Introduction

We have with us now the new Philips 328P6AUBREB display, a screen which is 31.5" in size and features a 2560 x 1440 resolution. The IPS based screen is aimed primarily at HDR uses, being promoted heavily in the spec sheets. There is also a wide colour gamut backlight offered on this model, supporting >100% sRGB and 99% Adobe RGB coverage and this is along with a 10-bit colour depth. This isn't specifically aimed at professional uses despite the wide gamut support, but there is also an added uniformity correction feature on this screen. Simple connectivity is possible through the addition of a USB 3.1 type-C interface , with DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 2.0 also being offered.

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Specifications and Features

The following table gives detailed information about the specs of the screen as advertised:

The 328P6A (we'll use this shortened name throughout the review for simplicity) offers a good range of modern connectivity options with 1x DisplayPort 1.2, 1x HDMI 2.0 and 1x USB 3.1 type-C connections offered. There's even an old school D-sub VGA connection which we haven't seen used for a long time really. The digital interfaces are HDCP certified for encrypted content and the video cables are provided in the box for all the connections which is great news.

The screen has an internal power supply and comes packaged with the power cable you need. There are also 2x USB 3.0 ports located on the back of the screen with the video connections (with fast charging support). An audio in and a headphone out connection are also provided if you need them along with integrated 2x 3W stereo speakers.

Below is a summary of the features and connections of the screen:

Power Consumption

In terms of power consumption the manufacturer lists typical usage of 32.4W in the ON mode, and <0.5W in standby. We carried out our normal tests to establish its power consumption ourselves.

Out of the box the screen used 57.7W at the default 100% brightness setting. Once calibrated the screen reached 27.1W consumption, and in standby it used only 0.8W. We have plotted these results below compared with other screens we have tested. The consumption (comparing the calibrated states) is a little higher than most 27" models due to the slightly bigger screen size (and therefore backlight), but less than the larger 34 - 38" models for the same reason.

Panel and Backlighting

Panel Part and Colour Depth

The Philips 328P6A features a TP Vision TFT31585-QHBN0.K IPS technology panel which is capable of producing 1.07 billion colours. TP Vision are associated with Philips and we've seen their panels used in previous Philips screens as well. A 1.07b colour depth is achieved through a native 8-bit colour depth and additional FRC stage (8-bit+FRC). Keep in mind whether this 10-bit support is practically useable for you and whether you're ever going to truly use that colour depth. You need to have a full 10-bit end to end workflow to take advantage of it which is still quite expensive to achieve and rare in the market, certainly for your average user. This includes relevant applications and graphics cards as well, so to some people this 10-bit support might be irrelevant.

The panel part is confirmed when dismantling the screen as shown below:

Screen Coating

The screen coating is a light anti-glare (AG) like other modern IPS panels. It retains its anti-glare properties to avoid too many unwanted reflections of a full glossy coating, but does not produce an too grainy or dirty an image that some thicker AG coatings can, including much older IPS panels. There are no visible cross-hatching patterns on the coating.

Backlight Type and Colour Gamut

The screen uses a wide gamut LED backlight unit which offers a colour gamut beyond the standard sRGB space of normal W-LED units. This allows wide coverage of colour spaces such as Adobe RGB (99% coverage quoted) and DCI-P3 for those who want to work with or view wider gamut content.

You need to be mindful that the backlight is a wide gamut type as not everyone wants or needs a wide gamut screen, and you do certainly pay a premium to have it. It can help produce more vivid and colourful images which are often preferred for multimedia use, and certainly for HDR content where boosted colours is part of the attraction. However, for colour critical work it can lead to oversaturation of colours and unrealistic and "inaccurate" tones unless you are working with specific wide gamut content in a colour managed workflow. There is also an sRGB emulation mode offered by the screen which we will look at later on as well. If you want to read more about colour spaces and gamut then please have a read of our detailed article.

Backlight Dimming and Flicker

We tested the screen to establish the methods used to control backlight dimming. Our in depth article talks in more details about a previously very common method used for this which is called Pulse Width Modulation (PWM). This in itself gives cause for concern to some users who have experienced eye strain, headaches and other symptoms as a result of the flickering backlight caused by this technology. We use a photosensor + oscilloscope system to measure backlight dimming control with a high level of accuracy and ease. These tests allow us to establish

1) Whether PWM is being used to control the backlight
2) The frequency and other characteristics at which this operates, if it is used
3) Whether a flicker may be introduced or potentially noticeable at certain settings

If PWM is used for backlight dimming, the higher the frequency, the less likely you are to see artefacts and flicker. The duty cycle (the time for which the backlight is on) is also important and the shorter the duty cycle, the more potential there is that you may see flicker. The other factor which can influence flicker is the amplitude of the PWM, measuring the difference in brightness output between the 'on' and 'off' states. Please remember that not every user would notice a flicker from a backlight using PWM, but it is something to be wary of. It is also a hard thing to quantify as it is very subjective when talking about whether a user may or may not experience the side effects.

