Gadgetory

hey guys and welcome back to hardware unbox today steve has tasked me with looking at a product he's wanted for quite some time a professional-grade 32 inch 4k monitor he can use for video editing and perhaps a bit of gaming and benchmarking on the side the monitor in question is the viewsonic VP 3268 one of the highest and monitors viewsonic cells and a huge shout-out here to viewsonic for not only providing us with the monitor to review but also allowing us to use it for our content creation to make things clearer this monitor isn't geared towards gaming that's not to say you can't use it for gaming but you'd probably be better served with a similar display for half the price the lack of a gaming focus is seen in the spec sheet - as this panel does not support variable refresh technology like free sync and it's 14 millisecond grader gray response time is fairly slow certainly slower than I'd want for gaming what you do get though is an excellent set of professional features each VP 3268 is individually calibrated at the factory with delta ii levels below 2.0 - for commonly used color spaces srgb rec 709 sm p te - c + eb you each color space gets its own display mode accessible through the on-screen display and each comes with a detailed calibration report in the box so you can verify whether the display is up to scratch the VP 3268 also uses a true 8-bit panel with support for up to a fourteen bit lookup table and support for 10 bit through FRC there's no true 10 bit display but then again there's not any of these panels actually available below $2,000 so we'll take the 8 bit plus FRC here the panel itself is an IPS LCD with a 1,300 to 1 contrast ratio 315 units of peak brightness and what viewsonic claims is excellent uniformity another key feature for professionals the monitor even supports HDR though this feature isn't advertised and that's probably for a good reason more on later I really like the design of this display and that's because it gets the most important thing right that's the bezel size they're bezels around the VP 3268 on all sides are extremely thin which helps make the expansive 32 inch panel feel even larger it also helps when you want to use multiple monitors something creative professionals almost always do as you can put two of these displays side-by-side with a very small gap between as far as construction is concerned the monitor is well built but it doesn't go overboard with fancy features are unnecessary Flair most of the monitor uses basic plastic and it's somewhat annoying the parts of the stand use a glossy dust attracting finish but the design does look good though and won't look out of place on a professionals desk did I mention the bezels are really slim because yeah that is definitely the best part of this design all the stand adjustability you'd want is included here such as a 130 ml of height adjustment 120 degrees of swivel and you can pivot it into a portrait orientation there's also a small though serviceable amount of tilt and of course you can reason out it if you desire what about connectivity well there's no shortage of display inputs to HDMI 2.0 ports a full-size DisplayPort and also a mini DisplayPort Mini DP is an unusual connector to use here though I guess it must be useful for someone otherwise you know viewsonic wouldn't have included it there's also a set of three point five mil or do jacks one input and one output allowing you to use either the dual 5 watt internal speakers or you can pass through audio from HDMI or DisplayPort oh and there's also a 4 port USB 3.0 hub as well unless positive note the on-screen display is hard to control as it uses basic buttons rather than a directional toggle if you want to change color profile can be achieved relatively easily but if you want to fine tune any other controls it's a difficult slog through menus that aren't really designed for these sort of controls most of the controls in the OSD are relatively common inclusions things such as brightness and contrast sliders color temperature controls settings for overdrive and so forth well I didn't find ghosting to be too much of an issue with this display while using it you know for just general applications and desktop use you know despite that slow 14 millisecond response time switching to overdrive to sort of a medium setting did improve things in fact through Sonic even suggests you can have the response times with an appropriate overdrive setting it's not surprising that response times less than ideal because viewsonic has opted for a professional-grade IPS LCD rather than the faster turn of VA panels that we often find at these sort of 4k displays what you do get with the IPS panel is excellent viewing angles in all directions helped through an anti-glare coating the 3840 by 2160 resolution this pound uses isn't all that new these days but it's always nice to see such a sharp and crisp presentation at this size I am still waiting on 4k displays with greater than 60 Hertz refresh rates to hit the market you know those were supposed to be coming this year but it hasn't really eventuated though for now the VP 3268 hits the maximum of 60 Hertz we've seen at this resolution in my testing the display hit the marks that viewsonic lists in their specification sheet for brightness and contrast when cranked all the way up to maximum this display achieved just a bit over 350 nits in my testing while contrast was around fourteen sixty to one actually higher than viewsonic States this has maintained well at lower brightness levels to falling to around 1400 to one to 120 news uniformity is outstanding and that's exactly