Mission Review: Incredible display form factor at a keen price
Tom Mitchell, Technical Director at Mission and Kevin Shaw, Head of Colour at Mission and President of the Colorist Society International (CSI) review two of ASUS’ latest ProArt monitors
Sponsored by Asus for ProArt Displays
The ASUS ProArt Display PA24US
Very affordable HDR monitoring to 600 nits for a broad range of applications with built-in self-calibration and SDI ports
Kevin Shaw “When looking at the PA24US display, the first attractive element was having an SDI input. From an installation point of view that takes away a lot of extra checks that you have to do.
“The built in self-calibration just amazed me. I checked it with our own probes and it’s right on the money, every time. If you’re out in the field and you didn’t trust what you were looking at and self-calibrated it, it would be spot on. You can trust it. Very few people know how to calibrate a monitor, unless you’re in an upstream post environment.”
Built-in Probes & Calibration
Tom Mitchell “The PA24US monitor is incredible value. I can see it being widely used in editorial and for corporate and education work for colour accurate, reliable HDR work with accurate colour rendition up to 600 nits, which is more than enough for most applications.
“The PA24US monitor is incredible value” Tom Mitchell
“When you think about the price point and the capability of the monitor, I don’t think there’s anything that’s matching it. You’ve got a built-in probe that if bought separately would add about £300 plus an additional couple of hundred pounds for calibration software. So long as you set it up and configure it correctly, you can get up and going very quickly.
“We’ve verified it with our own, professional probes. We’ve seen built-in calibration tools before and had mixed results. With the PA24US, we didn’t need to make any adjustments after the self-calibration.”
Shaw “Offering good 709 has become the minimum standard. And ASUS has certainly achieved that. But they’ve also been able to apply that into the HDR world up to 600 nits, where HDR is that much more difficult to calibrate to. To be able to do that on this monitor and the PA32UCXR and have them match each other and even premium reference monitors so nicely is a significant point for me.”
The ASUS ProArt Display PA32UCXR
A 2,000 nits* HDR display with exceptional colour latitude and contrast ratio offering critical monitoring to more people at a competitive price
Shaw “We’ve reviewed content with molten iron and steel that has just come out of a furnace where, with greater contrast, we can see the texture and detail in the way that all the metals are flaking off.
“We’ve looked at specular highlights of wet elephants and water with the sun reflecting off it and we can just see so much detail.
“And we’ve looked at dusky, sunset scenes. We’re seeing a lot more separation in the colours in the clouds. The monitor shines and even performs better than some of the industry’s premium monitors.”
Impressive Contrast Ratio
Mitchell “I’ve seen single layer LCD 2,000 nit monitors before, but I’ve preferred 1,000 nit monitors with better contrast and deeper blacks. Contrast has seemed to be the trade off with these brighter LCD monitors. This
is the first 2,000 nits LCD monitor that I’ve seen where the blacks and the highlights really hold up with a lot of contrast ratio, and that’s thanks to its efficient local dimming. It’s very close to some of the premium
£25,000+ mastering monitors.”
Shaw “To test the contrast we put a checkerboard up and measure how the whites and the blacks react when you’re showing both at the same time. This is the first monitor I’ve seen that nails that checkerboard test. The blacks stay black to the human eye. It might not be as good as a premium hero monitor, but in normal lighting conditions you’d never notice the difference. It’s that close.
“Rec. 2020 is our largest display colour space, and it is based on primaries that can only be achieved with lasers. There is no monitor currently on the market that can cover it. This monitor can achieve a very large colour gamut towards the 2020 colour space target, even more than some of the expensive premium mastering monitors.”
One To Many
Mitchell “The PA32UCXR would make a very good HDR video playback monitor for performing critical IT work. Its 4K HDR rendition is excellent, and within a digital lab it’s more than capable for QC’ing HDR footage and rushes.
“For visual effects, it is probably the most ideal monitor short of the final sign-off monitor, which is impractically expensive within a multi-seat environment.
“It might not necessarily be your final hero monitor for your final QC or master grade, but it’s the closest you could possibly get. Considering it’s about one tenth of the price of a grade one reference monitor, you could comfortably give all your artists this monitor and then verify the final image with your premium monitor.”
“I haven’t seen a better monitor at the price point” Kevin Shaw
Shaw “I love the idea of editorial using HDR monitors like this. There’s research that shows that you should hold an HDR shot longer to allow the human eye to take in the dynamic range of the HDR image and the PA32UCXR is both practical and affordable.
“I also think that this monitor is brilliant for cinematographers. DP’s can get so comfortable with SDR monitoring that they find it hard to visualise what they’re doing in HDR. A 2000 nit monitor like this (on set) could show about twice the dynamic range of Rec. 709 displays without tone mapping, so you’re seeing so much more of what the camera is capturing. You can’t do it with an expensive monitor unless it’s on a tentpole type project. This monitor could lead the way for cinematographers to understand how just a little bit of a tweak in the lighting would improve the final HDR result. It’s nothing technical it’s just seeing it and knowing how you can make the shot.
“It has a series of menu presets that are easy to navigate for everything from Rec. 709 and sRGB all the way up to HLG an PQ with a number of roll off options. You don’t have to know anything about colour science to use them. It takes away all the hassle.
“In terms of reliability, I’ve never had one fail. ASUS are relatively young in this market, but the improvements they’ve made in the past two or three years that I’ve been using them are phenomenal. As a company, they’re very responsive and working hard to make a name for themselves in our industry.
“I haven’t seen a better monitor at the price point. If you built a checklist based on this monitor, I’d be surprised if you could find anything that would match it. You’ve got the built-in calibration and 2,000 nits with beautiful colour rendition and rich blacks. Even at 1,000 nits, there were areas of colour volume that we were seeing better on the ASUS than any other monitor that I’ve got access to, particularly in the red channel, which is just so accurate all the way up to 1,000 nits.”
*Default specification for peak brightness is 1600 nits, it may achieve higher than default.
Staff Reporter
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