Grayscale, Gamma and Color
Grayscale & Gamma Tracking
Our grayscale and gamma tests are described in detail here.
We measured the RG270 in its as-delivered Standard picture mode with the brightness slider set to 80 percent. That corresponds to a brightness value of around 180 nits, a little lower than most. It didn’t seem to affect grayscale and gamma accuracy though.
Most budget monitors won’t produce grayscale and gamma charts like the ones above, which point to strong color accuracy. Default grayscale tracking was excellent with all errors below 2dE and a superb 1.61dE average. That’s better than some professional displays we’ve reviewed. Gamma rides quite close to the 2.2 line, with a slight dip at 90 percent. The RG270 was on the verge of clipping some highlight detail, but managed to render all the different levels of brightness in our test patterns.
Calibration smoothed things out even further but increased the gamma dip at 90 percent by a hair. However, we couldn’t see any problem, as the error is well-below the visible threshold. With an average error of just .78de, it can’t get much better.
Comparisons
The RG270 leads the comparison pack in both pre- and post-calibration grayscale tests. In the first chart, you can see that only it and the MPG27CQ manage to make our No Calibration Needed list. The other screens require some tweaking. After adjustment, the budget Acer still took the top prize with an excellent .72dE result.
Gamma tracking wasn’t perfectly linear, with the RG270 recording a .45 range in values. That’s mainly due to the dip at 90 percent we showed above. As you can see by its first-place finish in the deviation test, the rest of the brightness range is nearly perfect. This is excellent performance for any gaming monitor and particularly impressive at this price point.
Color Gamut Accuracy
For details on our color gamut testing and volume calculations, click here.
There is very little fault to find in the RG270’s color gamut accuracy results. The RG270 hit all the targets right out of the box for every color except green and magenta, where there were slight hue errors. This is a tiny error that can’t be seen by the naked eye (an average error of 1.964dE is quite small). Regardless, we tried improving those colors using the six-axis slider but could not see any difference. Calibration brought a tiny improvement to 1.823dE but did not fix the green and magenta hue errors. Still, we don’t consider this an issue; the RG270 boasts above-average color accuracy.
Comparisons
The RG270 finished a close third in our color accuracy testing. The MAG24C is a bit cheaper (about $225 as of this writing) but is also smaller at 24 inches.The AOC costs over $200 more than the RG270 but very similar color accuracy. The least-expensive is the XF251Q, but not only is it two inches smaller, it uses a TN panel.
One drawback though is that the RG270 doesn’t deliver a wide color gamut. That’s the domain of the two MSI screens, which render more than 80 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut. The RG270 is strictly an sRGB monitor and delivers almost 100 percent of that gamut. The missing 3.34 percent is due to the hue errors we saw in the green primary. But in real life applications, it’s far from a problem and will not impact gameplay or general use in any way.
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