as you'd expect from a professional-grade display no backlight bleed to speak of and a sub 1.5 Delta II color difference relative to the center most quadrants are actually a sub 1.0 Delta a difference and this improves a darker gray scale levels I haven't yet seen a cheaper or gaming focus monitor that achieves similar levels of uniformity so it's clear that this is one thing you only get with a more expensive monitor like this so let's see how the monitor performs in this section I'll be focusing exclusively on the srgb mode as that's the most popular color profile and the one I'm most familiar with for testing the other modes particularly rec.709 will be handy for those who require more niche color spaces relevant to their fields of work but srgb is the most common and the most widely used the first thing I want to point out is you must switch the monitor into its srgb mode from the default color mode if you want srgb accuracy the default mode is basically a user mode that allows you to change various settings and make adjustments to performance while the integrated color modes lock down settings to adhere to factory calibration the only disappointing aspect to the srgb mode is the brightness is locked to 120 nets which is fine for most office use but it doesn't give users the flexibility to adjust brightness to suit their usage conditions sure accuracy might stray from that factory reported different brightness levels but I'd like to see a way to unlock this feature within the mode perhaps with the toggle between your factory calibrated brightness and a user brightness aside from this the srgb mode is outstanding and requires very few tweaks to achieve elite performance starting with grayscale results we're seeing a Delta II average of 1.71 which achieves view Sonic's calibration targets and provides near-perfect accuracy gamma is fantastic while color temperature appears slightly tinted towards the red end of the spectrum though on average it does come close to that ideal 6,500 K mark this correlates well as well with that report that viewsonic provided in the box saturation performance is outstanding with the Delta II average under 1.0 with a peak value no greater than 2.0 this sort of performance is rarely seen in those cheaper gaming focused displays so you're certainly getting your money's worth here color checker results are also fantastic again with the Delta II average under 1.0 and very few colors exceeding a Delta II of 2.0 despite the significant amount of cards that this test actually tests for these sort of results and not only what you'd want but also what you'd expect from a professional monitor and it's impressive that viewsonic has actually outperformed their own metrics in providing a Delta a that's not just lower than 2.0 on average but often under 1.0 for individual colors the benefit having this sort of performance out of the box is you don't need to mess around with color profiles in Windows which are often irritating to set up correctly and many programs simply ignore them with a viewsonic VP 3268 you can plug in this model and guarantee accurate performance in whatever application you'd like without having to deal with messy profiles the absolute best performance I would suggest using a color calibration tool to tidy up those grayscale performance achieving a Delta a under one point sir with this display is trivial though that will require software profile if you don't choose to do this though you will still get fantastic results I did want to talk briefly here about the HDR mode that's included which you can find buried in the display settings flick it on and the VP 3268 appears as an HDR capable display in Windows 10 and in support and games firstly you're never going to get an ideal HDR experience with this monitor as it a doesn't support a gamut wider than srgb and B doesn't support a high enough brightness using HDR on this monitor is like using HDR on any old STR display it doesn't work really even make sense in fact for the most part enabling hgr makes the display work considerably worse as Windows and games try and do things the monitor is not capable of the main question when buying any professional-grade hardware is whether the pro specific features and certifications justify the increased price tag in the case of the VP 3268 this display is available for around nine hundred dollars or thirteen hundred ozzie while the cheapest 32 inch 4k monitor is around $450 to 700 Australian these days obviously if you're a gamer that just wants a 32 inch 4k display there's no reason to buy the VP 3268 get something in Cheaper instead and you probably be happier but if you're a professional that wants a high quality accurate display there's a lot to like about the VP 3268 it supports four separate color spaces each with a dedicated factory calibrated profile and in my testing with the srgb mode it's certainly very accurate you simply won't find an equivalent display with this level of accuracy without using an awkward software profiles that is around that $450 price point it also has outstanding uniformity another key ingredient professionals and something much harder to calibrate with an inferior display from that perspective if you do want these features the VP 3268 is a great Buy I'm sure Steve will be very high he added to his testing in content creation workflow otherwise I'll have to head to his place and steal it back off him anyway if you're interested in grabbing one of these monitors and links to it are in the description below through Amazon and I guess I have to get back to some rise in mobile testing so I'll catch you next time