Results: Color Gamut And Performance
Color gamut is measured using a saturation sweep that samples the six main colors (red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, and yellow) at five saturation levels (20, 40, 60, 80, and 100 percent). This provides a more realistic view of color accuracy than sampling only the 100 percent saturations.
Since the V801 includes a color management system, we tried it out. It only adjusts hue, so we made tiny tweaks to cyan and magenta. Because they didn’t make much of an impact on the final results, we’re only showing the post-calibration chart.
The V801 fares well, with a reasonably accurate sRGB color gamut. Red and magenta are slightly undersaturated, but the error is only barely visible above 80 percent. You can see this is compensated for in the luminance graph by raising the brightness of red. The overall result is as good as, or better than most computer monitors or HDTVs.
Let’s see how the NEC V801 stacks up for color accuracy.
The V801's 1.19 Delta E result is the lowest average color error we’ve measured this year. Only Pioneer beats it with an amazing .83 Delta E measurement. And that’s without the benefit of a CMS. Remember that we take into account all saturation levels from 20 to 100 percent, resulting in a higher number than if you only measured at 100 percent. The NEC’s extremely low score means it’s a very well-engineered display, worthy of its high price tag.
Gamut Volume: Adobe RGB 1998
There are basically two categories of displays in use today: those that conform to the sRGB/Rec 709 standard like HDTVs, and wide-gamut panels that show as much as 100 percent of the Adobe RGB 1998 spec. We use Gamutvision to calculate the gamut volume, based on an ICC profile created from actual measurements. The chart shows the percentage of both sRGB and Adobe RGB 1998 gamuts.
The V801 comes pretty close to rendering 100 percent of the sRGB gamut. We don’t know of any panels this big that display the wider Adobe RGB 1998 gamut. And we’re not sure what the application of such a panel would be. Given this and the Delta E results above, our opinion is that the V801 qualifies as a reference-level display for both color and grayscale accuracy.
