ASUS PQ321Q UltraHD Monitor Review: Living with a 31.5-inch 4K Desktop Display
by Chris Heinonen on July 23, 2013 9:01 AM ESTSince the ASUS has a pair of HDMI inputs, but there is effectively no 4K HDMI content right now, the performance of the internal scaler is essential to know. To test it, I use an Oppo BDP-105 Blu-ray player and the Spears and Munsil HD Benchmark, Version 2. The Oppo has its own 4K scaler so I can easily compare the two and see how the ASUS performs.
First off, the ASUS is poor when it comes to video processing. Common film and video cadences of 3:2 and 2:2 are not properly picked up upon and deinterlaced correctly. The wedge patterns are full of artifacts and never lock on. With the scrolling text of video over film, the ASUS passed which was strange as it fails the wedges. It also does a poor job with diagonals, showing very little if any filtering on them, and producing lots of jaggies.
Spears and Munsil also has a 1080p scaling pattern to test 4K and higher resolution devices. Using the ASUS scaler compared to the Oppo it had a bit more ringing but they were pretty comparable. This becomes very important for watching films or playing video games, as you’ll need to send a 1080p signal to get a 60p frame rate. 24p films will be fine, but concerts, some TV shows and some documentaries are 60i and would then appear choppy if sent at 4K over HDMI.
Brightness and Contrast
In our preview of the PQ321Q, we looked at how it performed out of the box with the default settings. What we did see is that the PQ321Q can get really, really bright. Cranked up to the maximum I see 408 cd/m2 of light from it. That is plenty no matter how bright of an office environment you might work in. At the very bottom of the brightness setting you still get 57 cd/m2. That is low enough that if you are using it for print work or something else in a darkened room the brightness won’t overwhelm you.
The change to IGZO caused me to wonder how the black levels would behave on the ASUS. If energy flows far more freely, would that cause a slight bit of leakage to lead to a higher black level? Or would the overall current be scaled down so that the contrast ratio remains constant.
I’m not certain what the reason is, but the black level of the PQ321Q is a bit higher than I’d like to see. It is 0.756 cd/m2 at the lowest level and 0.5326 cd/m2 at the highest level. Even with the massive light output of the ASUS that is a bit high.
Because of this higher black level, we see Contrast Ratios of 755:1 and 766:1 on the ASUS PQ321Q. These are decent, middle-of-the-pack numbers. I really like to see 1,000:1 or higher, especially when we are being asked to spend $3,500 on a display. Without another IGZO display or 4K display to compare the ASUS to, I can’t be certain if one of those is the cause, or if it is the backlighting system, or something else entirely. I just think we could see improvements in the black level and contrast ratio here.
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noeldillabough - Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - link
Damn my current monitors are 1920x1200 and I was hoping "real 4K" was 2x2 of that.JDG1980 - Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - link
Search around on eBay for an IBM T220 or T221. These have a 3840x2400 resolution (though only a 48 Hz refresh rate), and usually cost about $800-$1500. They aren't always there, but show up on a semi-regular basis.cheinonen - Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - link
Technically it's UHD, though everyone uses 4K for 3840x2160 anyway. I'm trying to avoid it to be more accurate, but since everyone refers to their display as a 4K model, I often fall back to it. UHD would be more accurate, though.Synaesthesia - Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - link
I'd love if you could test with a Mac Pro and see how it does with the "retina" display mode, i.e. effectively the space of a 1080p display but with double the sharpness.twtech - Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - link
I think you'll see a little bit of both in terms of using scaling, and the physical size of elements onscreen. Things will have to be scaled somewhat, but text for example won't have to be just as big as it was before.BubbaJoe TBoneMalone - Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - link
Unfortunately, for gamers, there isn't a video card that can handle 60fps at 4k with maximum video settings. Not even with 3 titans as shown on this video -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa-DRVqPJRonoeldillabough - Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - link
Just think of the videocards that will sell ... the next "big thing" for AMD and nVidia; because let's face it, Intel is catching up far too quickly for their comfort at low resolutions.airmantharp - Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - link
Why would you run it at maximum settings? Gotta love the FUD peddlers.DanNeely - Thursday, July 25, 2013 - link
140DPI at desktop monitor distances isn't high enough DPI to do without AA; and if you can't run at native resolution with all the other settings maxed you'd be better off running at 2560x or 1920x on a panel that natively supports that resolution to avoid scaling artifacts and scaling lag in the panel itself.Panzerknacker - Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - link
I don't understand the people hating at 4k and saying they intend to stay with 1080p. I mean common, everybody wants something new right? I think the LCD technique and LCD displays are far from perfect yet, and despite they clearly have their advantages over CRT, they still also clearly have their disadvantages.I see this as one step closer to beating CRT. Now that with 4K we finally are at a higher pixel density, a level of sharpness that will be hard to improve on, I hope the focus will shift towards improving black levels, response times and overal picture 'feeling' (watching a LCD is still like staring at a LED lamp, while CRT gives the much nicer light bulb feeling), and bringing back the nice glow effects in games we enjoyed on CRT's that appear like washed out collored spots on a LCD.
Good review btw.