Grayscale Tracking And Gamma Response
Our grayscale and gamma tests are described in detail here.
You can see that the XR341CK is nearly perfect out of the box. The chart shows a slight rise in blue as brightness increases, but all the errors are below two DeltaE, which means they cannot be seen. Considering Acer doesn't include a factory-certified calibration, this is an impressive result.
Switching to sRGB mode locks out all adjustments including Brightess and Contrast. It's still very accurate as far as grayscale tracking is concerned. Its only flaw is gamma, which we'll show you below.
Calibration does little to improve an already superb test result. The only change we made was to increase Red Gain by one click and lower Contrast by two. Only a few professional displays can do better than this.
Here is our comparison group.
The U3415W remains our out-of-box champ in the grayscale tracking test. But the fact that a gaming monitor is only a tick behind speaks volumes. Acer is using a very high-quality LG panel part in the XR341CK and it shows.
If you lined up all our test subjects together, you wouldn't see a difference in their grayscale accuracy. The fact that four of the screens are gaming monitors tells you just how good the latest displays are. It really can't get much better.
Gamma Response
Out-of-box gamma is the only flaw in an otherwise superb set of test results. Tracking is fairly solid but the offset is a little light. It's a small difference but a visible one. Luckily all you have to do is change the preset from 2.2 to 2.4.
This is much better and it would be perfect if not for a tiny error of 1.8cd/m2 at 90 percent. It's well below the visible threshold and again we're seeing a pro-level result.
Gamma tracking is super-tight except for the tiny dip at 90 percent shown above. The XR341CK is still among the best in this test.
We calculate gamma deviation by simply expressing the difference from 2.2 as a percentage.
The average gamma value is 2.19, which is only .04 percent off the 2.2 standard. Just remember to change the preset in the OSD to 2.4 to see the same result.
