[sblantipodi]

Bob Raikes from Display Daily says that the LCD era is finished since everyone is pushing towards OLED, companies and people.
When OLED will solve burnin, pixel structure issues with a similar brightness of an LCD display I will be glad to jump in, but when? 🙂

[PCM2]

Longer term I’d agree that LCDs days are numbered, but shorter term I don’t. And it may be that those issues are never fully resolved with OLED technology, which is why Nanosys are working on alternatives using inorganic materials. They’re a huge cog in the machine as a key producer of Quantum Dots used in LCD designs (QD LED, including the backlight for the X32 FP) and also QD-OLED. They’re also pushing towards QDEL (NanoLED as current preferred marketing term) which will use red, green and blue QDs as a purely self-emissive inorganic system. As opposed to using them to replace phosphors on an LCD’s LED backlight or to supplement an OLED light source.

[furama]

Cost aside, would pg32uqx still be superior over this for overall experience? And is it true that newer batches of pg32uqx has less blooming?

[PCM2]

The comparison is drawn throughout the X32 FP review and it depends what you value in the experience. The PG32UQX offers significantly weaker pixel responsiveness, it’s simply too slow for some but absolutely fine for others. It also offers superior brightness and likes to bright bias more. Some ‘haloing’ or ‘blooming’ is unavoidable, it would only be greatly diminished if the monitor dark biases significantly more than it does (as the Acer does). I’m not aware of ASUS re-tuning the algorithm to significantly change the behaviour in that respect and they wouldn’t be able to do so without compromising the experience by dimming bright highlights.

ASUS could’ve performed some fine-tuning to smooth out some of the transitions where flickering could be observed due to rapid brightening and dimming of zones, with ‘halos’ formed around smaller bright objects set against medium backgrounds. There’s plenty of discussion of that with respect to the X32 FP in this thread and it’s explored in some detail in the review. I’d also recommend taking a look at this thread which offers a comparative view of the Acer and the ViewSonic XG321UG, which is the ViewSonic version of the PG32UQX.

[spiroh]

Excellent review! In general, even IPS monitors have cone a long way with brightness and some of their issues. As I said before I still find FALD too noticeable for me so I need this off during work, and I recently observed my brother’s C2 as a monitor. It’s amazing but too big for me as an all arounder due to work productivity. The Predator is doing a solid job right now holding me very happy until a standard sized 32 to 40inch OLED monitor becomes available.

[furama]

Thanks for your advice. I am currently using Acer X27 and been wanting to upgrade for a while. I am now leaning towards PG32UQX, and i am hoping the haloing wont be as bad as some youtube video back in 2021 and hope i wont notice the weaker pixel responses.

[GroundReaper94]

I am somewhat in the same boat as you. I want to use a dual monitor setup and I am currently using an ASUS PG27AQDM as my main gaming monitor. The monitor is great, but relativ dim HDR, bad text clarity and possible Burn-In force me to use a second monitor.

The X32FP was great in everything, but had terrible HDR performance for me because of the extrem dark biasing (especially on the PS5, where the homescreen was at a maximum of 80 nits or so). The test pattern with white boxes, especially with 100% white, were awesome on the X32FP, but it is way too dim in many games with the heavy dark biasing. In Battlefield 2042, many maps felt so dark that I had trouble seeing enemies. For me personally, the X32FP perfomed the best in AC Odyssey, but AC Valhalla on the other hand was a bit dim.

The Odyssey Neo G8 had horrible scanlines, lackluster colors and a relatively dim HDR presentation.

The Cooler Master GP27U is my current second monitor and it is really nice so far, but I could also get an ASUS PG27UQ for only 400€ and could sell the GP27U to make profit. The question is, would it be a wise choice to go for a PG27UQ as a second monitor for desktop, singleplayer and HDR in 2023? I also considered the PG32UQX or XG321UG because of the awesome HDR performance. The response times are slow, but for singleplayer and cooperative games it should be enough.

@PCM2
The review of both the ASUS PG27AQDM and ACER X32FP were superb. Thank you for your awesome work! 🙂

[PCM2]

It’s nice to see the reviews appreciated here! 🙂

It might be worth getting hold of the PG27UQ and seeing how you find it. I think it remains a nice choice for a bright HDR performance – and you could possibly sell it with minimal if any loss if it doesn’t work out and you prefer the GP27U? I have to say though, there’s something really special about that superbly bright HDR performance of the PG32UQX or XG321UG. The ‘pop’ and wow factor it delivers even to scenes overflowing with brighter shades is simply unparalleled and if you’re after strong HDR brightness they deliver that incredibly well. It also provides a nicely lifted and suitably vibrant look to colours due to its reluctance to dark bias. I always have that experience in my mind when reviewing other monitors (and I know I like to draw the comparison in reviews) as it really did make a lasting impression on me. Whilst a lot can be said about weaknesses in pixel responsiveness with that panel, I don’t feel it’s terrible – especially not for immersive single player gameplay. And it’s significantly better than most VA models for that matter.

