Anybody tried the checkers gaming monitor ?

[Keenen]

Yeah, I tried your exact settings. Unfortunately mines doesn't look good with that profile, keen to hear others who have tried it out though. Might be just me.

I found it looks great if I turn up the vibrancy in nvidia to 70. Color looks the same as my 29” lg ultra wide


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[johnny_h]

Damn, sorry man. I can try creating another file tomorrow morning again as well just in case

 

[Theo Lubbe]

It's funny, I actually wrote up an over9000 word post on calibrating your monitors both by eye and using a colorimeter/spectrometer, but then figured it'd be entirely too wordy and so snubbed it without bothering to save it... But I'm gonna cover at least a few things here for now.

So what you're seeing here is actually a kinda-bad result, suggesting to me that something was possibly wrong with your OS settings, driver-borne image settings, monitor settings or DisplayCal settings.

The left group, Gamut Coverage, is what the monitor ended up calibrating to. The right are the theoretical maximum gamut volume (that is, think of a 2L container as the 'volume' and the 'coverage' being how much liquid you were able to fill that container with). However, the /maximum/ deviation being less than DeltaE 1.0 is very good; that means while the monitor's coverage and volume are both not 'full' for the sRGB spectrum (the primary spectrum almost all PC content you will consume is 'mastered' for and software typically attemps to display within), at least the representations of the hues and shades will be accurate. A 'dull' image isn't nearly as bad as an 'off-hue' image; seeing things which are meant to be violet as blue as example, or orange as yellow or worse, brown, can completely ruin one's experience of a variety of media.

Personally, I don't consider any modern monitor to have a half-way decent panel unless it can attain at least 80% Adobe RGB coverage and in excess of 95% sRGB coverage. Ideally, the volume of both would be at least 85% and 105%, respectively.

Here is my Samsung P2450H, which has a thoroughly-aged backlight and was manufactured in 2009, as example:

Notice it has a large maximum deviation; in this monitor's case, that deviation is primarily in very dark blue areas, which comes down to the panel and backlighting combination in use.

Unfortunately I went and deleted my 25UM58-P's result's screenshot and the ICC profile since I haven't been using the monitor in many months now, so don't have a third example; but the last calibration I did on that had around 99%/83%/87% sRGB, AdobeRGB and DCI P3 coverage.

DCI P3, by the way, is a gamut originally developed for 'digital video', and is the gamut some modern non-HDR panels are being made to conform to. It covers the entirety of sRGB, it simply stretches for more coverage in a different 'direction' than Adobe RGB does: How do P3 displays affect your workflow? - CreativePro.com - it's not a gamut I would necessarily recommend specifically trying to calibration for, however.

Anyway, on to what you should be doing when calibrating your monitors with DisplayCal.

First and foremost, the most important things you're going to want to do are ensure there is NOTHING dynamically nor statically adjusting ANY aspect of the displayed picture on any level. This means you want to ensure you:

* Disable/revert any and all colour/brightness/contrast-related settings you've made in your graphics display driver and/or GeForce Experience or Adrenalin software
* Ensure your driver is outputting FULL colour range (0-255) (this is available as an option only when connecting via HDMI or DisplayPort, typically) - if the choice between 'TV' and 'PC' is also/alternatively available, select 'PC'
* Disable ANY form of black level compensation in drivers (if present) AND on the monitor. The HDR functionality of the monitor may very well make use of software processing rather than being 'true' HDR, so disable the HDR mode for calibration
* Brightness and Contrast should be at the monitor's defaults, as should the RGB values
* Ensure Night Light in Windows is disabled and/or will not be turning on or off mid-calibration
* If there are 'gamma' options on the monitor and one of them is 'off', put it on that. If they are simply titled 'mode', then after ensuring nothing is adjusting the image, open this chart and fill the screen with it, then compare the different 'modes' and find one which has the most consistent change going from darkest to brightest; you don't want the left nor right side to seem like it has a 'quicker' change between bright or dark than the opposite end:

Next, you want to ensure the function of your brightness and contrast sliders. Fill your screen with a black image and turn off all lights in your room you can; you essentially want to be able to see nothing but your monitor's backlight bleed; your eyes may/may not take a while to adjust to the darkness for you to notice it.

