ViewSonic Overdrive LCDs: A New Era of Very Fast Panels?

Color Rendering: The Generation Gap, Continued

The VG912s didn't do too badly either for a TN panel, but the Samsung 8 ms panels do much better and the choice of an AU Optronics for this 12 ms TN panel is not the most satisfactory.

These values were at the calibration point - that is, with the brightness, contrast and color adjustments that resulted in the best calibration curve. When you move away from this calibration point by adjusting the contrast and/or brightness, the calibration curve deteriorates.

Here again, the VP191 wins the round. The black level was very good and monitors that can go down this far at the calibration point are rare. It's on a par with, for example, the 0.28 nits the MVA panel of the Q19 scored. The L90D+ seems to do a little better in terms of contrast, but it does so at the price of excessive brightness. Naturally, we can bring the brightness of the L90D+ to 220 nits, but then we lose color fidelity.

As for brightness, the result is unfortunately the same for both monitors. The brightness is clearly too high, even at 220 nits. However the VP191b did do better than the others in this department.

We then measured the contrast stability when changing the brightness of the panel.

VP192s

VP191b

This curve indicates the contrast value measured at a given brightness adjustment on the OSD. In theory, brightness and contrast are two independent parameters and good contrast is a requirement regardless of the brightness adjustment. Unfortunately such is not the case in practice.

The brightness adjustment is shown on the X-axis, and contrast is shown on the Y-axis. The contrast is expressed here as a percentage of the maximum value measured using the ANSI test protocol. The maximum contrast was at a brightness adjustment of 100%.

Here there's nothing worth mentioning; both monitors performed admirably.