Results: Color Gamut And Performance
Color gamut is measured using a saturation sweep that samples the six main colors (red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, and yellow) at five saturation levels (20, 40, 60, 80, and 100%). This provides a more realistic view of color accuracy.
The chroma results are the main reason we went with Standard as our preferred picture mode. FPS1 not only locks out the gamma presets, but its color gamut also has a few issues.
The only color that approaches our standard is the green primary. All of the others have either hue or saturation errors, or both. If you look at the 100-percent points (the edges of the triangle), the situation doesn't look too bad. But the lower levels are too high, especially for red and magenta. Color luminance is also low almost across the board. Most of the errors are visible, and the average Delta E value is 4.77.
The Standard mode provides the best chromaticity.
We measured the above result in both the Standard and sRGB modes, which tells us that the XL2720Z is a very accurate monitor when it's set up correctly. As you saw in the grayscale results, choosing the correct options in the OSD means you have a decent panel without calibration and a superb one with. The only real flaw is blue, which is over-saturated at the 80- and 100-percent points. The luminance is reduced to compensate.
Now we return to the comparison group.
We’ve tested several professional monitors that come with factory calibrations and guarantee errors of less than two Delta E. The XL2720Z finishes just over that threshold with a value of 2.20. I consider that to be excellent performance, and I'm glad to see such attention to detail in a monitor aimed at gamers rather than users who require pinpoint color accuracy.
Gamut Volume: Adobe RGB 1998 And sRGB
There are basically two categories of displays in use today: those that conform to the sRGB/Rec. 709 standard like HDTVs, and wide-gamut panels that show as much as 100 percent of the Adobe RGB 1998 spec. We use Gamutvision to calculate the gamut volume, based on an ICC profile created from our actual measurements.
The XL2720Z is an sRGB-only monitor and it comes pretty close to the 100-percent mark. The slight deficiency comes from under-saturation of red and under-luminance of blue. The other colors hit their marks with near-perfection.