Now adjust the brightness slider down from what's presumably a default of 100 and try to ascertain whether the backlight is dimming or not. If it doesn't seem to be getting dimmer, change the brightness back to default and adjust the contrast slider instead. Note on which of the two it gets darker (it should be on Brightness) and reset to default.

In DisplayCal, on the 'display & instrument' page you want to select 'auto' under correction, optionally enable the white/black level drift compensation options (shouldn't be necessary, will increase calibration time but if you can stand leaving the monitor alone for a few hours it may be worth using them). On the calibration page you want to choose 'interactive display adjustment', whitepoint as 'colour temperature' of 6500K (if you can't achieve 6500K with an acceptable brightness and leveled RGB values, incrementally tune it back 500K at a time - the lower the number, the more 'yellow', or 'warmer', your calibration will end up having to be), white level to 'as measured', tone curve of 'gamma 2.2' and calibration speed of medium.

For general use in a well-lit room you want a brightness of at least 120cdm2. Calibrating to a specific brightness isn't really necessary unless you're trying to match apparent image brightness between different environments; remember that your resulting ICC profile is going to be for a specific brightness level at the time of calibration. As such, if someone else tries to use the same profile at a different brightness, they will inherently have a different experience of it than you did; this applies doubly-so if their viewing environment's colour temperature/brightness is different to yours.

But I digress. Put some imagery on your screen which represents what you'll most-typically look at and adjust whichever 'brightness' slider changed your backlight level until the image has a comfortable brightness for you. Now start the calibration in DisplayCal.

It will tell you what your starting brightness is and this will be the 'measured' point to which you are going to be trying to adjust your RGB values. As you adjust any one of these values down there will typically be a corresponding drop in the brightness measured.

Note that on many monitors, adjusting the numbers up from where they started (if a value like 50 between 0 and 100) will actually clip and not increase the actual brightness of that value. If you want to check this, load up this image:

While adjusting one of the RGB sliders, look at the stepped gradients of the corresponding colour. If while adjusting it up several different steps seem to become closer to the same colour, that means that value is clipping and the difference between the colours is, obviously, reducing; this is bad, as it means you're reducing the available volume of gamut. On some monitors, adjusting these sliders to their minimums will completely remove that colour. This would indicate a similarly-bad problem, because what's happening here is colour information is being removed from the image to be displayed; this also means you're reducing coverage. If this happens it means you may not actually be able to use those sliders for adjusting the RGB values of the monitor for calibration purposes; they may linearly do this throughout the entire available range or there may be a specific point at which it begins happening, I don't have the monitor yet so I can't determine this for you.

Anyway, if it doesn't and it simply makes the relevant colour appear 'darker', that's precisely what you want, as the intensity of that portion of the signal is simply being modified. Proceed to adjust your RGB values to get them centered in Displaycal, then tune your brightness back to where you wanted it to be (if the change was significant), and continually shuffle the RGB sliders and brightness till you match everything up.

Once they're all spot on, tell it to start calibrating and go do something else for the next few hours.

AFTER the calibration has completed, THIS is when you can start messing with vibrance adjustments in programs and games.

The entire point of the calibration of the monitor is to ensure that, if the computer had told the monitor to display a RGB value of 128,128,128, it would display as that, not as 140,128,109. In this way, if you look at a product photo like that of a car online and you don't have your driver doing funky things to your colours like boosting vibrance or w/e (and honestly, if sRGB volume and coverage on the thing were close to or exceed 100%, you shouldn't realistically WANT to increase vibrance for 'general use'), what you see in the product photo is supposed to be what you'd get colour-wise, since car manufacturers are particular about their cars looking in photos as they do in person.