100%                                                     50%                                                     0%
   
Above scale = 1 horizontal grid = 5ms

 

Contrast Stability and Brightness

At the top end the maximum luminance reached a very high 461 cd/m² which was a little higher even than the specified maximum brightness of 450 cd/m² from the manufacturer. There was a fairly good 363 cd/m² adjustment range in total, but at the minimum setting you could reach down to a fairly moderate luminance of 98 cd/m². This might not be quite low enough for some people wanting to work in darkened room conditions with low ambient light and it doesn't reach as low as some screens. A setting of 7 in the OSD menu should return you a luminance of around 120 cd/m² at default settings. It should be noted that the brightness regulation is controlled without the need for Pulse Width Modulation for all brightness settings so the screen is flicker free.

    

We have plotted the luminance trend on the graph above. The screen behaves as it should in this regard, with a reduction in the luminance output of the screen controlled by the reduction in the OSD brightness setting. This is not quite a linear relationship as you can see, with the settings between 100 and 50 controlling a slightly steeper adjustment range than between 50 and 0.

The average contrast ratio of the screen was excellent for an IPS technology panel, measured at 1202:1. It remained stable across the brightness adjustment range as shown above.

Testing Methodology

An important thing to consider for most users is how a screen will perform out of the box and with some basic manual adjustments. Since most users won't have access to hardware colorimeter tools, it is important to understand how the screen is going to perform in terms of colour accuracy for the average user.

We restored our graphics card to default settings and disabled any previously active ICC profiles and gamma corrections. The screen was tested at default factory settings using our new X-rite i1 Pro 2 Spectrophotometer combined with LaCie's Blue Eye Pro software suite. An X-rite i1 Display Pro colorimeter was also used to verify the black point and contrast ratio since the i1 Pro 2 spectrophotometer is less reliable at the darker end.

Targets for these tests are as follows:

• CIE Diagram - validates the colour space covered by the monitors backlighting in a 2D view, with the black triangle representing the displays gamut, and other reference colour spaces shown for comparison

• Gamma - we aim for 2.2 which is the default for computer monitors

• Colour temperature / white point - we aim for 6500k which is the temperature of daylight

• Luminance - we aim for 120 cd/m², which is the recommended luminance for LCD monitors in normal lighting conditions

• Black depth - we aim for as low as possible to maximise shadow detail and to offer us the best contrast ratio

• Contrast ratio - we aim for as high as possible. Any dynamic contrast ratio controls are turned off here if present

• dE average / maximum - as low as possible. If DeltaE >3, the color displayed is significantly different from the theoretical one, meaning that the difference will be perceptible to the viewer. If DeltaE <2, LaCie considers the calibration a success; there remains a slight difference, but it is barely undetectable. If DeltaE < 1, the color fidelity is excellent.

Default Performance and Setup

Default settings of the screen were as follows:

Initially out of the box the screen was set in the 'color temperature' mode with a setting of 6500k. This operates the screen a the full native gamut of the backlight. The display was also set with a very high 100% brightness which was far too bright and uncomfortable to use. You will definitely need to turn that down. The colours felt bright and vivid and you could tell the screen was offering a wide gamut beyond normal sRGB screens.

We went ahead and measured the default state with the i1 Pro 2. The CIE diagram on the left of the image confirms that the monitors colour gamut (black triangle) extends a considerable amount beyond the sRGB colour space reference (orange triangle). We measured using ChromaPure software a 146.8% sRGB gamut coverage which corresponds to 108.2% of the DCI-P3 reference and 77.6% of the Rec.2020 reference. This coverage is fairly typical of a wide gamut LED backlight unit.

Default gamma was recorded at an accurate 2.2 average, with a very small 1% deviance from the target. White point was measured at a slightly too warm 5955k which left it a moderate 8% out from the 6500k we'd ideally want for desktop use. There are a range of other colour temp presets available in the menu along with a configurable 'user define' mode where you have access to the individual RGB channels for the calibration process.

Luminance was recorded at a very bright 466 cd/m² which is far too high for prolonged general use, you will need to turn that down. The screen was set at a default 100% brightness in the OSD menu but that is easy to change of course to reach a more comfortable setting without impacting any other aspect of the setup. The black depth was 0.39 cd/m² at this default brightness setting, giving us a strong static contrast ratio for an IPS-type panel of 1188:1. Colour accuracy was difficult to measure in this mode since it is comparing the wide gamut colours produced by the screen with a normal sRGB reference. We will ignore those for now. Testing the screen with colour gradients showed smooth gradients with only minor gradation evident in the darker tones. There was no sign of any colour banding which was good news.

 

Factory Calibration

The screen carries a factory calibration in the sRGB and Adobe RGB preset modes, designed to deliver low dE of <2, and a pre-tuned 2.2 gamma curve. An individual report is provided in the box as shown with our example below:

 

We first of all tested the sRGB mode. Unfortunately the main flaw with this (and the Adobe RGB) mode was that you cannot adjust the brightness control from the default 100% setting, without the screen reverting to the normal 'color temperature' mode, and therefore the full native gamut of the backlight. That makes these two calibrated modes pointless really, as the brightness is far too high and uncomfortable to use. You could turn things down at the graphics card level, but at the cost of lowering the contrast ratio significantly.

