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Grayscale Tracking And Gamma Response
Our grayscale and gamma tests are described in detail here.
Most gaming monitors have a mode called standard that provides the best starting point for calibration. Asus named its picture modes after different gaming genres with Racing being the default setting. That turns out to be the best choice whether you choose to make adjustments or not. The white point runs a little blue as brightness rises, but the errors above 70 percent are barely visible. It's perfectly fine for a great gaming experience but there is room for improvement.
We thought sRGB would be more accurate but it's actually quite green as you can see. The error is visible from 30 percent on up. In this mode all adjustments, including Brightness and Contrast, are locked out.
After calibrating the Racing mode, we generated an almost perfect chart. This is what we'd expect from a high-end pro screen, not a gaming monitor.
Here is our comparison group.
The Racing mode, measured out of the box only has an average error of 2.51dE. That's just fine with us and it puts the MG279Q mid-pack in our comparison.
Calibration makes a significant improvement to grayscale accuracy and sends the Asus to the top of the group. It beats many pro monitors we've tested as well.
Gamma Response
There are no gamma adjustments on the MG279Q but different picture modes change the tracking. Above, is the FPS mode, which emphasizes detail in the shadow and highlight portions of the image by increasing light output. It's not a huge difference but we prefer the gamma tracking in Racing mode shown below.
This is much better and aside from a slight dip at 90 percent, it's pretty much perfect.
Here is our comparison group again.
A 0.15 variation in values indicates fairly tight gamma tracking. The Acer XB270HU monitor is on top, but only by a small margin. None of the screens are far off the mark but the top three are in the professional category.
We calculate gamma deviation by simply expressing the difference from 2.2 as a percentage.
The MG279Q drops a tad in the results because its gamma is slightly below the 2.2 average value. Our measurement came out at 2.13. We doubt anyone will be able to tell a difference when viewing actual content.
