ASUS PA279Q Professional Grade LCD Monitor Unboxing & Overview
ASUS PA279Q Professional Grade LCD Monitor Unboxing & Overview
2013-10-31
welcome to my unboxing and overview of
my new pest friends this my friends has
already been out of the box I've already
seen it and it is absolutely gorgeous
this is the a soos PA 2 7 9 q it has a
10 bit aah IPS panel so what that
basically means is full support for deep
color that is it can represent a broader
range of colors and more intermediary
steps between them so that you have very
fine shifts from one color to another or
from one shade to another one even in
between different shades of grey it okay
so on top of the 10 bit panel it has a
14 bit lookup table which means the
monitor itself can understand even more
information than it can actually display
because all monitors are going to
approximate they have to approximate
most monitors are capable of displaying
around sixteen point eight I think it is
million colors and so anything that
isn't one of those 16.8 million discrete
colors has to be approximated to one of
those sixteen point eight million colors
but what a fourteen bit lookup table
intended panel means is fewer
approximations and much more true to
life colors this is particularly
important for creative professionals
such as photo or video editors that want
to have the most accurate whoops
color possible in their photos or videos
but it can also be something that's
valued by general users as well the
first thing we find inside the box is
the included hood so this is if you have
bright ambient lighting and you want to
maintain the true to life colors that
the monitor can produce if I had to
criticize something about this monitor
which I guess I probably should it would
be this it's not a very good
implementation it's flimsy plastic it
has what appears to be a non reusable
adhesive on the inside so you just have
to decide once and only once whether or
not you want to use it and I think I'm
going to opt not to going instead for
controlling the ambient light and using
the panel itself you get a USB 3 cable a
2 B you get a mini DisplayPort 2
full-sized DisplayPort cable you get
an audio cable for the integrated dual
three watt speakers which are actually
surprisingly not bad you get a power
cable which you can see we've already
used a full-size DisplayPort 2 full-size
DisplayPort cable a dual link DVI cable
driver disk don't use that and finally
an HDMI cable but don't use this either
because HDMI in is not going to be
capable of driving the massive 2560 by
1440 resolution that this monitor
supports for any kind of professional
application you're going to want to be
using DisplayPort in order to get full
res and deep color support but much in
the same way that lots of bass in music
is not necessarily good lots of colors
that are oversaturated and ugly are not
necessarily good but don't worry this is
a PA monitor which means that it comes
with a calibration testing report so
they show you the equipment they're
using and the results that we're
obtained on this exact monitor this does
add additional cost to the manufacturing
process but on pro art monitors they
want you to know that you're getting
what you paid for it comes with a
guaranteed Delta e of less than 2 this
is a huge step up from the promised
delta e of less than 5 on previous part
monitors and for those of you who aren't
familiar with delta e it is basically
the difference between what the color is
supposed to look like and what it
actually looks like on the display
itself now they use a couple of tricks
in order to make sure that the
uniformity of the colors on the monitor
are is as good as possible on one of
them is called uniformity compensation
so that insures that you're not going to
have a brightness and color that is
dramatically different in this corner
compared to a central reference point
and the same goes for any other segment
of the monitor and that's included on
your calibration report as well so let's
have a look at it physically it's got
all the usual adjustments height
adjustable stand as well as tilt pivot
and/or swivel I guess this one's called
and finally pivot that's right portrait
mode so you can put it in this setting
if you really really wanted to what I
usually use this for is to plug in my
port so you've got a nice solid base and
then Wow all the expansion you could
pretty much ever want so there's your
your USB 3 in there's 3 USB 3 ports for
the included hub display port okay hold
on
play port in and out so this supports
daisy-chaining so this is the output so
what that means is you can actually hook
up multiple monitors up to four
depending on the resolution from one
DisplayPort port to HDMI don't use that
DVI and then we've got audio in as well
as a pass-through for your headphones
should you so desire
powerin is here in a dedicated power
switch as well as Kensington lock are
down here on the bottom lots of
ventilation you can see pretty much the
entire back of the monitor is covered in
perforations because it does need in
order to have you know really fancy
electronics inside it some passive
cooling although there is no cooling fan
included and then finally on this side
you've got a couple more things so
that's three more USB 3 ports and an SD
card reader that supports all the latest
standards on the other side you don't
find a whole lot of anything other than
the on-screen display which is on this
side of the panel right here and uses a
bit of a different implementation so you
can now browse the menu by using it as a
bit of a joystick up-down left-right and
then pressing to confirm and then
there's all the other stuff here you've
got some programmable buttons and
whatnot for presets as you can see we've
fired up the monitor now this amazing 4k
clip was shot on the sony fs7 hundred
not by us guys you can click the