In the sRGB preset mode you can see first of all that the gamut is being quite nicely emulated to match the sRGB colour space. The CIE diagram on the left shows that the two triangles match pretty closely now, and certainly cut down on the large over-coverage we had seen with the native gamut in the 'color temperature' mode. Using ChromaPure software we measured a 91.7% sRGB coverage in this mode which was a little lower than we had hoped, but for those who want to work with standard sRGB content more accurately, this preset provides a more suitable option.

Gamma was measured at an accurate 2.2 average, with a 0% deviance recorded. The factory calibration does not have a target for white point and we measured it in this mode at 6055k, still leaving it a little too warm and with a 7% error. dE was 1.2 average which was excellent, with a 2.3 maximum so it looks like the factory calibration worked very nicely in that regard. Contrast ratio remained strong for an IPS panel at 1190:1. Colour gradients were mostly smooth but showed a bit of banding in darker tones.

The main problem with this factory calibration mode is that you cannot adjust the brightness control, without the screen reverting you back to the 'color temperature' mode. As a result, although this sRGB mode has a fairly decent sRGB colour space emulation and good factory calibration, you can only use it if you can live with the crazy high 463 cd/m² brightness which is very uncomfortable. Changing the brightness moves you back to the full native gamut of the screen, so you then lose the sRGB emulation. We are not sure why Philips would limit the availability of the brightness control in these modes, but it makes them unusable in our opinion.

 

We also then tested the Adobe RGB calibrated mode for completeness:

In this mode the Adobe RGB colour space is being more closely matched than the full native gamut of the backlight in the out-of-the-box mode. We have provided a visual comparison below of both modes. In this Adobe RGB mode the gamut was reduced a bit from the default 146.8% sRGB coverage to 125.6% now. Again gamma was reliably set up at 2.2 but white point was a little too warm. We cannot accurately measure the dE as the software is comparing the wide gamut colours produced by the screen with an sRGB reference.

Colour space coverage of Adobe RGB reference
Comparison between native mode (left) and Adobe RGB emulation mode (right)

Again the main problem was that you cannot adjust the brightness control without moving out of this mode, making it again a bit pointless. Shame as the emulation of the Adobe RGB space was good.

Calibration

We used the X-rite i1 Pro 2 Spectrophotometer combined with the LaCie Blue Eye Pro software package to achieve these results and reports. An X-rite i1 Display Pro colorimeter was used to validate the black depth and contrast ratios due to lower end limitations of the i1 Pro device.

We first of all switched to the 'User Define' color mode which gives you access to adjust the RGB channels individually but will leave the screen in the full native gamut. It's sadly not possible to work with the sRGB mode as although the screen offers a fairly decent sRGB emulation mode, you cannot change the brightness away from the maximum 100% so it's too uncomfortable to actually use. As a result, it's not possible to calibrate the screen with a smaller sRGB gamut in mind.

We adjusted the RGB channels and brightness setting as shown in the table above as part of the guided calibration process. These OSD changes allowed us to obtain an optimal hardware starting point and setup before software level changes would be made at the graphics card level. We left the  LaCie software to calibrate to "max" brightness which would just retain the luminance of whatever brightness we'd set the screen to, and would not in any way try and alter the luminance at the graphics card level, which can reduce contrast ratio. These adjustments before profiling the screen would help preserve tonal values and limit banding issues. After this we let the software carry out the LUT adjustments and create an ICC profile.

Average gamma was measured at 2.2 average which fixed the minor 1% deviance we'd seen out of the box. The fairly large 8% white point deviance had now been corrected bringing the measured white point to 6523k. Luminance had been improved thanks to the adjustment to the brightness control and was now being measured at a far more comfortable 119 cd/m². This left us a black depth of 0.09 cd/m² and a static contrast ratio of 1287:1 which was excellent for an IPS panel and living up to the spec of the screen. Colour accuracy of the resulting profile was excellent too, with dE average of 0.3 and maximum of 1.1. LaCie would consider colour fidelity to be excellent. Testing the screen with various colour gradients showed mostly smooth transitions with only some minor gradation in darker tones, but no visible banding. You can use our settings and try our calibrated ICC profile if you wish, which are available in our ICC profile database. Keep in mind that results will vary from one screen to another and from one computer / graphics card to another.

Calibration Performance Comparisons

The comparisons made in this section try to give you a better view of how each screen performs, particularly out of the box which is what is going to matter to most consumers. We have divided the table up by panel technology as well to make it easier to compare similar models. When comparing the default factory settings for each monitor it is important to take into account several measurement areas - gamma, white point and colour accuracy. There's no point having a low dE colour accuracy figure if the gamma curve is way off for instance. A good factory calibration requires all 3 to be well set up. We have deliberately not included luminance in this comparison since this is normally far too high by default on every screen. However, that is very easily controlled through the brightness setting (on most screens) and should not impact the other areas being measured anyway. It is easy enough to obtain a suitable luminance for your working conditions and individual preferences, but a reliable factory setup in gamma, white point and colour accuracy is important and some (gamma especially) are not as easy to change accurately without a calibration tool.

From these comparisons we can also compare the calibrated colour accuracy, black depth and contrast ratio. After a calibration the gamma, white point and luminance should all be at their desired targets.

