NEC EA275UHD - affordable ultra high resolution

[Czornyj]

A new NEC EA275UHD will soon be available at an attractive price. On paper it looks like a display for office work rather than for color critical applications, but (like all recent EAxx4WMi series displays) it can be hardware calibrated by NEC SpectraView calibration software.
Right now it's supported by NEC SpectraView II rev. 1.1.20:

 
It has AH-IPS type panel with W-LED (blue LED + red and green phosphor) backlight:


The blue LED, R and G phosphors are well chosen, so the display gamut is close to sRGB as well as it covers ~100% of that color space:




The native wtpt is ~6100K, and the TRC in factory modes exhibit 3-4∆E peak deviations to a TRC of γ2.2, which is typical for office desktop displays:

N mode:

sRGB mode:


...but contrary to typical office displays we can linearise TRC using internal 10bit 1DLUT and NEC SpectraView II calibration software:

[Czornyj]

New EA275UHD on the left vs my trusty old NEC 3090WQXi on the right
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19059944/EA275UHDvs309WQXi.JPG

[Lundberg02]

Why would anyone in this forum buy an sRGB?

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Why would anyone in this forum buy an sRGB?

Anyone who produces mostly Web content (amongst which images), like maybe 80+% of the people posting here?

Cheers,
Bart

[D Fosse]

Yes, and to those people it's rapidly becoming very useful to see how web content reproduces on a UHD display. So sRGB/UHD makes a lot of sense.

Besides, standard gamut is an effective way to reduce cost if you're on a tight budget. See for instance the price difference between NEC P242 and PA242. Wide gamut is nice, absolutely, but even for print not really essential.

[digitaldog]

Anyone who produces mostly Web content (amongst which images), like maybe 80+% of the people posting here?

Maybe but I suspect it's just your guess 
Any wide gamut display worth it's salt can do a superb simulation of sRGB! Probably much better than 80+% of the people posting here can do calibrating their display for web content?
We get the best of both worlds. And as you'll see, sRGB output to a display will (is) going the way of the dodo bird. Enjoy while you can.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Maybe but I suspect it's just your guess 

Of course.

Any wide gamut display worth it's salt can do a superb simulation of sRGB! Probably much better than 80+% of the people posting here can do calibrating their display for web content?
We get the best of both worlds. And as you'll see, sRGB output to a display will (is) going the way of the dodo bird. Enjoy while you can.

In an ideal world, sure there are benefits. But since the world is switching towards tablet and phone consumption of images, therefore the benefits of large gamut display capability are limited to a relatively speaking few applications, volume-wise. Of course the specialized applications is where the benefits are very welcome, but there is certainly room for good sRGB displays for some time to go.

Cheers,
Bart

[D Fosse]

And as you'll see, sRGB output to a display will (is) going the way of the dodo bird.

I'm not so sure about that. It seemed like that some years ago, but since then wide gamut displays have become not so much an emerging technology, but rather a niche product for graphics professionals (including photographers).

The rest of the world, including monitor manufacturers, move away from wide gamut and back to sRGB.

And even general support for color management, obviously a requirement for these displays, is on a steady decline.

Like Bart, I blame the tablets and phones. There's a new mainstream, a new paradigm, and it has no place for wide gamut.

[digitaldog]

Like Bart, I blame the tablets and phones. There's a new mainstream, a new paradigm, and it has no place for wide gamut.

No reason they can't and will not, that's my prediction. Consumers like saturated colors. We're seeing the pixel density wars first and that makes sense. At some point it's gone as far as it need be, increased color gamut is easily supplied as the next best feature.
New iMac display gamuts are an interesting development too...

[Czornyj]

Like Bart, I blame the tablets and phones. There's a new mainstream, a new paradigm, and it has no place for wide gamut.

I blame TV and Rec.709 (sRGB primaries). Most recent OLED tablets and phones are natively wide gamut. While the new broadcasting standard Rec.2020 is super wide gamut I suspect we should expect a global switch to wide gamut, color managed environment in future.

But so or so UHD gives you noticeable improvement on every image, while wide gamut advantage can only be seen on specific images with saturated colors, and even then it's usually not a night-and-day difference. As a designer, photographer, printer and color consultant I appreciate wide gamut displays, but IMO UHD is even better - YMMV.

[xpatUSA]

But so or so UHD gives you noticeable improvement on every image, while wide gamut advantage can only be seen on specific images with saturated colors, and even then it's usually not a night-and-day difference. As a designer, photographer, printer and color consultant I appreciate wide gamut displays, but IMO UHD is even better - YMMV.

As a myopic hobbyist who views his monitor without glasses from about 450mm I wonder how I would personally see a 4K or UHD monitor?

My current cheap NEC has a pixel-pitch of 0.294mm. At my viewing distance, that equates to 0.65mrad and my vision is approx 0.75mrad; therefore, I can not distinguish the individual screen pixels unless I squint hard - and then only barely.

So would I see, for example, a pixel-pitch of 0.133mm as "even better" than what I have, or would YMMV apply?

Ted

[Tim Lookingbill]

As a myopic hobbyist who views his monitor without glasses from about 450mm I wonder how I would personally see a 4K or UHD monitor?

