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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chewbyJ - Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - link
this is great news! i've been wanting to replace my ancient Dell 2009WFP's with something larger, feel like experimenting with that Seiki SE39UY04 for $700 that got announced last month. hopefully you guys can get your hands on one of those soon and have something to compare with this ASUS model.can't wait to do Photoshop and Lightroom work on a giant 4k display and use a more expensive/high quality uniformity display for color accuracy of prints and media.
Panzerknacker - Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - link
btw, why is everybody worrying so much about gaming and graphics cards not handling 4k? I mean when you have that many pixels available it should be no problem to upscale, run the game at 1080p and simply upscale to 4k. I doubt there will be quality loss due to this and it will probably still look better than on a native 1080p screen.How does this work btw? Is it possible to let the screen do this by itself like with a TV? So you input 1080p, 1024 x 768, whatever ress, will it be upscaled by the screen to 4k and display fullscreen? This is really important for me because I would use the screen for everything, also playing older games that do not support 4k.
sheh - Wednesday, July 24, 2013 - link
Of course, like any current monitor, monitors do scaling. Some do it better, some worse, some let you configure more scaling options, some don't. It's probably best to handle scaling with the graphics card (/drivers), because that gives you, at least potentially, the most control.pattycake0147 - Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - link
The paragraph describing the black levels is missing a zero after the decimal and before the seven. Confused me until I looked at the graph.pandemonium - Wednesday, July 24, 2013 - link
Nice spreadsheet you got there. Clearly shows the necessary amounts per distance and size of display. More people need to be aware of such things!LordSegan - Wednesday, July 24, 2013 - link
"The ASUS PQ321Q is pricey, and I can’t say that getting three or four 30” 2560x1600 panels isn’t a better deal, but it’s not the same as having one display that looks like this. "I don't mean to be harsh, but this story needs more careful copy editing. There are run on sentences and other pretty amateurish errors.
Mondozai - Wednesday, August 21, 2013 - link
I don't mean to be harsh, but your comment needs more careful copy editing. You should spell it run-on sentences, not run on sentences.It helps having correct grammar when trying to correct others.
Just a tip.
bill5 - Wednesday, July 24, 2013 - link
Heh, what a surprise the reviewer loved a $3,500 monitor...It's almost like you get what you pay for
Confusador - Wednesday, July 24, 2013 - link
So when can I get a 23" 2560x1600 display? 32 is a bit much for me, but I'd love the dpi.sheh - Wednesday, July 24, 2013 - link
2014, probably.