Default setup of the screen out of the box was moderate. Firstly in the default mode the full native gamut of the backlight (around 147% sRGB coverage) was produced and it's not really possible to work with other emulated colour spaces like sRGB or Adobe RGB because in those modes the brightness control is locked at 100%. In the default mode though you could change the brightness setting to whatever you want, and certainly you'd want to change it from the default setting which is too bright. The gamma curve was well set up out of the box, but white point was a bit off (8%) and a bit too warm. The screen did show a high static contrast ratio for an IPS panel which was pleasing.

Where the 328P6A did very well is in black depth and contrast ratio. Not compared with VA panels of course which as you can see reach up to around 2000 - 3000:1 as you can see from the models on the right hand side above. That's a strength of VA technology for sure. IPS panels have been limited to around 1000:1 maximum for many years though, with the odd screen exceeding slightly beyond that such as the Dell U2515H (1138:1). This screen pushed that a bit further, with 1287:1 measured after calibration. That's an excellent result for an IPS panel. Another new screen we tested recently was the Acer ProDesigner PE320QK which reached even higher at 1468:1 and set a new standard for IPS technology.

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Viewing Angles

Above: Viewing angles shown from front and side, and  from above and below. Click for larger image

Viewing angles of the screen were very good as you would expect from an IPS-type panel. Horizontally there was very little colour tone shift until wide angles past about 45. A slight darkening of the image occurred horizontally from wider angles as you can see above as the contrast shifted slighting. Contrast shifts were slightly more noticeable in the vertical field but overall they were very good. The screen offered the wide viewing angles of IPS technology and was free from the restrictive fields of view of TN Film panels, especially in the vertical plane. It was also free of the off-centre contrast shift you see from VA panels and a lot of the quite obvious gamma and colour tone shift you see from some of the modern VA panel type offerings. All as expected really from a modern IPS panel.

Above: View of an all black screen from the side. Click for larger version

On a black image there is a characteristic pale glow when viewed from an angle, commonly referred to as "IPS-glow". Here is appears more purple than white like some IPS panels. Some level of glow from an angle is common on most modern IPS-type panels and can be distracting to some users. If you view dark content from a normal head-on viewing position, you can actually see this glow as your eyes look towards the edges of the screen. Because of the large size of this 32" panel, the glow towards the edges is more obvious than on small screens, where there isn't such a long distance from your central position to the edges. Some people may find this problematic if they are working with a lot of dark content or solid colour patterns. In normal day to day uses, office work, movies and games you couldn't really notice this unless you were viewing darker content. If you move your viewing position back, which is probably likely for movies and games, the effect reduces as you do not have such an extreme angle from your eye position to the screen edges.

Panel Uniformity

We wanted to test here how uniform the brightness was across the screen, as well as identify any leakage from the backlight in dark lighting conditions. Measurements of the luminance were taken at 35 points across the panel on a pure white background. The measurements for luminance were taken using BasICColor's calibration software package, combined with an X-rite i1 Display Pro colorimeter with a central point on the screen calibrated to 120 cd/m². The below uniformity diagram shows the difference, as a percentage, between the measurement recorded at each point on the screen, as compared with the central reference point.

It is worth noting that panel uniformity can vary from one screen to another, and can depend on manufacturing lines, screen transport and other local factors. This is only a guide of the uniformity of the sample screen we have for review.

Uniformity of Luminance
SmartUniformity mode = Off

Uniformity of the screen was really poor on this sample, let's hope it varies with different samples of the screen. There is a uniformity correction mode which we will test in a moment, but with that turned off you can see there's quite a large difference in uniformity of brightness across the screen. The sides of the screen were much darker than the centrally calibrated region, ranging down by -45% in the most extreme cases to 83 cd/m². The left hand edge dropped the lowest here. Only 26% of the screen was within a 10% deviance of the centrally calibrated point which was poor. You may notice some of this variation in practice, and it's certainly likely to be problematic for any colour critical or photo work.

Uniformity of Luminance
SmartUniformity mode = ON

Thankfully there was a much  better result if you enable the SmartUniformity mode from the OSD menu. In this mode the screen goes a bit darker as well, so this would also afford you a lower luminance range than the rather limited 98 cd/m² we had seen with this feature turned off. You now need a brightness setting of around 46% to produce a 120 cd/m² luminance, as opposed to a setting of 7% that you need when SmartUniformity is off. It's nice that you are able to adjust the brightness control in this mode to your liking, unlike the sRGB and Adobe RGB emulation modes we tested earlier. The brightness uniformity across the screen is improved massively, with a maximum deviance between any two points of only 6.46%. The whole screen was within the 10% deviance threshold now. There is one draw back to this SmartUniformity mode though in that it adjusts the digital white levels to achieve the uniformity correction and so has an impact on the contrast ratio of the screen. We measured a static contrast ratio of 576:1 with SmartUniformity turned on.

Backlight Leakage

Above: All black screen in a darkened room. Click for larger version

We also tested the screen with an all black image and in a darkened room. A camera was used to capture the result. The camera showed there was no noticeable backlight bleed or clouding on this sample which was great news.

