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TFTCentral’s September Monthly Round-up

Simon Baker
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Here’s our monthly roundup for those who perhaps can’t keep up with all the news and information on a regular basis. We will try and provide a round-up of some of the key things going on in the monitor world each month. If you want to keep up to date but on a less regular basis, this should be all you need!

If you missed our last round-up piece for August, it’s available here. If you’ve spotted anything you think would be of interest that we’ve missed, let us know!

Loads of 240Hz IPS Monitors Announced

Dell Alienware AW2720HF

We’ve still not seen any of these available to buy just yet, but there’s certainly been a large number of new monitors announced using the latest 240Hz refresh rate IPS panel technology. Most are 27″ in size, but there’s also been some smaller 24.5″ sized models emerge. They all feature a 1920 x 1080 resolution, but we are particularly keen to see whether the higher refresh rate brings about improvements in motion clarity, and whether the pixel response times can keep up with the frame rate demands on an IPS panel. Models announced so far include:

  • Acer Nitro XV273X – 27″ model, the first to be announced and expected Nov 2019 at £399 GBP. We are waiting on an update from Acer on availability of a sample for this
  • Dell AW2720HF – 27″ model which was expected to be available mid September (so maybe any time now?) which if true, could make it the first to be released to market. Price of $599.99 USD
    LG 27GN750 – 27″ model and expected Q4 2019. Pricing not confirmed yet
  • Acer Nitro VG272X – 27″ model, a more trimmed down version of their XV273X. Unclear on launch date and regions at this time
  • ViewSonic XG270 – 27″ model, expected to be available in November at a price of $429.99 USD
  • Acer Nitro XB253QX – a smaller 24.5″ model expected Q1 2020 at £349 GBP

Conspicuous by their absence in this list are Asus, who are surely going to announce a competing model soon!

Reviews We Are Hoping to Conduct Soon

We are waiting on delivery of a couple of interesting screens at the moment. They are:

Samsung C49RG90 – We receive a lot of requests from readers wanting a review of this mega-wide display. It’s 49″ and has a 5120 x 1440 resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, AMD FreeSync 2 and a VESA DisplayHDR 1000 certification.

Lenovo Legion Y44w – an interesting new gaming screen with an ultrawide 43.4″ sized panel. Offering 3840 x 1200 resolution, 144Hz refresh rate and FreeSync 2.

LG 38GL950G – still on our list to review as soon as it is available in the UK. Not had any updates on this one recently, but it will be reviewed as soon as we can! 37.5″ ultrawide with 3840 x 1600 resolution, 175Hz refresh rate, native G-sync support and Nano IPS panel.

If you want to have exclusive early-access to our reviews before they are published, please consider becoming a TFT Central supporter.

We Are Improving Our Review Calibration and Measurement Devices

We will soon be incorporating the latest generation of X-rite calibration and measurement tools in to our reviews. This will include the new i1 Pro 3 spectrophotometer, and the new i1 Display Pro Plus. This helps account for modern display technologies better including OLED (when they arrive in the monitor market properly!) and HDR displays. This includes the capability to measure much higher peak brightness than previous generations. You can see the full range of X-rite i1 Family devices here.

A Dream Spec? The Asus ProArt PA32UCG Announced

This new screen was showcased at IFA 2019 and it features an incredible spec (and no doubt will carry a hefty price tag!) It is:

  • 32″ size
  • 4K 3840 x 2160 resolution
  • 120Hz refresh rate
  • Adaptive-sync for VRR (both AMD and NVIDIA)
  • 1152 zone Mini-LED backlight local dimming
  • VESA DisplayHDR 1400 certified
  • Peak HDR brightness of 1600 cd/m2
  • HDR10, HLG, and Dolby Vision support
  • 10-bit colour depth
  • 95% DCI-P3 colour gamut
  • Factory calibration
  • Hardware calibration support
  • 2x Thunderbolt 3, 1x DisplayPort 1.4 and 3x HDMI 2.0 ports
  • A full range of tilt, swivel, pivot and height adjustments are offered from the stand

It’s expected to be released in Q1 2020 but no official word on price yet. Given it’s impressive specs and positioning for the professional market primarily, expect a very high price tag. More info when we get it.

VESA DisplayHDR 400 Remains a Rubbish Spec!

At the beginning of the month we were excited for a short time by the press release from VESA which suggested that they had tightened up their criteria for the HDR 400 certification level. The wording of the press release implied that the future update would require local dimming for all tiers, which would have fixed a big part of our issue with HDR 400. After clarifying with VESA we were disappointed to learn though that it not much more than a new way to check that the screen is operating in “HDR” mode via the signal data instead of the meta data being sent. They had not mandated the need for local dimming for this HDR level.

We still really dislike this spec, it still doesn’t need any form of local dimming and so there’s nothing there to actually produce a higher dynamic range in the first place! It doesn’t need anything beyond standard sRGB gamut or 8-bit colour depth either. It really is rather pointless as a certification level and will continue to be abused by manufacturers advertising their screens as HDR when there is very little/nothing in the way of any genuine HDR performance. You can read our full thoughts on it here.

They did at the same time release a new upper tier for LCD displays with the new HDR 1400 level, which accounts for monitors with an even higher peak brightness capability. The Asus ProArt PA32UCG talked about above will be the first to be certified under this new tier.

You Want More News?

You can always check our news archive for a full list of news articles published each month.

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