Gadgetory

welcome back to hardware box today we're checking out a 4k and supposedly HDR monitor from LG called the 32 euro 950 this beast is mostly marketed towards creative professionals with LG's website talking about how good it is for color grading and other color accurate work but there's a few features in here as well for gamers including free sink support and multiple gaming modes priced at $1,300 are around 1750 in Australia the 32 UL 950 probably won't be attracting too many pure gamers as that's quite a high price tag to pay for a 32 inch 4k IPS panel with just a 60 Hertz refresh rate but the feature set for someone like me that does a lot of content creation as well is pretty impressive stuff like 98% DCI p3 coverage multiple factory calibrated modes and Thunderbolt 3 are all features I look for in a professional class monitor and LG has delivered on all of that here if you saw my earlier review for the LG 34 wk 95 you which is their 5k ultra wide display for creators a lot of the design will be familiar to you the front is dominated by the expansive 31.5 inches per Mille with slimmest bezels around all four sides nothing crazy here just a big display that lets the pixels do the talking the stand is a silver metal arrangement with curved legs and a simple pillar so visually it's all quite pleasing and should be suitable for office users the rear of my monitor was white again a very simple use of plastic here that gets the job done what you'll also notice here is a very adjustable stand we're getting height adjustment with an excellent range of motion plus tilt and pivot support this means you can use the 32 year old 950 as a portrait monitor which I know is popular with some craters the collection of ports is found directly on the rear we have DisplayPort and HDMI plus two Thunderbolt three ports and two USB type a ports the inclusion of two Thunderbolt ports allows for daisy chaining only one of them is an input but this does allow you to hook up say two of these monitors with a single cable and get 60 watts of power sent back to your laptop I love monitors that support USB power delivery and considering lots of creators rock laptop as their main machine this is a great addition on screen controls are accessible through a directional toggle although unlike the last Korean monitor I reviewed from LG the 32 UL 950 does have a few gaming options in here specifically a toggle for free sync which is disabled by default and to game specific modes always love to see adaptive sync make the cut but the rest of the game features aren't all that useful luckily there are plenty of other modes and options for adjusting colors which I feel is the primary use case for this monitor so let's take a look at color performance and out of the box it's all very typical for a wide gamut monitor the default mode is left fully unclamped so the entire gamut is available although 4 srgb content this means our stretching up to DCI p3 which results in over saturation so it's probably not a mode you don't want to use for standard work or usage due to this camera issue when testing default performance against srgb as we always do Delta e values in our color tests are around that 3.0 mark so it's not fully accurate however I was quite impressed with default grayscale performance the white point is close to 6500 K as is the overall CCT curve which leads to a delta average of 1.4 an excellent result the gamma ko isn't perfect and needs a bit of shooting but this is a decent start most people by this monitor probably won't use it in the default mode though and will stick to one of the five specific color modes that are included srgb DCI p3 ebu rec 709 and SMPTE - see I'll be focusing here on the srgb and DCI p3 modes as they are the most commonly used although the rec 709 mode is almost identical to the srgb mode as well if that's of interest to you unfortunately the LG 32 UL 950 suffers from the same issue as its ultra wide brother the 34 wk 95 you the srgb mode is very poor this is all down to an incorrect white point of 5,500 K rather than 6,500 K which throws off everything grayscale performance becomes so bad the error values literally don't fit on my charts anymore and this flows into colour Delta II issues with averages of our 4.0 while the gather is clamped the mode is not really usable for colour accurate work and this surprises me a bit because the monitor ships with a 6500 K point units default mode so it seems bizarre to me that LG felt the need to make any significant changes for the sRGB mode which uses that very same white point there is obviously some fundamental issue being made at the factory with this mode and that's disappointing because it's one of the most important modes available to creators the issue is compounded by each of the factory color modes locking down most settings so you can't just go and change the white port using your on-screen menu other features are also bizarrely disabled I'm not sure why you can't enable the uniformity compensation mode or change the response time setting in any of the calibrated modes both of these features should be unlocked at the very least while the srgb mode sucks the DCI p3 mode is excellent this mode uses the default white point so we're getting an accurate 6500 K and that results in a grayscale Delta II of 1.5 - and generally good performance here we're looking at saturation again a great result with the Delta a average of one point four four and a similar color checker result of one point five three rounds out the bunch it's not perfectly calibrated but I'd be happy using this sort of mode for color accurate work so for those that want a wide gamut monitor this display will provide great accuracy with no tweaks and with 97 percent DCI p3 coverage as measured by myself this display has the best coverage of that gamut of any monitor I reviewed up to this point on top of providing five color modes out of the box LG also gives you two slots you can use for hardware calibrations this is achieved through LG's true color Pro app which isn't the best and is especially tricky to use with this monitor as it requires a USBC connection but it does end up working as advertised basically you hook up the display hook up a color remodel or similar calibration device that you own and then set to work calibrating the display yourself to any of the supported Gammons the best part of hardware calibration is that the profiles are uploaded to the display and into the provided slots this means that rather than dealing with PC science software profiles which often ignored by applications the display itself is doing the heavy lifting and provides accuracy across any app this is a crucial feature for content creators and something you typically only see with professional class displays like this with two slots available you can we create 1 srgb profile and one wide gamut profile to suit whatever work you are undertaking and with the ability to create an sRGB profile you can basically fix the included srgb mode while I suspect a lot of creators will already