Asus PA279Q, The Cadillac Of Monitors?
Today we're taking a look at the 27-inch member of Asus’ ProArt family, the PA279Q. This is a flagship piece of hardware, and it has a feature set and price tag to match. You'll find this monitor in the company's Visual Professional line-up, topped by the Ultra HD PQ321Q, which we're in the process of reviewing.
Looking at the logos on the outside of the box, it’s obvious that Asus tried to cram every possible feature and enhancement into this display. QHD resolution from an AH-IPS panel is where our journey begins. At 2560x1440, the PA279Q has the dot size to pretty much eliminate any visible pixelation, even if you sit very close to it. With more screens hitting the market at this resolution, we’re starting to get spoiled. QHD displays are claiming permanent spots on our desks.
This is also a wide-gamut panel. Asus claims 99 percent of Adobe RGB 1998. It’s also pre-calibrated and includes a data sheet, individual to each monitor, showing the results of grayscale, color, gamma, and screen uniformity tests. All errors are below two Delta E, and the gamma is a perfect 2.2 as-shipped. And here’s the best part: the PA279Q includes an sRGB mode so you can have accurate color for your game and movie content. This is the first wide-gamut display we’ve seen that can correctly render both Adobe RGB 1998 and sRGB.
There is more here than just high performance. Six USB 3.0 ports are included, plus an appropriate cable for the single upstream connection. And you get a nine-in-one memory card reader too. Of course, there is audio support courtesy of three-watt stereo speakers, as well as a headphone jack.
All of this luxury doesn’t come cheap. But it’s not the most expensive flagship monitor we’ve seen either. That honor still belongs to Samsung's S27B970D, which sells for nearly $1200. At $850, Asus undercuts that screen by quite a bit, offers more features and, in our testing, equal or better image quality.
| Brand | Asus |
|---|---|
| Model | PA279Q |
| Street Price | $850 |
| Panel Type | AH-IPS |
| Backlight | GB-r-LED |
| Screen Size | 27" |
| Max Resolution | 2560x1440 |
| Max Refresh Rate | 60 Hz |
| Aspect Ratio | 16:9 |
| Response Time (GTG) | 6 ms |
| Brightness (cd/m2) | 350 |
| Speakers | 2 x 3 W |
| VGA | - |
| DVI | 1 |
| DisplayPort | 1 in, 1 out (v1.2 w/MST) |
| HDMI | 1 |
| Headphone | 1 |
| USB | v3.0, 1 up, 6 down |
| Dimensions w/baseWxHxD | 25.2 x 22 x 9.5 in641 x 560 x 240 mm |
| Panel Thickness | 2.75 in, 70 mm |
| Warranty | Three years |
You may notice in the specs a type of backlight we haven’t covered here before: GB-r-LED. The vast majority of LED screens use white LEDs (W-LED) on the top and bottom edges of the panel. A white LED emits blue light through a yellow phosphor, which neutralizes its color temp to around 6500 Kelvin. This is very easy and cheap to implement, and that's why it’s so common. At the other end of the spectrum, we have RGB-LED which is literally red, green, and blue LEDs arrayed directly behind the LCD panel. This is very expensive and difficult to manufacture, and therefore quite rare.
The compromise is found in GB-r-LED technology. Here, the backlight consists of green and blue diodes coated with a red phosphor. The net effect is that the spectral peaks of the three primary colors are pretty much even. With W-LED, the spectral peak is much higher for blue. So, software (and the panel's color filters) must intervene to achieve the correct color balance. A GB-r-LED panel is more accurate natively, making software and the color filter layer less critical. And you get the added benefit of the wider Adobe RGB gamut. It is a bit more expensive to manufacture than W-LED, but less so than RGB-LED.
Before we get to the benchmarks, there is a lot to look at, both in the box and on the panel itself. Asus' asking price is above other QHD screens, but we quickly discovered the value factor is high as well.