If I've missed something or something isn't clear, let me know and I'll try to add/clarify as necessary.


Edit: an important note about calibration; if it was done correctly, then putting one monitor next to another may make either monitor look like it's significantly more blue/yellow or even green or magenta than the monitor it's being compared to. This has to do with how your brain adjusts to the colours you see. This is an important article to read on the matter; ultimately if you've got a colour-calibrated monitor then you shouldn't feel "oh no, this one looks terrible compared to the rest", but instead "the rest are not displaying things correctly".

Because if you were to view the lot in 'direct sunlight' (assuming their images were all bright enough to compete with unshaded daylight), only the calibrated monitor's whites would actually be and appear white while the other monitors' would appear tinted. So, rather try to get all your other displays colour-matched to your calibrated monitor, or accept that you're going to have inaccurate colours on all of them if you try to colour-match the monitor you would have otherwise calibrated objectively with hardware, 'subjectively, by eye' instead.

TL;DR this version is shorter than what I threw away and more to the point, even - sorry.

Edit edit, this is the result of a 425-patch calibration with white/black drift compensation enabled, and allowing for an extra 3h on top of what's usually a 1h40min calibration:
Edit edit edit: also note the 'D5000' in the filename, which implies I calibrated at 5000K instead of 6500K. My monitor can't produce enough 'blue' from its backlight to calibrate to 6500K anymore. Considering how dim the calibration ends up (around 75cdm2) I have to use it in a darkened room in which the lighting is 6000-6500K anyway, so it 'looks' correct, at least. I wouldn't be able to continue using this monitor for working on photos anymore, though, as what I see on the screen would look very different to the same image printed out and held next to it, colour temperature wise.

I don't know whether this is affecting anyone else, but recently my DisplayCal profile loader doesn't seem to be able to make the profile 'stick'. Remedied easily by doing:
1. open start menu
2. 'advanced color' (click monitor with colourful thing in it and page with colorful thing on it)
3. enable 'use my settings'
4. 'add'
5. from the list, select the profile DisplayCal had created
6. click 'ok'
7. click 'close'

 

[EmileS]

Alright guys, I rented a calibrator from X-rite i1Display Pro and used DisplayCAL—Display Calibration and Characterization powered by ArgyllCMS to calibrate my monitor. It only cost R200 for the day.

If anybody wants to rent it from them, I can recommend them. The guy who runs it is pretty friendly and helpful.
The only thing is his site requires you to upload a copy of your ID and proof of residence (I used a 5 month old one so that it can't be used to open accounts, just in case) and the site doesn't have SSL so I uploaded a picture saying that I can provide the identification docs another way and he let me share it via a Google Drive link.

I picked it up today and started calibrating all my screens.

I factory reset my monitor which it defaulted to:
Brightness: 80
Contrast: 50
Black Level: 50
Eco: Standard
DCR: Off

I then set color temp to User and altered the RGB values to these until I got as close to what DisplayCal said were correct:
Red: 44
Green: 42
Blue: 45

You should set your monitor to pretty much the same as above, then use the icm file below.

Then went through the calibration process and got the following files: calibrations – Google Drive
You can install the ICM file it through Windows or DisplayCal.
The zip file is just the full settings from DisplayCal, but I don't think you need em. I uploaded em just in case.

Let me know if it works for you guys too

Good job man!
Did you enable HDR mode?

 

[johnny_h]

Good job man!
Did you enable HDR mode?

Thanks, and unfortunately not. I'm not sure what's required to calibrate a monitor in HDR mode.
And sadly I cannot try any other calibrations as I've packed up the monitor for shipping(already sold it).

But I'm very keen to see what @Theo Lubbe manages to do when he get his, I suspect you guys will get some really good configs and profiles😁

 

[EmileS]

Alright guys, I rented a calibrator from X-rite i1Display Pro and used DisplayCAL—Display Calibration and Characterization powered by ArgyllCMS to calibrate my monitor. It only cost R200 for the day.

