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Author Topic: NEC P242W vs. PA272W  (Read 18557 times)

joshnl

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Re: NEC P242W vs. PA272W
« Reply #20 on: January 30, 2014, 02:26:09 am »

The native colour space of P242W also exceeds sRGB to some degree, so a PA242/PA272W in sRGB emulation would look as P242W in sRGB emulation in non colour-managed apps.

All these displays use precise 14(16)bit 3DLUT to emulate sRGB, so it's just as good as it gets, and you can quickly switch it using Multiprofiler's keyboard shortcut (+ it manages display profiles automatically).

Thanks, Czornyj.

The PA242W is another possibility that I should consider, I guess, since it's the same as the P242W except it's aRGB...
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Czornyj

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Re: NEC P242W vs. PA272W
« Reply #21 on: January 30, 2014, 06:17:00 am »

PA272W is marginally more expansive, but substancially larger with massive 2560x1440px resolution. Best bang for buck, in contrary to Andrew I prefer 30" but it's much more expansive.
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Marcin Kałuża | [URL=http://zarzadzaniebarwa

joshnl

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Re: NEC P242W vs. PA272W
« Reply #22 on: January 30, 2014, 03:41:49 pm »

PA272W is marginally more expansive, but substancially larger with massive 2560x1440px resolution. Best bang for buck, in contrary to Andrew I prefer 30" but it's much more expansive.

Cool. Thanks, Czornyj. More food for thought.

I really wish that NEC made a 27" equivalent to the P242W, as I'm starting to lean more towards an sRGB display, but would really like 27".
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Czornyj

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Re: NEC P242W vs. PA272W
« Reply #23 on: January 30, 2014, 04:29:22 pm »

PA272W is 2 in 1 - one click and it mimics a perfect sRGB device, another click turns it into wide gamut display that can simulate rich palette of pigment or dye printer. more closely. There's also a very smart white point calibration control:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=83820.msg699341#msg699341
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joshnl

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Re: NEC P242W vs. PA272W
« Reply #24 on: January 30, 2014, 04:39:54 pm »

PA272W is 2 in 1 - one click and it mimics a perfect sRGB device, another click turns it into wide gamut display that can simulate rich palette of pigment or dye printer. more closely. There's also a very smart white point calibration control:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=83820.msg699341#msg699341

So are you saying I'd be crazy not to go for the PA272W? ;)

It is very tempting. I'm just not sure that, for me, it's worth an extra $500.

ANALYSIS PARALYSIS!!!
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Czornyj

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Re: NEC P242W vs. PA272W
« Reply #25 on: January 31, 2014, 03:35:33 pm »

Are Canon L-series lenses worth extra money over EF-S? Are full-frame sensor cameras worth extra money over APS-C? ;)
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Marcin Kałuża | [URL=http://zarzadzaniebarwa

MarkH2

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Re: NEC P242W vs. PA272W
« Reply #26 on: January 31, 2014, 04:39:08 pm »

Thank you for the discussion here and elsewhere in the forums, gentlemen -- helped me zero in.  I ordered the PA272W-BK-SV today.
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WombatHorror

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Re: NEC P242W vs. PA272W
« Reply #27 on: March 01, 2014, 03:11:46 am »

Hi all,

I'm long overdue to upgrade my 7- or 8-year old bottom of the barrel LCD monitor (sRGB), and was hoping to get some guidance from some of the kind folks on this forum. After having done LOTS of research over the last while, I think I've narrowed the process down to a few key questions.

But first, just to give you an idea of my situation, I'm an avid serious amateur nature photographer, and am wanting to start producing fine art prints of my work (possibly for sale). I don't print at home, but the idea is that I will use high-end print shops capable of wide-gamut (beyond sRGB) printing - and I may start printing at home eventually. When I process my pictures, I do so with a proper colour management workflow, editing in 16-bit Adobe RGB 1998, and then converting to 8-bit sRGB for web viewing.

The deal is, I now want to (1) have better image quality with a broader gamut of colours when looking at my finished pictures on my own computer (basically, to improve my own viewing experience when looking at images on screen) and (2) be able to have a better idea of what my photos will look like when printed on wider gamut printers.

