Viewing Angles, Uniformity, Response & Lag
To learn how we measure screen uniformity, please click here.
These are some of the best viewing angle photos we’ve seen from any monitor, IPS or otherwise. There is no visible color shift to the sides and only a slight reduction in brightness. From the top down you can see a red tint but almost no loss of detail. Since there isn’t any new technology here we believe it’s due to the tight gap of the PA328Q’s anti-glare layer. It’s obviously superior to the competition.
Screen Uniformity: Luminance
The black field uniformity test is the only real flaw we encountered in our sample. There are visible bright areas in the upper left and lower right zones of the screen. The other regions are fairly uniform to the eye and there is no hotspot at the center. If you recall our review of the Planar PXL2790MW, that monitor also has no air gap in front of the TFT layer. This close contact with the anti-glare coating makes light-bleed difficult to avoid. Unfortunately the PA328Q’s uniformity compensation doesn’t help here.
Here’s the white field measurement.
The white-field measurement is what we’ve come to expect from well-built monitors. And you can see the uniformity compensation makes a significant difference in this test result. We still believe the feature is unnecessary however. 9.22 percent is still visually perfect.
Screen Uniformity: Color
Uniformity compensation introduces slight color shifts in the upper-left and lower-right portions of the screen. They’re barely noticeable but you won’t see any problems at all with compensation turned off.
Remember that the above three test results are sample-specific. Another PA328Q will measure differently than ours did.
Pixel Response And Input Lag
Please click here to read up on our pixel response and input lag testing procedures.
25 milliseconds is a common result for an IPS panel running at 60Hz. We ran this test with TraceFree turned up all the way. That causes slight ghosting behind moving objects but during gameplay, it’s very hard to see any artifacts. The improvement in motion detail is visible however.
Here are the lag results.
While gaming in Ultra HD is still limited to 60Hz, the PA328Q has fairly low input lag compared to most monitors at this resolution. Against the BenQ BL3201PT it’s a wash but the gaming-oriented XB280HK which adds G-Sync to the mix, is still the fastest UHD monitor out there.