Monoprice 30-inch IPS LED Monitor Review

Results: Grayscale Tracking And Gamma Response

Our grayscale and gamma tests are described in detail here.

The Monoprice ships set to a color temp preset called Bluish. It’s aptly named, as you can see. By the 80-percent level, green is almost non-existent, giving the brightest whites a purplish tint. Luckily, there is a warm preset that looks much better. Or, you can calibrate the user mode with reasonably effective RGB sliders.

With only a single set of RGB sliders affecting the high range, this was the best chart we could generate. The errors at zero and 50 percent are just over the visibility line, but overall, the image is vastly improved from where we started.

Here is our comparison group:

With an average error this high, you’ll want to do something to correct the flaw. We know most people shopping for value-priced monitors aren’t going to calibrate, so we strongly suggest trying our settings from page three. You’ll lose some contrast performance. However, the gains in color accuracy are well worth it.

A result of 2.33 DeltaE is not bad by any means. A few years ago, it would have been better than average, in fact. Over the last 18 months, however, we’ve seen a steady improvement in accuracy from monitors at all price points. You no longer have to spend four figures to get decent color and grayscale results.

Gamma Response

We had a bit of trouble dialing in the gamma due to a brightness control that doesn’t work as expected. The trace above indicates some crushing of shadow detail and a general murkiness up to the 50-percent brightness level. The only way to fix it is to raise brightness to maximum.

This is the best trace we could achieve. With the brightness slider maxed, we used the contrast control to get peak output to 200cd/m². As with the grayscale adjustments, the improvement in image quality is significant.

If you’re tempted to try the dynamic contrast option, this is the effect it has in our gamma test. All brightness levels from zero to 30 percent appear as one black object. That means all shadow detail is lost. There’s plenty of clipping at the top end too. You do get a measured contrast of over 6000:1, but in our opinion the image is not usable. We strongly recommend avoiding the DCR feature.

Here is our comparison group again:

A .5 variation in gamma values is not too bad. It’s just that the rest of the group performs a little better. Our favorite monitor is still the BenQ BL3200PT. Among the value choices, though, Auria's display looks strong.

We calculate gamma deviation by expressing the difference from 2.2 as a percentage.

Even though the Monoprice’s gamma tracking is a little weak, the values stay within striking distance of 2.2. Remember that we’ve given up some contrast to get to this point. But now the image looks far better, and in our opinion is perfectly usable.