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HG281D Test ResultsWe'll start off with our lab tests as measured by the Konica Minolta CS-200 and ColorFacts software. When performing these tests, we used the out-of-the-box settings (brightness 100, contrast 70) with one exception: We changed to 6500K color preset. This gives us an expected color target to work with, and one that we expect all LCD monitors and HDTVs to be able to reproduce accurately. click on image for full view
The color temperature across the luminance curve is really poor in dark areas, quickly shooting up to a very blue color in the dark areas. This is typical of many LCDs, but often not this bad. The curve is pretty flat above 10%, which is good, but the color is still too cool. It should track around 6500K, instead it averages over 7500K (the high results in the darkest area throws the average off a bit to 7696K). click on image for full view
There's good news and bad news in this color tracking chart. Bad news first. Below 10% luminance, the color gets extremely blue and red falls off, so dark areas will have a dramatic blue tint. Also, these lines should ideally be on top of each other throughout, and instead we see the monitor is pushing blue and falling short on red more than desired. Now the good news. Above 10% luminance, the lines are rather flat. This means that by tweaking the RGB values in the color menu, you should be able to get them to lie on top of each other pretty easily (or tweak the monitor for other lighting conditions and get uniform performance at 10-100% brightness). click on image for full view
Looking at the CIE chart, we can see that this is a 72% color gamut display, rather than 92% as we see in some other new monitors. This makes it fine for standard desktop work and watching video (especially TV content), but it's probably not the best for desktop publishing, photo editing, and other tasks where a wider color gamut matters. As 72% color gamut displays go, this is a pretty typical example of "good" color accuracy. The red, green, and blue points track close to the standard (but just a little beyond) and the mid-points are near where they should be. click on image for full view
Whoops…a gamma of 1.76 is not what we're looking for. The gamma ratio should be closer to 2.2 for desktop PC displays. We see the luminance curve of this monitor (the yellow line) fall below the reference line (the dotted line) everywhere below 50%, and above it everywhere from around 65% on up to full brightness. This is the "look at me!" showroom mode you'd see from TVs in a store window, designed to make everything "pop." But you close fidelity in bright areas and detail in dark scenes once you get it home. Our 9-point tests revealed an average brightness of 487 cd/m<SUP2 and average full-black value of .6 cd/m2, which is definitely on the bright side. This gives the display a contrast ratio of 817:1. Uniformity is quite good, however. Full-white uniformity is 86.1% and full-black is 86.4%. There are no really visible hot spots. By turning the brightness control down to zero, we got a full-white luminance of 101 cd/m2 and a full black of .12 cd/m2, both of which are much better suited to dark rooms. We think most users should probably stick the brightness at 50 or 60 percent on this display to give better blacks and keep the bright areas from being so blindingly bright. Continued... |
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