have calibration hardware on hand if they are serious about color accuracy unfortunately the hardware to perform these calibrations is sold separately so fixing the srgb mode isn't easy or cheap for those beginning their calibration journey with this monitor the good news is from a performance perspective calibrating the display using true color Pro works very well grayscale Delta averages were below 1.0 with a great CCT curve and both saturation and color trekker Delta II averages will also boil 1.0 so performance II is accurate and contrast and doesn't drop significantly while color accuracy tends to be the most important performance metric procurator's there are of course other things to discuss the brightness is good topping out 400 nits in the SDR mode which is probably going to be way too bright for most users contrast is also excellent for an IPS LCD at around 1300 to one that's higher than average and while it is still well below what a VA panel can provide the far better viewing angles of IPS panels make this technology overall better suited to craters that require accuracy uniformity is mediocre probably the only key area where this monitor disappoints along with the srgb mode you can see here plenty of Delta e values above two point notes or full result but it's not as tight as I'd like for a pro monitor now this monitor does come with a uniformity compensation mode but because it's inaccessible in any of the color modes or Hardware calibrated modes it's basically useless and I didn't bother testing it response times here are pretty typical for a pro grade IPS at a greater great average of eight point zero four milliseconds using the high overdrive mode which is the mode used for the color accurate profiles and can't be changed this puts it in the ballpark of a gaming grade VA panel so it's not as quick as the best IPS panels going around but it's decent enough for creative work within the 60 Hertz refresh window input latency is also fairly standard at around 7 milliseconds none of these results sound all that amazing for gamers but I think there's a bunch of other reasons why you probably wouldn't want this display for gaming despite in including features like free sync the primary one is the price tag which is around the same mark as a game in grade 4k 144 Hertz monitor these days but also the feature set is generally geared more towards professionals the other key feature of this monitor is HDR thanks to display HDR 600 certification but performance is very similar to the LG 34 wk 95 use so I'd still class this monitor as only a semi HDR display in other words it gets close to providing a decent HDR experience but ultimately falls short as it lacks a full array local dimming backlight looking at the HDR checklist here we're meeting the brightness and color gamut requirements but with only edge lit local dimming there can be significant haloing around bright objects and in general these types of backlight struggle with HDR content in some cases having edge lit to me actually looks worse than having no dimming at all for HDR content we typically want at least a 20,000 to 1 contrast ratio but ideally over 50,000 to 1 the 32 UL 950 only manages a twelve thousand nine hundred to one single frame ratio in a best-case scenario but normally this will be way lower and much closer to the pedals native 1302 1 contrast ratio as there simply aren't enough local dimming zones the edgelet array also struggles with small bright objects so brightness decreases with smaller window sizes rather than increases like with a good HDR monitor sustained brightness only ever reaches 400 nits and actually falls away to 217 it's with a 2% window so you're not getting good high light performance the only time I recorded above 600 nits of brightest was with a full-screen flash which is good enough to pass display HDR 600 certification but is not ideal for actually viewing HDR content like with the 34 wk 95 you the only way to get true HDR performance with an LCD is to include a full array local dimming backlight which adds to the cost of the monitor given estia and wide government performance is still great from the 32 year old 950 I think for some buyers it's safe to ignore the HDR capabilities all together but if you came here looking for a top-end HDR display unfortunately this isn't going to be in overall there's lots to like about the LG 32 you online 54 content creators and prefer it's a really wide gamut monitor it's big and high-resolution so there's lots of screen real estate it's accurate to DCI p3 in the provided mode it supports hardware calibration the design is nice it includes Thunderbolt 3 with power delivery and daisy-chaining viewing angles and contrast are excellent for an IPS panel and it even supports free sync the only real complaints I have are related to middling uniformity and the poor srgb mode which really should be calibrated better I don't think the srgb mode is too much of an issue for people that require color accuracy because anyone in that position should be calibrating the display themselves anyway but it's just a bit of an oversight from LG hgr performance is also mediocre but whether this is an issue will depend on what you want to use this monitor for and to me it succeeds in enough other areas to only make it a minor problem I guess the questions at the end of the day are is this package worth $1,300 and is it the best option on the market if you aren't going to find the professional features useful there are plenty of great 4k monitors out there for around $500 that you should choose instead same advice for gamers either get a non-professional 4k display for much less cash or look into a high refresh 4k monitor like the SR Nitro xB 273 K for around the a thousand dollar mark for professionals which is the actual target market here I also think the 32 UL 950 is a bit hard to recommend LG has kind of shot themselves in the foot thanks to their very own 32 UD 99 which offers many of the same features as the 32 um 950 for a regular price of $1,000 in fact it's even better than that because right now the 32 UD 99 is on sale for just $700 unless you really really must have say Thunderbolt 3 daisy-chaining or a slightly wider gamut the 32 UD 99 is a much better deal I think LG were hoping that hgr would be a big selling point here as well because that could further justify the price difference but given the performance is only semi HDR at best I just don't think it's worth it if you need HDR for your workflow I'd spend more and get something with true hgr like the soos pro at PA 32 you see all the dell ultrasharp up2 7 1x with that said because the monitor is actually pretty good overall if the 32 UD 99 gets discontinued or if you can find the 32 UL 950 on sale or if it's just a really good price in your country there are still plenty of reasons to get it that's it for this monitor review as always please subscribe for more and give this video a thumbs up if you liked it consider supporting us on patreon for some cool perks and I'll catch you in the next one you