Note: if you want to test your own screen for backlight bleed and uniformity problems at any point you need to ensure you have suitable testing conditions. Set the monitor to a sensible day to day brightness level, preferably as close to 120 cd/m² as you can get it (our tests are once the screen is calibrated to this luminance). Don't just take a photo at the default brightness which is almost always far too high and not a realistic usage condition. You need to take the photo from about 1.5 - 2m back to avoid capturing viewing angle characteristics, especially on IPS-type panels where off-angle glow can come in to play easily. Photos should be taken in a darkened room at a shutter speed which captures what you see reliably and doesn't over-expose the image. A shutter speed of 1/8 second will probably be suitable for this.

General and Office Applications

The screen features a 2560 x 1440 resolution which is fairly common nowadays, but the difference here is that it is on a slightly larger screen size than normal. The 328P6A is 31.5" in size, making it 4.5" larger diagonally than the typical 27" models featuring this resolution. The larger screen size is designed to provide more immersion for multimedia and games, giving a bigger screen to look at, especially useful if you want to view it from a little further back than a typical PC viewing position. So how does this 2560 x 1440 resolution look on this larger screen? Well, it looks fine. You will see slightly larger font sizes of course with the 0.272mm pixel pitch here and so for office work it doesn't look quite as sharp as on a 27" model. Some people may even prefer this slightly larger font though for more comfortable reading, and it's certainly not too big we didn't think for a screen this size. It also avoids the need to worry about any Operating System or software scaling which you would have to contend with on 3840 x 2160 resolution displays of this size.

The light AG coating of the panel is welcome, and much better than the grainy and 'dirty' appearance of older IPS AG coatings from years gone by. The wide viewing angles provided by this panel technology on both horizontal and vertical planes, helps minimize on-screen colour shift when viewed from different angles. The default setup of the screen offered an accurate gamma curve and a strong contrast ratio for an IPS panel. The white point was a bit warm though and you are pretty much "stuck" with using the screen with its full wide gamut capability. That's fine if you want boosted, more vivid colours for multimedia, gaming and HDR or if you are working specifically with wide gamut content. It's native gamut is fairly close to the Adobe RGB reference space. It's just a shame that you're limited to using only this colour space really, since the provided sRGB (and Adobe RGB) emulation mode work well and provide a nice factory calibration, but are not practically useable since you can't alter the brightness from the crazily high 100%. That's a really annoying issue, as otherwise it would have been very handy. Those modes also carry the factory calibration, so not being able to tweak the brightness control seems crazy.

The brightness adjustment range of the screen was very good, with the ability to offer a luminance between 461 and 98 cd/m². This did mean that at the lower end it doesn't go as dark as some people may want. A setting of ~7 in the OSD brightness control should return you a luminance close to 120 cd/m² out of the box. On a positive note, the brightness regulation is controlled without the need for the use of Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM), and so those who suffer from eye fatigue or headaches associated with flickering backlights need not worry. There was no audible noise or buzzing from the screen, even when specifically looking for it using test images with a large amount of text at once. The screen also remains cool even during prolonged use. The brightness uniformity of the screen in the default mode is poor unfortunately, so if you want to do any colour critical/photo work you are probably best to switch to the SmartUniformity mode where it is miles better. This also will help you achieve a lower luminance should you need to.

There is a LowBlue mode available in the preset menu to help reduce the blue light output of the screen. We found it made the image look a little more green compared with the calibrated 'off' mode. There are 3 levels available (default is 2) and switching up to the maximum 3 setting produced an overly green image, making even black fonts look dark green. You can at least customise the brightness and other settings in this LowBlue mode which makes it usable.

The screen offers 2x USB 3.0 ports (with charging capabilities also) which is very handy, although they are on the back of the screen with the input connections so not really easy access. There are also 2x 3W integrated stereo speakers which are probably ok for the odd mp3, sound clip or YouTube video, along with an audio input and headphone output. There aren't any other extras like card readers or ambient light sensors offered though which can sometimes be useful in office environments. The stand offers a wide range of adjustments which is great news, allowing you to obtain comfortable viewing positions although they are quite stiff to operate so you might not want to move it around too often.

 

 
Responsiveness and Gaming

The 328P6A is rated by Philips as having a 4ms G2G response time. The screen uses overdrive / response time compensation (RTC) technology to boost pixel transitions across grey to grey changes as with nearly all modern displays. There is a user control in the OSD menu for the overdrive under the 'Smart Response' setting with 4 options available - Off, Fast, Faster and Fastest. The part being used is the TP Vision TPT31585-QHBN0.K IPS-type technology panel.  Have a read about response time in our specs section if you need additional information about this measurement.

We use an ETC M526 oscilloscope for these measurements along with a custom photosensor device. Have a read of our response time measurement article for a full explanation of the testing methodology and reported data.

We carried out some initial response time measurements in each of the overdrive settings, along with some visual tests. You can see the trend clearly enough above. The response times improve a little with each step in the overdrive level, but at the same time, the overshoot creeps up as well. We felt that the 'Fast' mode provided the best balance to be honest, before the higher levels of overshoot started to appear more regularly. Some users may wish to experiment with the 'Faster' mode too perhaps. Keep in mind this is a 60Hz-only screen and not specifically aimed at gaming. The 9.0ms G2G response times in the Fast mode are adequate for 60Hz IPS gaming, and to be honest not far behind the best 60Hz IPS panels we've tested. They can reach down to about 8.5ms G2G in the best cases we've found without introducing any noticeable overshoot. There is no variable refresh rate technology like G-sync or FreeSync on this screen, and it's not specifically aimed at gamers.
 

