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Final Analysis
When we review professional displays at Tom’s Hardware, our expectations are always high. The two main reasons for this are price and marketing. The word professional always seems to add cost, and in most cases it’s justified. Fancy backlights and wide gamuts don’t come cheap for manufacturers, nor does the time required to calibrate each monitor that comes off the assembly line. And marketing always plays a role when talking about performance claims. To guarantee color errors below 2dE means there is some expensive quality control taking place at the assembly plant. You can’t just stamp out screens with automated machines and expect them to perform at this level.
The ViewSonic VP2771 has busted through the price barrier pretty nicely. We haven’t talked about it much during the review, but a quick check online reveals that it’s selling on the street for under $600 at this writing. Remember that the earliest QHD/IPS displays sold for that and more when they first appeared. And that was for rank-and-file product, not factory-calibrated professional-grade panels.
ViewSonic also makes bold claims for the VP2771 and manages to live up to them. Its factory-certified calibration is verified by our tests and once you figure out the OSD, the image quality is as good as the very best screens we’ve reviewed.
The OSD represents our single complaint. There are so many modes and presets that without some help, many users will have difficulty finding the optimal configuration for their monitors. As shipped, the Native preset is decent, but it doesn’t access the VP2771’s full potential. You can get pretty close with the Colorbration kit, but that will add $280 to the cost if you buy it directly from ViewSonic.
Our recommendation is to perform the manual calibration in the Advanced Mode as we did. You can copy the settings and probably get quite close to our results. Of course, if you have the means to do it yourself with a package like CalMAN, you’ll see what the VP2771 is truly capable of.
So in the end, we have a monitor that can easily run with the top products in the professional category and be bought for considerably less than some of them. The only thing you won’t get is the Adobe RGB gamut. If you’re trying to stay on the bleeding edge of video standards, this might be a hindrance. After all, the industry is on the cusp of achieving the super large Rec.2020 gamut. While those displays don’t exist in the consumer realm yet, it’s logical to assume they’ll be here soon.
But for now, if you need a reliable tool for video production in the Rec.709/sRGB realm, there are few better choices than the VP2771. And if you forgo the Colorbration kit, you can get it for about the same price as a premium IPS/QHD display that doesn’t include factory-certified color modes.
For its excellent performance potential, calibration features, and solid build quality, we’re giving the VP2771 the Tom’s Hardware Editor Recommended Award.
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