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I was both impressed and disappointed by the M32UC’s HDR performance. On the one hand, it’s a VA panel with around 500 nits peak. That’s a rare thing on a screen of this size. But there’s no dynamic dimming in HDR mode, which means contrast doesn’t increase.
HDR Brightness and Contrast
We know it’s possible for a VA panel to be bright, given the Asus’ extreme result. But the M32UC is one of the first desktop-sized VA monitors with 4K resolution, so it has some upward potential. Nearly 500 nits is plenty of brightness for strong HDR highlights. But since black levels are no lower, contrast is about the same for SDR content. All the other panels use either zone or field dimming to achieve greater dynamic range. Gigabyte could implement this in a firmware update. However, it does produce decent HDR by virtue of its 2,274.2:1 contrast ratio. My complaint is that it could be much better.
The three HDR modes all look the same visually and measure almost identically. You can tweak the white and black detail levels if you wish, but this will not improve the picture nor give it greater contrast. I recommend sticking with the default HDR mode and leaving all other settings unchanged.
Grayscale, EOTF and Color
The M32UC’s HDR grayscale measurements show some coolness in the brighter steps. This won’t impact the image too greatly because the errors are concentrated in very small highlight areas. Dark and mid tone zones are closer to the neutral gray they should be. The EOTF tracks almost perfectly to spec with a tone-map transition point at 68%. Detail rendering is solid at all points.
HDR color tracking is mostly on point with a few issues noted on the chart. Red is over-saturated in the mid tones while green is generally under-saturated. Blue also has a bit of extra verve which makes sky and water textures more prominent. Secondary hues in yellow and magenta are a bit off their targets as well. Rec.2020 tracking shows similar behavior, but tracking is mostly linear until the M32UC runs out of color at the 80% saturation points for red and blue and at 60% for green. This is a typical result for monitors that cover less than 90% of DCI-P3.
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