Detailed Response Time Measurements
SmartResponse mode = Fast

Having settled on the 'fast' SmartResponse mode for delivering the optimal balance between response times and overshoot, we carried out a more thorough range of measurements as shown above. The average response time was now measured at 8.9ms G2G. Rise times (changes from darker to lighter shades) were a bit slower than fall times (changes from light to dark), with a 9.7ms G2G average compared with 8.2ms G2G. Some of the fall times reached down to 6.5ms as a minimum but none reached down to the advertised spec of 4ms. Perhaps this is possible in the 'faster' or 'fastest' modes, but we felt that there was just too much overshoot introduced in those higher settings to make them practical.

Speaking of overshoot, the 'fast' mode showed moderate levels of overshoot overall, with some smaller transitions (where shades are closer together) showing fairly high amounts. It was not too bad or obvious in practice in this mode, but does get progressively worse if you push the SmartResponse setting up higher.
 

We have provided a comparison of the Philips 328P6A against many other screens that we have tested. For a 60Hz IPS-type panel it performed pretty well really, with an average 8.9ms G2G response time and moderate levels of overshoot. Other 60Hz IPS screens shown here are the Acer ProDesigner PE320QK (13.3ms), Dell U2515H (9.3ms), Dell U2715H (9.9ms), Dell U2717D (8.7ms) and Dell UP2718Q (9.9ms). They were all slightly slower than the 328P6A, although they did show less overshoot so it's a bit of a trade-off. Higher refresh rate IPS models such as the Acer Predator X34 (100Hz refresh rate 7.9ms G2G response times) and Asus ROG Swift PG279Q (144Hz, 5.0ms) for instance are faster from a pixel transition point of view, but also thanks to the added frame rate of the higher refresh rate. Those high refresh rate models are certainly more suited to gaming than 60Hz models.

Additional Gaming Features

• Aspect Ratio Control - the screen has 3 options for hardware level aspect ratio control options, with settings 'widescreen', 4:3 aspect and 1:1 pixel mapping offered. It would have been useful to see an additional 'auto-aspect' ratio mode available to account for other formats than the native 16:9. Although much content is in 16:9 nowadays, including external consoles and Blu-ray players so you may not need to worry.

• Preset Modes - There is a specific 'game' preset mode available in the OSD which seems to accentuate the sharpness of the image - and is certainly much brighter than our calibrated state. Might be useful to set up for your specific gaming needs for quick switching.

Lag

We have written an in depth article about input lag and the various measurement techniques which are used to evaluate this aspect of a display. It's important to first of all understand the different methods available and also what this lag means to you as an end-user.

Input Lag vs. Display Lag vs. Signal Processing

To avoid confusion with different terminology we will refer to this section of our reviews as just "lag" from now on, as there are a few different aspects to consider, and different interpretations of the term "input lag". We will consider the following points here as much as possible. The overall "display lag" is the first, that being the delay between the image being shown on the TFT display and that being shown on a CRT. This is what many people will know as input lag and originally was the measure made to explain why the image is a little behind when using a CRT. The older stopwatch based methods were the common way to measure this in the past, but through advanced studies have been shown to be quite inaccurate. As a result, more advanced tools like SMTT provide a method to measure that delay between a TFT and CRT while removing the inaccuracies of older stopwatch methods.

In reality that lag / delay is caused by a combination of two things - the signal processing delay caused by the TFT electronics / scaler, and the response time of the pixels themselves. Most "input lag" measurements over the years have always been based on the overall display lag (signal processing + response time) and indeed the SMTT tool is based on this visual difference between a CRT and TFT and so measures the overall display lag. In practice the signal processing is the element which gives the feel of lag to the user, and the response time of course can impact blurring, and overall image quality in moving scenes. As people become more aware of lag as a possible issue, we are of course keen to try and understand the split between the two as much as possible to give a complete picture.

The signal processing element within that is quite hard to identify without extremely high end equipment and very complicated methods. In fact the studies by Thomas Thiemann which really kicked this whole thing off were based on equipment worth >100,1000 Euro, requiring extremely high bandwidths and very complicated methods to trigger the correct behaviour and accurately measure the signal processing on its own. Other techniques which are being used since are not conducted by Thomas (he is a freelance writer) or based on this equipment or technique, and may also be subject to other errors or inaccuracies based on our conversations with him since. It's very hard as a result to produce a technique which will measure just the signal processing on its own unfortunately. Many measurement techniques are also not explained and so it is important to try and get a picture from various sources if possible to make an informed judgement about a display overall.

For our tests we will continue to use the SMTT tool to measure the overall "display lag". From there we can use our oscilloscope system to measure the response time across a wide range of grey to grey (G2G) transitions as recorded in our response time tests. Since SMTT will not include the full response time within its measurements, after speaking with Thomas further about the situation we will subtract half of the average G2G response time from the total display lag. This should allow us to give a good estimation of how much of the overall lag is attributable to the signal processing element on its own.

