: <1E, right: ~2.7E, left: ~4.2E
* Luminance uniformity delta centre (except mid): 6%, Right: ~10%, left: ~15% (it handles worse the black levels)
* Black luminance at 0.223 cd
* Contrast at 720
* I don’t know how to measure yet the colour gamut/volume with xrite i1.
* With AMA (overdrive) set to 1, the ufo ghosting behaves fantastic to me

The uniformity and the contrast bugs me, but everything else so far looks pretty good. I sure won’t use all other fancy modes and menu settings, but I have still to check out the HDR. The stand is a bit stupid, the whole monitor stands on 3 well spread points basically.

[PCM2]

Thanks for sharing your feedback on the EX3210U, ryobg. Glad you’re liking it overall, though it’s a shame to read about those issues as well. Whilst uniformity can vary between units (and so can contrast, to an extent), that contrast definitely seems on the low side. Is it possible your unit has a uniformity issue centrally which raises black depth there and therefore reduces contrast? This can certainly happen on monitors sometimes. The contrast on my unit reaches ~1000:1, as recorded with an X-Rite i1Display Pro Plus. Make sure your colour signal is correct and try the following settings to see if it enhances contrast:

– Color Mode = Custom
– Light Tuner = 0 or negative (positive values will increase black depth and therefore reduce contrast)
– Colour Temperature = User Define (all channels at ‘100’)

[ryobg]

I have hard time to adjust correctly. The profiling does some contrast checking which makes me move the Contrast to 54 and during the White Point calibration, I have to move the RGB sliders. Otherwise the temperature is widely off as well its color. The latter, set to 100, 87, 88 respectively. Somehow, able to boost the contrast to 780 now, black level at .200 cd. Light Tuner mode is at zero, the Vibrancy/Sharpness at their defaults. The AMD is streaming RGB pixels 4:4:4, display’s RGB PC range mode is at RGB 0~255. I’m wondering whether I should play with the Light Tuner (0) and Gamma (3).

[PCM2]

Full correction of the gamma on the EX3210U will certainly take some doing and though that shouldn’t massively impact contrast it could have a bit of an impact. On my unit ‘Gamma 2’ and ‘Light Tuner -2’ got closest to the ‘2.2’ curve with the ‘Custom’ preset. Those are moderate colour channel adjustments you’ve had to make, which will reduce contrast quite a bit. You might want to simply target a slightly higher white point so the red channel adjustment is less extreme. That will be more suitable in some lighting conditions anyway – your eyes will naturally adjust to this to a fair degree. Strictly targeting 6500K for all lighting environments isn’t really advisable anyway, it’s just an easy general recommendation to give and it helps to have a common target for matching in a multi-monitor environment. Unfortunately that significant green channel adjustment can’t really be avoided and it’s that one that generally has the greatest impact on contrast.

I generally wouldn’t recommend touching the contrast control, either. This model is quite sensitive to these adjustments. Whilst it shouldn’t reduce measured static contrast, increasing contrast even slightly on this model may cause some issues with overly blended bright shades. Usually such adjustments are recommended as some sort of crutch to try to correct some areas of the gamma curve, but it can have undesirable consequences your colorimeter might not be picking up on. Be sure to observe the Lagom white saturation test when making any contrast adjustments and make sure there aren’t obvious tints or overly blended light greys as a result of the adjustments.

[ryobg]

I don’t want to bloat anymore this thread, just reporting the result of my several hours overall fight. At 6900K, 160 cd, I was able to achieve 870:1 contrast. This was the maximum. Black luminance at 0.184 cd. My white point is a bit off, average colour error ~1.6E (the reds are worse at ~3E). The grey uniformity is still ~15% off at the whole left. Light Tuner 0 (default), Gamma 3 (default), RGB 100,100,100 (default), Contrast 55, Brightness 48.

Basically, I sacrificed a bit of colour accuracy for a bit of contrast. Frankly, I don’t think this EX3210U display unit is the best, but probably is practical enough.

