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

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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

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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

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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.

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Christian Eberle
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.