Through all my research, I think I've narrowed down my choices to the NEC P242W and NEC PA272W monitors. The main differences between these monitors, as I understand them, are (1) sRGB vs. wide gamut, (2) 24" vs. 27", and (3) 1920 x 1200 vs. 2560 x 1440. But I could really use some help answering the key questions that I think will help me decide between the two:

1. How well does the sRGB emulation mode work on the PA272W? Would an image viewed in that mode look about the same as it would on the P242W? I ask this since, while I do want the ability to know what I'm getting with wide gamut printing, the fact of the matter is that most of what I do ends up on the web.

2. Will the higher resolution of the PA272W require significantly more computer resources? My computer is a decent one (i7 950, 12GB RAM, ATI HD6870 video card), but even with my current 1680 x 1050 monitor, Lightroom still struggles a bit sometimes. I'm therefore worried that the substantially higher resolution of the PA272W will make using LR too much of a pain.

3. When editing pictures in LR and PS, will having a 27" screen provide much more practical real estate over a 24" screen? Keep in mind that I could use my old monitor as a second display to put toolbars and so forth on - however, again, I'm worried that having to drive two displays might slow down LR significantly (in the past, when I had a 1600 x 1200 CRT as a secondary display, using both monitors would slow down LR noticeably).

This is where my internet searching has come to a dead end, I'm afraid, so I would hugely appreciate some help with these questions.

Thanks!

Long story short:
The 242 and 272 are basically the same other than the size.

BUT I'd honestly look at a UHD display at this point in time. If you need to update your graphics card a little so be it. UHD is SO worth it.
Here is my initial review of the Dell UP2414Q:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=87704.msg714615#msg714615

(of course it is MUCH smaller physically than the 272 so you won't get the physical image size quite as impressively towering over you)

EDIT: note I thought you were talking PA series for both! The P242 and PA272 actually are quite different.
« Last Edit: March 01, 2014, 07:57:01 pm by WombatHorror »
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WombatHorror

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Re: NEC P242W vs. PA272W
« Reply #28 on: March 01, 2014, 03:20:16 am »

When you say the sRGB emulation mode works fine, does is really match a good sRGB monitor? I've heard from some people that they've had major problems with wide gamut monitors in sRGB emulation mode, in terms of getting the image they see on their screen to match what's seen on other peoples' sRGB screens. Was this just a problem with older wide gamut monitors, and not with newer ones such as the PA272W?

It works quite well on the Dell UP2414Q (to the point that it's basically a little bit better than what you'd actually get from a plain sRGB monitor, unless it was ultra fancy). And it works 100% perfectly on the NEC PA series. I mean you set it and then measure it and it's all dead on and even the saturation tracking ramps are bang on perfect (slightly wonky but not terrible on the Dell; they are actually usually slightly wonky on most monitors that are not really fancy). A regular sRGB monitor most likely doesn't even quite hit all the proper sRGB primaries and most don't have fancy internal LUTs so after calibration they'd probably have more banding and worse primary luminance tracking and , compared to the NEC, worse saturation tracking.

It is true that side by side it won't likely look quite like sRGB monitor calibrated with the same probe due to metamerism. The spectral spikes of the primaries are different and outside of the lab full spectral based CMS are not used. The effect varies a bit person to person so isn't even any given compensation factor that could perfectly match any two given screens for everyone. I will say that when I put up a color check chart on my NEC PA241W and on a couple sRGB monitors and also brought out a real color checker chart and viewed it under as close to D65 as I could get the color checker looked different in three cases hah, but it actually looked CLOSER on the WIDE GAMUT display to the real life chart than it did on the sRGB displays. I guess that means, at least for my eyes, the spectral spikes affect my eyes in a way that is a bit better match for how most colorimeters seem to be tuned.

