Display Performance, Continued
Color Gamut
The Samsung panel covers 95% of the sRGB color gamut in the middle of the screen. In the above image, the measured performance of the Panther’s panel is shown as a green triangle, and the reference sRGB color gamut is the red triangle. AdobeRGB is purple. The display completely covers red and blue, slightly missing sRGB in deep greens. This is a very good color gamut that is only limited by the WLED backlightling.
Color Accuracy
The average Delta E reading is a very good 1.22. Almost all of the grey patches are less than 1.5, so black and white photos should look very neutral on the screen.
Most colors stay pretty close to a Delta E of one. The only major departure from the reference color is the teal blue patch. This spike is typical of WLED-backlit TN-based screens, and we see a similar result on most panels of this design. Calibrated to remove the slightly blue white balance, the screen should serve as an excellent tool for color photo and video editing.
Monitor Rating
This is the rating generated by the Spyder4Elite monitor profiling software.
Calibration
The images above are photos of the Panther 5D's screen after (top) and before (bottom) calibration with the Spyder4Elite system. Depending on the monitor you're using to read this review, you should see some pretty significant differences between the top and bottom. Un-calibrated, the screen has a blue tint common to WLED panels, reflecting its native white point of 6900 K at full brightness.
And here's the correction applied to the Panther's Samsung panel. The bottom blue line shows the target 2.2 curve that the software was calibrating to. The middle blue line shows the blue channel being pulled down in intensity to pare back the panel’s white point to a more neutral 6500 K. The red and green channels are left mostly unchanged, with a slight bump in midtones.
After calibration, the screen curves are very close to the target. After all of the display performance discussion, a calibration yields excellent results.
Prior to calibration, the panel’s brightness measured 370 cd/m2. Removing the slight blue tint takes that measurement down to 365.4. There is also some slight tweaking to the gamma curve.
Eurocom's Panther 5D offers excellent brightness, contrast, and calibrated color accuracy. Thanks to a 120 Hz refresh, fast action looks smooth as well (in fact, this is necessary for 3D Vision support). We measured 95% of the sRGB color gamut, which is very good. Color and luminance uniformity in the top corners of the panel affected overall performance somewhat, but the screen still looks good. Although it doesn't match the performance of the best IPS panels, Samsung's display is a good example of TN-based technology.
