The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful: 17" LCDs Reviewed
High Color
So, this monitor is really a success esthetically; but what about performance?
First of all we calibrated our monitor with our LaCie calibrator to get an idea of the color fidelity.
We should remind you that this graph shows the difference between the desired color shade and the one actually displayed.
- If DeltaE >3, then the color you see is significantly different from the one required, meaning that the user will be able to perceive the difference.
- If DeltaE <2, LaCie considers calibration successful; a slight difference remains, but it will be almost unnoticeable to the user.
- If DeltaE <1, the color fidelity is excellent.
With this monitor, more than 85% of the colors were perfectly rendered. The monitor did have some difficulty displaying dark colors, but that's to be expected with an LCD. 100% of the values had a DeltaE under 2, which is excellent.
There are some reservations about this result, however.
| White spot | Black spot | Contrast |
|---|---|---|
| 244 | 0.62 | 393.5:1 |
That perfect calibration was obtained with the brightness adjusted to the extreme, which results in a rather high black level of 0.62 cd/m². A luminance of 244 cd/m² is also too high for domestic use.
This can be tempered, however, by lowering the brightness a little. The contrast remains stable over nearly 70% of the range of values (30 to 100%) as can be seen here:
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This curve indicates the value of the contrast measured for a given brightness adjustment using the OSD. In theory, brightness and contrast are two independent parameters and good contrast should be achieved regardless of the brightness adjustment. This is unfortunately not the case in practice.
On the X-axis is the brightness adjustment and the contrast is on the Y-axis. Contrast is expressed here as a percentage of the maximum value of the contrast measured using the ANSI standard. The maximum contrast was obtained with a brightness adjustment of 100%.
So, quite a good result can be gotten at around 190 cd/m² of luminance, even if obviously that will take you away from the optimum values obtained during calibration.