Results: Viewing Angle And Uniformity
For off-axis viewing, there’s no better tech right now than IPS. You can sit as much as 45 degrees from center and still see a decent image. The light falloff is minimal and the color shift associated with TN monitors is virtually non-existent. In addition, with monitors as bright as these, the effect can be further minimized at high-output settings.
We expected there might issues with side-to-side light falloff and color shift from the AOC because of its extra width, but the opposite turned out to be true. You can see a slight blue shift only in the upper- and lower-angle photos. This is a good thing, since you want a uniform image from left to right, especially from a monitor this wide. The vertical color shift means that people watching movies over your shoulder won’t see the best image quality.
Screen Uniformity: Luminance
To measure screen uniformity, zero percent and 100 percent full-field patterns are used, and nine points are sampled. In a change from previous reviews, we’re now comparing the results to other monitors we’ve measured. First, we establish a baseline measurement at the center of each screen. Then the surrounding eight points are measured and their values expressed as a percentage of the baseline, either above or below. This number gets averaged. It is important to remember that we test a single sample only, and that other samples of the same monitor can measure differently in this metric.
First up is black field uniformity:
A 7.24% variation from center is pretty much invisible. This means you are unlikely to see any variation in the black tone from left to right, and top to bottom.
Here’s the white field measurement:
The white field pattern measures even better at 4.44%. We can’t see any change in the Q2963PM’s white tone whatsoever. This is excellent performance made more impressive by the screen's wideness. We're also floored to see it right up there with the Samsung, which has a software adjustment for screen uniformity loaded at the factory.
Screen Uniformity: Color
With this review, we’re adding a new uniformity test to our benchmark suite: color. The above measurements only cover luminance. Now we’re measuring the white balance variation in an 80-percent white field pattern. The results are expressed as a variation in Delta E, in other words, the difference between the highest and lowest value. Since we don’t have numbers for past monitors, there’s no chart. The AOC ranged from a high of 2.6 to a low of .48, which is still invisible to the naked eye. This represents a 2.12 variation, which isn’t too bad.