My current cheap NEC has a pixel-pitch of 0.294mm. At my viewing distance, that equates to 0.65mrad and my vision is approx 0.75mrad; therefore, I can not distinguish the individual screen pixels unless I squint hard - and then only barely.

So would I see, for example, a pixel-pitch of 0.133mm as "even better" than what I have, or would YMMV apply?

Ted

Examine "Reply #1" of Marcin's shot he took with his camera comparing the newer NEC UHD resolution vs his old NEC to see the difference. I still have a regular LG 27" HD resolution I can barely see the tiny pixel grid if I squint hard enough and I'm having to view with reading glasses that noticeably magnify the entire screen sitting about 24 inches away.

It's nice to see NEC is offering high quality office level displays that come with a hardware LUT but that model is still pretty steep for such a market at between $700-$900 US.

Really nice photos, Marcin.

[xpatUSA]

As a myopic hobbyist who views his monitor without glasses from about 450mm I wonder how I would personally see a 4K or UHD monitor? [compared to my cheap NEC]

Examine "Reply #1" of Marcin's shot he took with his camera comparing the newer NEC UHD resolution vs his old NEC to see the difference.

Thank you, I did examine the shot. Clearly the UHD looks way better when shot with a camera from what looks like a fairly close distance. However, I am having difficulty reconciling that shot with my own visual acuity and my viewing distance, though

[D Fosse]

See this article, which discusses the relationship between screen resolution and viewing distance:

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/visual_acuity.htm

Basically, the takeaway is that any screen is UHD, just view it from the equivalent distance. But a traditional screen is obviously smaller at that equivalent distance. So the real benefit of UHD, you could say, is more screen real estate because you can sit closer, not higher resolution as such.

This is of course the same discussion as that of print resolution vs. reproduction size vs. viewing distance. A 6000 x 4000 shot that works for a magazine spread, will work just as well as a wall-sized banner, because it's seen from further away.

[Tim Lookingbill]

Looking at Marcin's opening post photo I'm not liking how small Lightroom's right tool panel is. I guess you would have to get close up so you can see the slider knobs and the numbers.

For my eyes I'ld say it would take about 3x magnification reading glasses just to see what I'm doing.

[JRSmit]

Thank you, I did examine the shot. Clearly the UHD looks way better when shot with a camera from what looks like a fairly close distance. However, I am having difficulty reconciling that shot with my own visual acuity and my viewing distance, though

It is not about bring able to see the dots, it is about see in colors which is a mix of dots.

[zeiterhd]

A new NEC EA275UHD will soon be available at an attractive price. On paper it looks like a display for office work rather than for color critical applications, but (like all recent EAxx4WMi series displays) it can be hardware calibrated by NEC SpectraView calibration software.
Right now it's supported by NEC SpectraView II rev. 1.1.20:

 
It has AH-IPS type panel with W-LED (blue LED + red and green phosphor) backlight:


The blue LED, R and G phosphors are well chosen, so the display gamut is close to sRGB as well as it covers ~100% of that color space:




The native wtpt is ~6100K, and the TRC in factory modes exhibit 3-4∆E peak deviations to a TRC of γ2.2, which is typical for office desktop displays:

N mode:

sRGB mode:


...but contrary to typical office displays we can linearise TRC using internal 10bit 1DLUT and NEC SpectraView II calibration software:

On the monitor picture, it looks like the whites are uneven....is it the "picture" or you found out its uniformity to be less than desirable?

[Czornyj]

On the monitor picture, it looks like the whites are uneven....is it the "picture" or you found out its uniformity to be less than desirable?

The backlight is strongly polarized, and the viewing angle is never perfect in this technology. After further tests I've found out, that it's better than I initially thought. Appearently it has 10 bit display with 14bit LUT, and DUC (Digital Uniformity Compensation), so after calibration it's perfectly linear, and the uniformity is decent:

[zeiterhd]

The backlight is strongly polarized, and the viewing angle is never perfect in this technology. After further tests I've found out, that it's better than I initially though. Appearently it has 10 bit display with 14bit LUT, and DUC (Digital Uniformity Compensation), so after calibration it's perfectly linear, and the uniformity is decent:

So you recommend this screen for a photography hobbyist? Also, what about NEC warranty? If I buy it from the US, will its warranty be valid in Canada...it seems they have a North American warranty. Will i be able to use ligthtroom correctly if I scale the screen 144op on my retina macbook pro? Will I be able to use spectraview correctly with i1display pro and retina macbook pro because it doesn't support 10bits.

thank you

[Czornyj]

Yes - I can highly recommend it for such applications. Remember that in case of this display SpectraView II and X-Rite i1Display Pro or NEC SpectraSensor Pro (MDVSENSOR3) is obligatory for photographic use. It works with my rMBP15 '15 and LR flawlessly, you can scale the OSX UI and the photo content is still displayed in UHD. The 10bit support is not really important, so there's nothing to bother.


Unfortunatelly I have no idea about warranty in Canada, I'd just ask NEC directly:
http://www.necdisplay.com/contact-support