If anybody wants to rent it from them, I can recommend them. The guy who runs it is pretty friendly and helpful.
The only thing is his site requires you to upload a copy of your ID and proof of residence (I used a 5 month old one so that it can't be used to open accounts, just in case) and the site doesn't have SSL so I uploaded a picture saying that I can provide the identification docs another way and he let me share it via a Google Drive link.

I picked it up today and started calibrating all my screens.

I factory reset my monitor which it defaulted to:
Brightness: 80
Contrast: 50
Black Level: 50
Eco: Standard
DCR: Off

I then set color temp to User and altered the RGB values to these until I got as close to what DisplayCal said were correct:
Red: 44
Green: 42
Blue: 45

You should set your monitor to pretty much the same as above, then use the icm file below.

Then went through the calibration process and got the following files: calibrations – Google Drive
You can install the ICM file it through Windows or DisplayCal.
The zip file is just the full settings from DisplayCal, but I don't think you need em. I uploaded em just in case.

Let me know if it works for you guys too

I tried installing the ICM file as well. Through right clicking and clicking install, as well as through Windows Colour Management. Made no difference and still looks washed out.
Any ideas?

Edit; I think my Radeon calibration settings did override it, when I turned it off everything looked nice again!

 

[EmileS]

Yeah, I tried your exact settings. Unfortunately mines doesn't look good with that profile, keen to hear others who have tried it out though. Might be just me.

In my case I had pre-existing Radeon settings for colour management. I disabled it and the image looked much better.

 

[EmileS]

HDR mode still makes the monitor look a lot more vibrant. Have to do some tweaking though.

 

[johnny_h]

In my case I had pre-existing Radeon settings for colour management. I disabled it and the image looked much better.

Glad to know! Sorry, I'm new to calibrations and tried to create a profile while I had both the monitor and calibration device.
I'm not sure about the HDR aspect at all, I think that would require a device that does HDR calibration

Regarding the vibrant look, one thing I read was that a well calibrated monitor might not be vibrant as people are used to, that's where things like Nvidia's digital vibrance can help make things more colorful

 

[Theo Lubbe]

Glad to know! Sorry, I'm new to calibrations and tried to create a profile while I had both the monitor and calibration device.
I'm not sure about the HDR aspect at all, I think that would require a device that does HDR calibration

Regarding the vibrant look, one thing I read was that a well calibrated monitor might not be vibrant as people are used to, that's where things like Nvidia's digital vibrance can help make things more colorful

Strictly speaking, one doesn't precisely need anything 'special' to calibrate for a 'super-wide gamut', just a colorimeter/spectrometer which can deal with the extreme differences not previously 'a thing' for monitors.

The big problem comes in at precisely how a monitor is 'doing' HDR though. There are monitors at the bottom end of the spectrum, particularly ones which don't have certification but claim to be HDR-capable, which aren't doing 'real' HDR; they're simply accepting the wider-gamut image signal and then trying to compress it into the capabilities of the panel using an integrated, probably non-user-customizable LUT (Look-Up Table - see Eizo article linked two paragraphs down)

This is one of the reasons you'll so readily see clipping of highlights on monitors like this one (well, presumably, I haven't played with it yet)/the one on the Linus Tech Tips video; because the capability probably isn't actually there in the monitor's panel in the first place, it might not even REALLY exist in the controller. Worse, often the ones configuring the monitors won't necessarily ensure the LUT in use works within the constraints of the panel in use. It might actually have been configured for a completely different panel which had a wider gamut and contrast range. Just look at the problem we have of this 27" monitor reporting it's using a 23.6" panel instead, as an example of things not being configured to a T before releasing the product.