[PCM2]

Our review of the BenQ EX3210U is now live.

[PCM2]

I’ve shared a few thoughts over here on the LG 32QG950 but I see it hasn’t really been mentioned or discussed in this thread. I’d reiterate that really you’re paying a premium for a VESA DisplayHDR 1000 experience with the LG – and whilst it’s good on the brightness side, 32 dimming zones is extremely limited and in my view unacceptable on the contrast side. Especially with the brightness levels that model is capable of. The A-TW polarizer does reduce (but does not eliminate) IPS glow and can only do so much at the high brightness levels under HDR. Static contrast is not overly strong, either, so it certainly doesn’t provide a deep and atmospheric look to darker scenes or an inky look to dark shades.

It offers good responsiveness (largely similar experience to the likes of the M32U in that respect) and offers a good level of vibrancy, albeit with lower Adobe RGB coverage than the models with AUO panels (EX3210U, MPG321UR-QD etc.) I don’t personally think it’s worth its usual premium, but when it’s on sale it might be worth considering, particularly if you like strong HDR brightness but care less about contrast.

[ryobg]

It is interesting coincidence. My BenQ EX3210U for which I talked above started randomly to turn off and at some point unable to turn on even. After several weeks and two trials, the seller returned me my money and I bought LG 32GQ950 instead. It was in similar category.

So far, the only issues I have found is that it randomly turns off for a second or two each other day, and my Windows has troubles to boot now both monitors on time, so my windows and apps move around. It has a contrast of 930, its HDR, subjectively, I see as a bit weak (weaker than the BenQ). Better colours (correctness and coverage) and it has better stand and light controls too. In general, I think it is average, if not, good monitor for the 32″ 4k high speed HDR category.

I do think that few years will pass before we see stable and nice HDR, therefore I don’t see a point to wait for any other upcoming model.

[PCM2]

Thanks for sharing your feedback, ryobg – it’s appreciated and a useful addition here. 🙂

Speaking of a potentially strong HDR performance, some of the models people are very interested in with that in mind are the Acer X32 FP and ASUS PG32UQXE discussed a bit in this thread. They’re relevant to this one as well but aren’t discussed here so far (in part because they’re not actually available yet). The hope is they’ll provide a relatively strong HDR performance for a reasonable price, though I would naturally expect a premium over the models discussed here as these ones include a capable Mini LED backlight. They’re long overdue at this point and the lack of recent news has been ‘disappointing’, to put it lightly.

[EsaT]

ryobg, did you try to check power bricks output voltage?
Random turning off and especially problems in getting something to power up are one symptom of power supply issues.
(if PC starts to need multiple power button presses in increasing numbers it’s time to get new PSU)

Have suspicion that part of current craze for external power bricks is to allow monitor manufacturers to change supplier often to cut down cost and maximize profit margin.
And shouldn’t need “doctorate in rocket science” to understand what that means for power supply’s quality.
Even if made with consistent quality, insides of those power bricks just run hot putting more stress on components.
(maybe I should just call them dumb design bricks)

[ryobg]

That would have been a good thing to check, if I knew earlier. However, the frequency of the problem started to increase as the time passed, until one day it totally stopped. We tried briefly with another supply and issue persisted, but the service reported no problem after that. After my second return, they just forwarded it to a bigger service and returned my money. With this LG, its brief turn on & off, occurs sporadically but if this starts to get worse – I will definitely try to measure its PSU.

In any case, I’m slightly disappointed in general quality of these gadgets. The price is not really small, but it does seem not enough. My old Asus 27″ 4k 60Hz gsync, didn’t show a problem since I bought it six years ago. On other hand, this year I bought a PC and I already got problems with its motherboard and RAM on top of the monitor.

Anyway, thank you for the comments.

[PCM2]

A comparison between the Gigabyte M32U and Samsung Odyssey G7 G70B (S32BG70) can be found in this post.

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