The new multi-LED wide gamut LCD like the NEC PAxx2W series and the Dell UP2414Q, at first glance, appear to more closely match the old CCFL wide gamut NEC PA241W than they do an old CCFL sRGB monitor or a new single-LED sRGB HDTV.
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WombatHorror

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Re: NEC P242W vs. PA272W
« Reply #29 on: March 01, 2014, 03:23:30 am »

They are confused <g>.
Getting two non wide gamut displays to match is work, one has to alter calibrations for each to produce that match. So suggesting that they can't get the two to match and this is due to the emulation is silly.

The different spectral spikes in wide gamut monitors make the matching difference a bit more dramatic though.

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Further, the only display that can actually produce sRGB is a cira 1994 CRT display with P22 phosphors.

Why do you say that? I can set the primaries on NEC PA241W to exactly match the xyY coordinates specified in sRGB standard and nearly so for the Dell UP2414Q. I can set both to sRGB tone response curve. And I can set both to D65 white point.
 
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WombatHorror

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Re: NEC P242W vs. PA272W
« Reply #30 on: March 01, 2014, 03:24:41 am »

Hey digitaldog, Sorry, I think I may not have been clear in my last post. The problem I've heard of is when someone with a wide gamut display tries to edit a picture for the web, for instance. For example, they put their wide gamut display in sRGB emulation mode, edit the picture as they see fit, and upload it to Flickr or whatever. Then, when they look at the picture on Flickr on an entirely different computer - that has a normal (but calibrated) sRGB monitor - the picture looks significantly different than what they saw on their own wide gamut monitor in sRGB emulation mode (particularly with respect to the colours of the image). Do you know anything about this?

It should not be super significantly different. If it's THAT different then they are doing something wrong with color-management. Due to metamerism it may be a bit different though, that is true.
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WombatHorror

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Re: NEC P242W vs. PA272W
« Reply #31 on: March 01, 2014, 03:33:09 am »

Sorry, digitaldog, maybe I'm being thick, but I still don't understand how well the sRGB emulation mode on the PA272W works.

On my current setup (sRGB monitor), if I edit a picture in Photoshop (with proper colour management workflow), and then convert to sRGB upon export, the picture will look more or less the same on my monitor (the "editing" monitor) as it will on another computer using even an uncalibrated monitor (the "viewing" monitor) and a non colour-managed browser (which, as I understand it, basically defaults everything to sRGB). I understand that there will be some differences, especially if the other monitor is uncalibrated; but overall, the pictures look very similar to me (I do this all the time between my home and work computers).

But what I've heard from some other people is that when doing the exact same thing as above, but using a wide gamut monitor in sRGB emulation mode as the "editing" monitor (instead of an actual sRGB monitor), the pictures will often look very different on the "viewing" monitor, and that this leads to lots of frustration in terms of tweaking the picture to get things to look good on the viewing monitor.

If they are noticing a larger difference than between viewing their edits on a calibrated sRGB monitor and most uncalibrated sRGB monitors then they are doing something terribly wrong.
A non-calibrated sRGB monitor will very often look a lot more different from a calibrated monitor than a calibrated wide gamut monitor will that is either run in sRGB mode or is using color-managed software, the uncalibrated vs calibrated is very often a much larger difference than the metamerism differences between monitors of different types.
 

Quote
Another way to put this is that when browsing through other peoples' pictures on Flickr or whatever using a non colour-managed browser, will the pictures still look good (more or less as their creator intended them to) on a PA272W in sRGB emulation mode?

Absolutely and it's easy to switch the PA out of gamma 2.2 into sRGB tone response curve instead so then even the tone response will look great (and since the average person will either have some random tone response curve or gamma 2.2 set, if they use a non-color-managed browser they will likely see things MORE off; for instance IE doesn't use monitor profiles so if your monitor is set to gamma 2.2 it will show ALL sRGB images at least slightly wrong in that the shadows will be a bit too dark and contrasty and the highlights a bit altered too, using Firefox would fix that though). Plus most sRGB monitors don't have all the primaries actually quite reaching sRGB while with the NEC you can dial them in 100% perfectly, and as I said, even the saturation tracking would be perfect. Other than the metamerism shift, you'd be seeing them more perfectly and with more and more people editing on wide gamut displays these days you might even have the better metameric match as well.