annotation or check out the link in the
video description to see it we didn't we
didn't shoot it I want to be really
clear about that but it looks amazing
even like two inches from the screen how
much detail there is especially when
watching on a greater than HD monitor
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so without further ado ah this monitor
man I love it so we're going to do the
usual things where we do our tilt test
so you can see that not all
is the color extremely uniform but even
at extreme angles you're not going to
lose that color accuracy yes some of the
brightness goes away but that's
perfectly natural because the light is
being emitted out the front of the panel
so not all of it is going to reach your
eyes obviously if you're looking at it
from an extreme angle but maintaining
color accuracy from an angle is
extremely important for professional use
so we're just going to go ahead give you
guys that full range here man it looks
good and according to the video review
done by digital vs. we're looking at
about 30 milliseconds of input lag which
is actually not bad now one thing that
makes it not really optimal for gaming
is the fact that it does exhibit reverse
ghosting which is kind of like ghosting
where there's an image trailing the
other image except that those are
reversed in terms of the colors so red
would be green etc etc so it can be a
little bit more distracting than regular
ghosting personally I've been dealing
with this kind of ghosting since my old
Behnke or rather dell 24:05 fpw so it
doesn't really bother me anymore but if
you're not used to it then there you go
very decent speakers as I mentioned
before but I actually can't find them so
I'm not sure exactly where they are
because they're not visible on the front
they're probably hidden somewhere behind
all these grilles in the back but both
slick and I were surprised at how usable
they are if you don't need like a
subwoofer and a you know dedicated
gaming speaker setup and you mostly use
headphones I think you'll find yourself
not really requiring any additional
desktop speakers which is quite nice
they have a completely new on-screen
display control mode so I actually found
it extremely easy to navigate so they've
got their usual splendid stuff you can
see it supports srgb RGB as well as NTSC
somewhere in there so it does 99% Adobe
RGB a hundred percent srgb and 120
percent NTSC they've also got some
unique picture-in-picture settings so
you can actually do picture-in-picture
or well okay obviously we don't have to
monitor setup but you can do picture and
picture and picture by picture for
pretty much any of the inputs which is
extremely flexible so it's it's really
nice to see that again this is really
easy to navigate actually quite liked it
so you can turn uniformity compensation
on and off it's nice that they give you
control of stuff like this because not
everyone necessarily wants that again
this is a
national monitor so being able to adjust
things like color temperature is again
very very important and they've also got
although I can't find it right now but
they've also got a pretty unique six
axis independent color control setting
that allows you to actually adjust each
of the different colors independently
without affecting any of the other ones
so how do you take advantage of its
greatness because not every application
is going to I mean not every computer is
even going to be able to output 10-bit
color so every part of the chain has to
support 10-bit color your application
your hardware and the monitor itself in
order to take advantage of deep color so
okay the monitors for creative
professionals whether it's photo editing
or video editing or anyone who has to
work with color in any kind of accurate
capacity but what about gamers why am i
interested in this monitor or even
general users well it's less fatiguing
to look at even if you aren't taking
advantage of 10-bit color man it's
beautiful is absolutely unbelievable so
while I wouldn't recommend it to someone
like a competitive gamer where you want
as many updates on the screen per second
as possible you're going to want a 120
Hertz monitor preferably with a strobing
backlight so that the image is extremely
crisp in order to get like every last
competitive edge for you I wouldn't
recommend it but for someone who's more
of a sightseer maybe you play Batman or
maybe you play games like Skyrim and you
just want to be as immersed in as
beautiful a fantasy world as you
possibly can you know what if you're
willing to spend the money it's not a
terrible recommendation this is my new
personal favorite monitor I'm one of
those people who believes that a monitor
is something a part of your computer you
spend more time looking at than any
other component and it is worth
investing heavily in them once in a
while versus doing frequent upgrades
from one TN panel to another cruddy TN
panel that might be slightly better than
the old one I've only bought two
monitors in about the last eight years
because again I spend about seven eight
hundred dollars on them and then I
expect them to last from multiple
upgrade cycles of the rest of my
components so in conclusion not for
gaming for professional use serves his
purpose extremely well is absolutely
beautiful and not fatiguing to look at
has great on-screen options however I
personally
plan to use it for general use and
gaming because it's absolutely beautiful
extremely well built looks great on your
desk and all those other good things
that are about it but yes it is
extremely expensive so like this video
if you liked it dislike it if you
disliked it leave me a comment letting
me know what you do for your monitor
upgrade cycle how often do you upgrade
how much do you expect to spend and last
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