[Degrader]

Yeah, nice review! The video is also very nice addition to the review, great job! I agree with your findings, like the somewhat undersaturating of green, the halo’s in the complex scene with candles 😉, dark biasing ofcourse. But I missed the significant shift in color temperature in dark content when local dimming is enabled. It is only mentioned very briefly in your written review. Does this means that you did not notice as strong as I did?

[PCM2]

The colour temperature was quite brightness dependent and also shifted over time as the monitor warmed up more. It even changed depending on the test pattern or colorimeter software used to record it. These were not huge shifts and I didn’t notice any specific shifts at a given brightness level with full field or large patch white with ‘Adaptive-Dimming’ enabled. Nor did I find a visually clear shift for smaller bright highlights (too small to accurately measure with the colorimeter). As noted in the written review it usually sat ~6800K under HDR (and that’s with ‘Adaptive Dimming’ active). So I didn’t really consider this a particular issue on my unit, though I did note in the OSD video and in the review that it would’ve been better if the monitor remembered colour channel adjustments separately for SDR and HDR for those who wish to adjust this.

[Degrader]

Then your unit was definitely better tuned than mine. I saw differences up to 2000K in a dark scene between local dimming enabled/disabled. Even on desktop when HDR was enabled both on the monitor and in Windows and measuring a white patch against a light background and dark background.

[PCM2]

Yeah, 2000K is pretty wild. Sometimes mine went a bit above 7000K according to some readings, but definitely didn’t see super high white points even with the ‘Adaptive Dimming’ active.

[Degrader]

Rtings published also their review of the X32 FP and I find it remarkable what they’re saying about text clarity. This probably the reason why I find text definitely clearer on the XG321UG compared to the Acer.

Although it has a high pixel density, the text clarity is just good because it doesn’t display text extremely well with Windows ClearType enabled. As you can see in the top photo, there’s color fringing in straight lines. While this isn’t noticeable unless you’re sitting very close to the monitor, it isn’t as good as other 32-inch, 4k monitors. The photos above are with Windows 10, and you can also see it in Windows 11 with ClearType on and with ClearType off. Even though Windows 11 has a better implementation of ClearType, there’s still color fringing.

[sblantipodi]

I’m not am hawk but I don’t see problems with text clarity.
the AG coating is not heavy, the pixel structure is the same of other IPS panel, how can this have a worse text clarity than other monitors?

[PCM2]

I didn’t have any issues whatsoever with text clarity on the X32 FP. It has standard RGB subpixels, it has a very tight pixel density and it has a ‘good’ screen surface. Furthermore, I use Windows 11 with ClearType and if you look at RTINGS image of Windows 11 text with ClearType on (though “on” is not one state, it depends how it’s optimised – but let’s not overcomplicate things) it doesn’t show any particular issues that the text in the review suggests it does. It’s common to see a deeper or more saturated look to the red subpixels bordering text, you can see that in my reviews of various models even with the text I show with ClearType disabled (EX3210U, PG32UQX and M32U to give some ~32″ ‘4K’ examples). There was nothing unusual or out of place with the representation of text on the Acer, at least not on my Windows 11 system.

The RTINGS image using Windows 10 ClearType does look odd for whatever reason. I question whether that would be readily noticed by most people by eye from a normal viewing distance, but I have to say it’s news to me that ClearType is “improved” on Windows 11 vs. Windows 10 anyway.

[Degrader]

@ furama, according to this user from Hardforum which has both the PG32UQX and the XG321UG there’s no difference between the two as it comes to haloing:

The PG and XG are very similar. I prefer the image on my PG, but this may be just a result of panel variations. The panel on my PG seems to be calibrated a bit better, and it has somewhat better uniformity, but that’s probably all panel lottery stuff. The haloing in HDR is pretty similar.

[spiroh]

Text clarity issues? No way. I’m using this for productivity over 8 hours a day and text looks amazing.

[sblantipodi]

Acer answered me this about HDR/SDR Adaptive dimming global setting:

“Understood your concern.
If we have chance to modify the FW, we will keep separated adaptive dimming setting in HDR/SDR modes, instead of global.
From our user’s feedback, they still enjoy adaptive dimming is ON while consuming SDR content to have higher contrast/brightness.
We will keep adaptive dimming adjustable in SDR mode, but default will be OFF.”

it’s a king answer but I don’t think thet they have another chance to release a new firmware
monitors doesn’t have a lot of firmware updates generally and I don’t think that this time it will be different.

[PCM2]

From my perspective I agree that ‘Adaptive Dimming’ is nice to use for some SDR content, but certainly not on the desktop (and not all SDR content in general). For HDR it’s absolutely something you’d want to use 100% of the time. So it would definitely be nice if it remembered the setting for SDR and HDR – but I agree with your assessment that we shouldn’t hold our breaths for the X32 FP to be updated again. 🙂

[spiroh]

Please let them know you know multiple people who would love that setting.

[Author]

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