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WombatHorror

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Re: NEC P242W vs. PA272W
« Reply #32 on: March 01, 2014, 03:36:49 am »

Okay, cool. I'm learning :)

I guess the core of what I'm asking is, just how well does the PA272W sRGB emulation mode mimic a normal sRGB monitor?

a bit different due to metamerism and the degree and nature of this difference varies from person to person, you can try compensation factors if you must try to replicate the spectral spikes of the sRGB monitors but that is a tricky game, with things moving more towards wide gamut I'd just forget it and let THEM move to the new displays

the difference might actually be more towards what you see in real life though for wide gamut so you might almost say the sRGB monitors are the ones a trace worse, if anything

but in all other terms absolutely utterly perfectly, look at some of my okd posts here where I posted charts of the NEC PA241W simulating sRGB and the charts are all as perfect as you could ever want
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WombatHorror

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Re: NEC P242W vs. PA272W
« Reply #33 on: March 01, 2014, 03:45:07 am »

Cool. Thanks, Czornyj. More food for thought.

I really wish that NEC made a 27" equivalent to the P242W, as I'm starting to lean more towards an sRGB display, but would really like 27".

Oops note that in all my posts above I thought you were talking about the PA272 and PA242 and didn't realize you meant the P242 for the smaller one.

I don't know anything about the P242W.

I doubt the P242W has the fancy 3D LUT and does it even have the uniformity compensation? Maybe it does. I don't know. Important things to look into. If it is a so-called regular gamut monitor then I doubt that it actually quite is able to cover all of sRGB, although it would be close. The PA242/PA272 would be able to cover all of sRGB.

I would NOT lean toward sRGB for photo myself. Wide gamut is so nice! It's great for stuff like sunsets, fall foliage, tropical waters, brightly colored clothing, flashy colored cars, emeralds, flowers. For YEARS I wonder what I was doing wrong taking pictures of certain subjects, such as flowers, no matter what I did they'd never look like they would in real life. I got a wide gamut monitor, BOOM, 95% of my old pics suddenly looked like real life colors! The problem wasn't me or my camera it was nasty sRGB with it's stingy colors clipping away the real life colors. Even a simple red rose is IMPOSSIBLE to capture as in real life in sRGB. I would never go back to a regular gamut monitor! And with these monitors having such great sRGB modes, all internally calibrated, there is no worry as with the early wide gamut monitors. You can have your cake and eat it too and an extra bonus cookie since even sRGB is more true to full sRGB specs!






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WombatHorror

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Re: NEC P242W vs. PA272W
« Reply #34 on: March 01, 2014, 03:47:06 am »

Personally I'd go Dell UP2414Q for the wide gamut and UHD. If you prefer size to UHD and a bit better thought out color system then the NEC PA272W. UHD is VERY awesome though for photos (and video and text).
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Czornyj

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Re: NEC P242W vs. PA272W
« Reply #35 on: March 01, 2014, 07:26:32 pm »

P242W has the fancy 3DLUT. It has a gamut that's slightly larger than sRGB, so it covers 100% of sRGB.

Personally if I were planning to get 4K wide gamut display, I'd wait for new NEC 4K models - EA244UHD was announced already, so I guess PA models should also be announced pretty soon.
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WombatHorror

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Re: NEC P242W vs. PA272W
« Reply #36 on: March 01, 2014, 08:03:14 pm »

P242W has the fancy 3DLUT. It has a gamut that's slightly larger than sRGB, so it covers 100% of sRGB.

Interesting, so I guess it's as good as the PA242W then other than for the wide gamut (although, IMO, that is a major lack). The trace extra gamut and full sRGB coverage sounds good too. That may be one of the best sRGB monitors ever made then.

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Personally if I were planning to get 4K wide gamut display, I'd wait for new NEC 4K models - EA244UHD was announced already, so I guess PA models should also be announced pretty soon.

Yeah that is what I had hoped, but I got solid info that apparently that is not the case (and the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ 30" PA UHD will arrive long before the smaller PA UHD eventually do).
So I got the Dell. And I really am loving it.
« Last Edit: March 01, 2014, 08:05:17 pm by WombatHorror »
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