Lag Classification

To help in this section we will also introduce a broader classification system for these results to help categorise each screen as one of the following levels:

• Class 1) Less than 16ms / 1 frame lag at 60Hz - should be fine for gamers, even at high levels

• Class 2) A lag of 16 - 32ms / One to two frames at 60Hz - moderate lag but should be fine for many gamers. Caution advised for serious gaming

• Class 3) A lag of more than 32ms / more than 2 frames at 60Hz - Some noticeable lag in daily usage, not suitable for high end gaming

For the full reviews of the models compared here and the dates they were written (and when screens were approximately released to the market), please see our full reviews index.

We have provided a comparison above against other models we have tested to give an indication between screens. The screens tested are split into two measurements which are based on our overall display lag tests (using SMTT) and half the average G2G response time, as measured by the oscilloscope. The response time is split from the overall display lag and shown on the graph as the green bar. From there, the signal processing (red bar) can be provided as a good estimation.

We measured a total display lag of 20.24ms. With approximately 4.95ms of that accounted for by pixel response times we had an estimated signal processing of 15.79ms, which was just under 1 frame of lag at 60Hz. Most non gaming screens with a built in scaler will show a similar level of lag, around 16 - 20ms is common.

Movies and Video

The following summarises the screens performance in video applications:

• 31.5" screen size makes it a reasonable option for an all-in-one multimedia screen, but being quite a bit smaller than most modern LCD TV's of course even at this size.

• 16:9 aspect ratio is more well suited to videos than a 16:10 format screen, leaving smaller borders on DVD's and wide screen content at the top and bottom.

• 2560 x 1440 resolution can support full 1080 HD resolution content but not Ultra HD content.

• Digital interfaces support HDCP for any encrypted and protected content

• Good range of connectivity options provided with 1x DisplayPort, 1x HDMI 2.0 and 1x USB type-C offered

• Cables provided in the box for DisplayPort, HDMI and USB type-C.

• Light AG coating providing clean and clear images, without the unwanted reflections of a glossy solution.

• Wide brightness range adjustment possible from the display, including a maximum luminance of ~461 cd/m² and a fairly decent minimum luminance of 98 cd/m². This should afford you good control for different lighting conditions. Brightness regulation is controlled without the need for PWM and so is flicker free for all brightness settings.

• Black depth and contrast ratio are excellent considering this is an IPS panel, measured at 1287:1 after calibration. Detail in darker scenes should not be lost as a result.

• There is a specific preset modes for 'movie' on this model which which might be useful to set up and save your settings for specific movie viewing.

• Decent enough pixel responsiveness which should be able to handle fast moving scenes in movies without too much issue. There is a moderate amount of overshoot in the recommended 'fast' mode but nothing too obvious. You will see more of an issue if you push the SmartResponse setting up higher.

• Wide viewing angles thanks to IPS-type panel technology meaning several people could view the screen at once comfortable and from a whole host of different angles. When viewing darker content you may find the characteristic IPS-glow a little annoying on this panel technology.

• No backlight leakage, and none from the edges which is good. This type of leakage may prove an issue when watching movies where black borders are present but it is not a problem here.

• Good range of tilt, height and swivel ergonomic adjustments available from the stand although some are a bit stiff to operate. Still, it's pretty easy to re-position the screen for movie viewing from a distance, or with other people.

• 2x 3W integrated stereo speakers on this model and audio input/headphone output connections if needed. Speakers might be ok for the odd video clip from YouTube but not for any real movie viewing.

• Reasonable hardware aspect ratio options with widescreen, 4:3 and 1:1 modes offered. Being a native 16:9 aspect ratio screen many external devices are the same and so probably don't need scaling. Would have been useful to see an 'auto' aspect ratio mode included too.

• Picture in picture (PiP) and Picture By Picture (PbP) are not available on this screen.

• HDR offered with some benefits, including an 8-zone local dimming backlight. See the HDR section for more information.

 

HDR (High Dynamic Range)

 

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range and is a technology just starting to make its way in to the desktop monitor market. It's been around in the TV market for a couple of years and is used primarily to provide a better dynamic range and contrast to the image for multimedia, movies and games - that being the difference between light and dark parts of an image. This improvement to the dynamic range is usually paired with other specific features under the banner term of "HDR" including a wider colour gamut for richer, more vivid colours and specs like a 10-bit colour depth support and a high Ultra HD resolution. Overall, an HDR Capable screen is designed to offer a more life-like images, with better contrast ratios between light and dark areas and more vivid, bright colours. You only need to go in to a high street store to observe the difference that HDR makes on TV sets, so we would encourage you to do that if you want to see first hand the improvements it makes to the image quality.

 

HDR Standards Conformity

 

Ultra HD Premium Spec Guidelines	Yes/no	Display Spec
At least Ultra HD Resolution 3840 x 2160		2560 x 1440 native only
10-bit colour depth processing		8-bit + FRC panel
DCI-P3 colour space coverage		108.2% DCI-P3 measured in default mode
Suitable HDR connectivity		HDMI 2.0
at least 1000 cd/m2 peak luminance		526 peak cd/m2 measured
at least 20,000:1 active contrast ratio		1879:1 maximum measured
Backlight dimming system (not defined in Ultra HD Premium requirements)	8-zone edge-lit local dimming

 

The 328P6A is heavily advertised as being an HDR capable display, although it cannot achieve some of the key requirements to deliver a true, full HDR experience unfortunately. On the plus side, the screen has the necessary extended DCI-P3 colour space and 10-bit colour depth support, although the resolution maximum is 2560 x 1440 so it can't truly support Ultra HD Premium content without scaling the resolution down. The extended colour gamut will give a nice boost in colour vividness though for HDR content.

