Viewing Angles, Uniformity, Response & Lag
Viewing Angles
Even though the UP2718Q is a high quality panel, its 384-zone backlight presents a few challenges in the viewing angle test. While detail looks about the same as any other IPS monitor, the color shifts are clearly more pronounced. To the sides, the image goes quite red, while a top-down view turns things purple. Brightness falls off around 40% at the 45° point as well. In HDR mode, we observed a slight halo effect in patterns where bright objects are rendered against a dark background. This is an artifact common to zone-backlight panels. It’s much more difficult to see in actual content, but we noticed it in a few instances.
Screen Uniformity
To learn how we measure screen uniformity, please click here.
The UP2718Q includes a uniformity compensation option, but since it’s not available in the Color Space modes, we didn’t test it. Based on our results, we believe it’s unnecessary. Dell easily out-paces all the VA panels here except the C4008VU8. Color uniformity is superb with only a tiny .72dE variation in values. This is excellent performance and we see no need for any compensation. If you wish to use it, it’s enabled in the Custom Color mode.
Pixel Response & Input Lag
Please click here to read up on our pixel response and input lag testing procedures.
If you’re drooling over the prospect of HDR gaming, the UP2718Q might be a decent choice if your tastes don’t run to fast-paced shooters. With 3840x2160 resolution and a maximum 60Hz refresh rate, motion processing isn’t in the same league as a high-speed gaming monitor. But for more casual titles, its 63ms total input lag is more than adequate. With overdrive set to Fast, we observed minimal ghosting in the BlurBusters test.
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