ViewSonic VP2780-4K 27-inch Ultra HD Monitor Review

OSD Setup And Calibration

OSD Tour

Touching the key marked “1” brings up the main menu. The “2” key takes you straight to the input selector. The down arrow adjusts the Blue Light Filter feature, and the up arrow selects from the three user-programmable picture presets.

The OSD is divided into seven sub-menus, the first of which is contrast and brightness.

Pressing “2” brings you into each sub-menu which has sliders for various adjustments. The contrast control is grayed out in the sRGB mode which is selected in this photo. We found no need to adjust it when it was enabled in the other modes.

You can connect up to five sources to the HDMI and DisplayPort inputs. Up to four of them can be viewed simultaneously using the multi-picture function, which we’ll describe below.

There are no speakers, so volume and mute only affect the headphone output. Since audio signals can be carried by both HDMI and DisplayPort, the Audio Input option lets you choose which source you want to hear.

Color Adjust is another term for the VP2780-4K’s picture modes. sRGB is the most accurate out of the box, followed by Native, which is the default mode. User Color pops up RGB sliders which allow for very accurate grayscale tracking. There is however a caveat to that, which we’ll explain on page five.

Here is the very complete signal information screen. Not many monitors tell you all the frequency parameters like this one.

Here are the remaining image adjustments. Sharpness has four levels, of which 50 seemed the best to our eyes. Turning it to max produces very slight ringing but not as much as most displays we’ve seen.

Response Time is the VP2780-4K’s overdrive control. On some screens it can cause additional ghosting but we saw only a small amount of the artifact regardless of the setting. Standard showed a little stuttering in our tests, so we opted for the Ultra Fast option.

Aspect ratio includes 4:3, along with full screen and 1:1 options. 1:1 will show lower-res signals windowed, so use full screen if you plan to work at resolutions other than the native 3840x2160 pixels.

You’ll notice Gamma is grayed out in the above photo. Presets are available in the Bluish, Cool, Native and Warm modes. You can’t change the tracking in sRGB, EBU or User, which we found to be a limitation.

Multi-Picture is very cool. You can display either four or two sources at once. When you have two, they can be viewed side-by-side or top-and-bottom. You can also set up PIP if you wish.

Viewmode is another list of image modes that include Standard, Game, Movie, Web, Text or Mono (black & white). They will take precedence over other picture adjustments, including brightness. We left this option on Standard for our tests.

Blue Light Filter will reduce the intensity of the blue primary to create a warmer color temp.

The OSD can be viewed in nine languages. It can also be positioned anywhere on the screen, and its timeout can be up to 60 seconds. If you employ the portrait mode, check the OSD Pivot box to rotate the menu accordingly. The Save As option contains three memory slots, but they only work in the User picture mode.

You might think Memory Recall is used to access the three programmable memories, but it’s actually a factory reset. And there is no confirmation dialog. Our advice is to record all your settings after calibration in order to avoid accidentally erasing them.

Calibration

The VP2780-4K comes with a factory-certified calibration supported by a complete data sheet that is unique to each sample. Our tests results matched ViewSonic’s almost exactly. You don’t need to calibrate if you use either the sRGB or Native modes. We attempted to calibrate the User mode and were rewarded with extremely accurate grayscale tracking, but then our luck ran out. We encountered gamma issues which in turn affected color saturations below 100 percent. The bottom line is that we were unable to exceed the accuracy offered by the preset picture modes. We don’t consider this a deal-breaker. The monitor is extremely precise as-delivered, and if you want greater accuracy, you can use a software LUT provided by CalMAN or the equivalent.

If you want to try our RGB settings in the User mode, we’ve provided them below. Otherwise, we recommend using the sRGB preset. Our brightness number provides 200cd/m² of output.