Philips 276E6 27-inch Quantum Dot Monitor Review

Grayscale Tracking And Gamma Response

Our grayscale and gamma tests are described in detail here.

The Color Temp mode is nearly perfect out of the box on its 6500K preset. The only rub is you can't adjust Brightness without switching the 276E6 into its Adobe RGB mode, which does require adjustment. As long as you're OK with the bright 370cd/m² output, Color Temp is the way to go.

Here's what we mean when we say "too green." Without some adjustment, the Adobe RGB mode looks pale and flat with an obvious tint to brightness levels above 10 percent. Even with the expanded color gamut in play, images don't look their best here.

Calibrating the Adobe RGB mode produces the best possible performance. The 276E6 matches any professional screen in the quality of its grayscale tracking. You can thank its precise RGB sliders with 100-step resolution for this excellent chart.

Here is our comparison group.

You can see that the Color Temp mode has no real flaw and is perfectly usable. This is a great out-of-box result. Our only complaint is the locked-out Brightness control.

Though calibration is required in the Adobe RGB mode, it only yields a small improvement over Color Temp. But that is the price for having control over brightness, which is fairly important in our opinion.

Gamma Response

In the default states of both the Color Temp and Adobe RGB modes, gamma tracking is quite good with only tiny dips at the 10 and 90 percent levels. You'll see later how this has a positive effect on color balance.

Calibration leaves gamma tracking largely unchanged. The average value has dropped slightly but we can't see a difference in real-world content. If your tastes run to a darker or lighter presentation, there are five total presets ranging from 1.6 to 2.8.

Here is our comparison group again.

.15 is a fairly tight range of values and lands the 276E6 mid-pack among these high-end displays. We're glad to see that Philips has adhered to accepted standards here as they showcase their new technology.

We calculate gamma deviation by simply expressing the difference from 2.2 as a percentage.

With a 2.15 average value, gamma runs a tad light but again, it's not something you'll be able to discern in normal use.