 

Local dimming is achieved through an 8-zone edge-lit backlight, which is fairly typical for mid-range HDR desktop displays. We saw the same 8 zones on the Samsung C320HG70 recently for instance. This is capable of boosting the brightness on parts of the screen while simultaneously lowering the brightness of darker regions. It doesn't give the level of control that a Full-Array Local Dimming (FALD) backlight would, but does provide some local dimming benefits to make HDR possible. See our detailed High Dynamic Range article for more information on dimming methods.

 

Despite the local dimming capability, one area where the 328P6A misses out when it comes to HDR is in offering a higher peak luminance. There is no peak brightness spec provided and the screen is only capable of reaching a little way beyond its normal maximum brightness of 450 cd/m² maximum according to our tests. It can't reach the levels of a 1000 cd/m² peak brightness but it does support pretty high levels of brightness for a desktop display. See the tests in a moment for more information.

 

 

HDR Contrast and Peak Brightness

 

We measured the luminance and contrast performance of the screen in HDR mode in a variety of scenarios. A white box is displayed on the screen which covers 1% of the overall screen size initially. This is designed to show at several target luminance levels, starting at 100 and then changing to 400 and 1000 cd/m² (and beyond if needed). We measure the actual luminance of that white box to see how close to the target luminance the screen actually performs at each step. When the screen reaches the maximum peak luminance possible, we also measure the black depth of the screen at a point furthest away from the white area. This can then allow us to calculate the HDR active contrast ratio, the difference between the bright white area on screen, and the dark black areas elsewhere.

 

This 1% white screen coverage is designed to give a rough representation of how a small highlight area in HDR content might appear and work in normal multimedia. The box then increases to a larger size, covering 4, 9, 25, 49 and finally 100% of the screen area. This represents different sized areas of bright content in HDR multimedia. Again those progressively larger boxes are shown at the different luminance targets, and we measure the actual screen luminance achieved for each.

 

White window size	100 cd/m2 target	400 cd/m2 target	1000 cd/m2 target		Peak luminance (cd/m2)	Min black depth (cd/m2)	HDR contrast (x:1)
1%	176	484	526		526	0.28	1,879
4%	176	482	525		525	0.32	1,641
9%	175	480	522		522	0.32	1,631
25%	175	480	522		522	0.31	1,684
49%	174	478	520		520	0.28	1,857
100%	174	479	520		520	n/a	n/a

 

When you enable the HDR mode in the OSD menu you are also able to adjust the brightness control yourself, and this has an impact on the peak brightness levels achieved by the screen. We put the screen at 100% brightness for these tests so as to push the brightness of the screen to the max for HDR content. With all the different sized white boxes, you can see the results are pretty much the same. Content intended to display at 100 cd/m² is a bit too bright at around 175 cd/m². Content mastered at 400 cd/m² is displayed at around 480 cd/m² which is not too bad. By the time you reach content mastered at 1000 cd/m² you reach the upper limit of the screen's backlight capability, with a peak luminance achieved of around 525 cd/m². We would have liked to see the 100 and 400 cd/m² content more closely match the intended luminance. You can lower the OSD brightness so that 100 cd/m² content is displayed at 100 cd/m², but it has a significant knock on effect and lowers the 400 cd/m² content well under the target.

 

With a peak luminance of around 526 cd/m² we measured a black point on the same screen of 0.28 cd/m². This gives rise to an HDR contrast ratio of 1879:1 which was a decent way beyond the normal static contrast ratio of around 1287:1. There is an  improved contrast but nowhere near the Ultra HD Premium HDR standards where 20,000:1 is desired for an LCD display. It looks like the local dimming is not capable of lowering the dark parts of the screen sufficiently low enough, and is likely limited by the IPS panel where black depth isn't really a strong point anyway.

Conclusion

The 328P6A provides a pretty good general screen, but does feel like it's stuck a little bit between target markets. On the one hand you've got some higher end professional features like 10-bit colour depth, wide gamut support and a very good uniformity correction feature. On the other hand, the factory calibration was a disappointment since the sRGB and Adobe RGB emulation modes are unusable because of the locked brightness control. It's a shame as they worked very well, and would have given you a lot more flexibility to work with different colour spaces. Additionally there is no support for hardware calibration on this model, so it doesn't offer that level of accuracy and control that you'd get from most professional grade screens.

Then the screen is also aimed at HDR multimedia uses. That's certainly heavily promoted on the spec pages for this screen. It does a nice job of offering the boosted colours necessary for wide gamut which is nice to see, and there's a modest 8-zone local dimming backlight utilised as well. However, the peak brightness performance is a little low compared with some HDR screens, and the local dimming backlight struggles to achieve any significant HDR contrast ratio in practice - partly due to the limitations of the IPS technology.

Overall though the 328O6A offers solid all round performance you'd expect from an IPS panel, including a strong contrast ratio for this technology. It comes with a nice set of connections and extras as well.

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