HP Envy 34c Monitor Review

Color Gamut And Performance

For details on our color gamut testing and volume calculations, please click here.

You can see the red over-saturation we’ve been talking about. This is the Envy 34c’s native color gamut. HP has compensated by lowering the red luminance which results in a low Delta E value and that’s a good thing. In actual content reds will be a little more vivid but they won’t look unnatural.

In sRGB mode the saturations are all pretty much on-target. Blue is slightly off but again HP has compensated by lowering the luminance. We wish the grayscale tracking were a little more accurate in this mode because it’s just fine otherwise.

Custom mode returns the red primary to its native position but grayscale tracking is better. It’s a six-of-one half-dozen-of-the-other proposition. To get the best white point you have to use Custom. To get the best gamut sRGB is the choice. It comes down to user preference and both images look great to our eyes.

Now we return to the comparison group.

The lowest average error is found in the Custom mode because color luminance levels correctly balance the over-saturated red primary. Based on this result, we chose Custom as our preference for both gaming and productivity. 1.07dE is an extremely low error and demonstrates excellent performance.

Gamut Volume: Adobe RGB 1998 And sRGB

The extra red means the Envy 34c exceeds 100-percent of the sRGB color gamut. Whenever this happens, photographers should calibrate their entire production chain to match. Otherwise it will be more difficult to obtain precise color accuracy in the proofing process.