NEC PA243W 24" Wide-Gamut Professional Monitor Review: Out-of-the-Box Excellence

Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.

Viewing Angles, Uniformity, Response & Lag

Viewing Angles

The PA243W is about as good as LCD monitors get in off-axis image quality. The panel is clearly a premium part. You can see almost no color shift to the side, with a light falloff around 40%. In the vertical plane, there is a visible change to red with a greater loss of brightness and detail. Under normal circumstances, users won’t see much difference in the picture up to about 60° off-center.

Screen Uniformity

To learn how we measure screen uniformity, please click here.

The PA243W has a five-level uniformity compensation control. And it’s the first one we’ve seen that provides a benefit with almost no contrast penalty. But you can see that in the case of our sample, it’s completely unnecessary. This might be the first time we’ve seen a monitor measure better in the black field test than the white. 2.17% is unbelievably low. While the results are sample-specific, we'd guess that you won’t find bleed or glow on any PA243W. Compensation seems to have a greater effect on brighter images and color, which show more improvement--at least to the meter. We see no difference with the naked eye.

Pixel Response & Input Lag

Please click here to read up on our pixel response and input lag testing procedures.

The PA243W is hardly a gaming monitor, but its response and lag are what we normally see from a display in this category. Casual play is fine but any attempts at first-person shooters should come with reasonable expectations. We observed a little latency during our Tomb Raider sessions, but motion blur was low when we turned on Response Improve in the Advanced menu. Contrast and color quality were first-rate of course, and shadow detail popped nicely thanks to accurate gamma tracking.

MORE: Best Gaming Monitors

MORE: Best Professional Monitors

MORE: How We Test Monitors

MORE: How To Choose A Monitor

MORE: All Monitor Content

Christian Eberle
Contributing Editor

Christian Eberle is a Contributing Editor for Tom's Hardware US. He's a veteran reviewer of A/V equipment, specializing in monitors. Christian began his obsession with tech when he built his first PC in 1991, a 286 running DOS 3.0 at a blazing 12MHz. In 2006, he undertook training from the Imaging Science Foundation in video calibration and testing and thus started a passion for precise imaging that persists to this day. He is also a professional musician with a degree from the New England Conservatory as a classical bassoonist which he used to good effect as a performer with the West Point Army Band from 1987 to 2013. He enjoys watching movies and listening to high-end audio in his custom-built home theater and can be seen riding trails near his home on a race-ready ICE VTX recumbent trike. Christian enjoys the endless summer in Florida where he lives with his wife and Chihuahua and plays with orchestras around the state.