This is in part why I want to know what controller we're working with, because we just might be able to flash a better firmware onto the things to give us access to functionality otherwise hidden from the user, which just might include the ability for the monitor's LUT to be adjusted. Super unlikely, but one never knows... One doesn't HAVE to create a custom LUT for the monitor's controller, you can get by with running an ICC profile instead, but the ICC profile method requires you load that on the target computer/device. This automatically means a monitor like this can't be 'calibrated' for use on consoles as example to produce as-good an image as it could on a PC since they don't let you load ICC profiles (yet).

This article gives a very laymans explanation of how 'HDR' in the context of monitors is different from 'SDR'. The key takeaway should be that for HDR to be done, you inherently need a higher bit-depth for the image signal, controller and panel. Most monitors are 8-bit; either 'true' 8-bit, or 6+2bit. Eizo have a great article explaining those here.

Generally speaking, until recently to get a monitor with a true 10-bit controller AND panel involved spending north of R9k for even a 24" almost as a rule. The cheapest currently available AdobeRGB 95%+ (thus, wide-gamut, which is what HDR also is as a rule albeit with a substantially-higher potential contrast ratio in the way of difference between darkest and brightest display 'luminance intensities) that I know of in South Africa is the ~R9k Dell Ultraderp UP2716D; a 60Hz, 2560x1440, 27" affair.

Granted, cost-increasing qualities of the display include that it has multiple displayport and HDMI inputs as well as integrated speakers and a USB 3.0 hub - as well as a tilty-swivelly-pivoty height-adjustable stand. Even if you discounted all of these factors though it would cost at the bare minimum R7k in realistic terms.

Notice how despite its price it doesn't have Freesync nor HDR; in fairness, it was introduced when these things were still in their infancy and it's billed first and foremost as a professional content-creation display, not a gaming or multimedia one, but still - price be up there yo. Despite having a gorillian more displayable colours than the 'HDR' monitor we're looking at here, it lacks the ability to display as-wide a contrast ratio - if it is truly a 'HDR' monitor though, it is supposed to still fall within the category of 'wide gamut'.

Until we know whether the widening of the gamut is because of 'accepting and displaying as received' a higher bit-depth image signal (along withwidened luminosity info) or by accepting a wider signal and interpolating the data to fit within the constraints of a standard-gamut panel, calibrating with HDR off is the more appropriate route. One can hope that, from there, games, the OS and software in general will continue to honour the ICC profile and 'upscale' it as necessary, and that the monitor will not decide to disregard the custom settings configured on it for the 'calibrated' profile.

All this said, this is going to be my first time calibrating a monitor which identifies itself as 'HDR', and my colorimeter is old and wasn't even made with the intention of being used on 'LCD' displays beyond the CCFL-backlit TN sort... So the results I end up with may be unusable anyway. Will see when I get mine.

Nog net 5 slaapies.

Edit: Oh, and yes, many people are used to over-saturated images, not 'balanced' imagery; so a calibrated monitor may to this sort of person seem like its image is 'dull'. Not because it is —in reality it's as true a representation as you could hope to get out of the monitor to what the designers of w/e you're watching intended for it, as well as 'reality' when looking at videos or photos before they're 'mastered'— but because people are used to televisions which have by-default cranked saturation/vibrance settings, or games/shows which may be made to be gaudy in general (Borderlands Series as example).

Cranking vibrance/saturation in the Nvidia and AMD drivers almost invariably results in compression of displayed colour ranges though (remember I talked about different colours starting to look the same in my last wall of text? Same principle, different angle of attack)

 

[aiccc]

FYI

Our work buyer arranged to buy 10 of the 27 inch monitors at R2999 each, delivered to work. We got them yesterday.

So you can still get it at the price.

 

[PrivatePublic]

I am by no means an expert, but I I've been messing with the colour settings on a 24 inch until I was happy with them. These are the values I ended up using:

Settings on the monitor:
Brightness: 98
Contrast: 40
Black Level: 50

Red: 50
Green: 45
Blue: 45

HDR: Off
Freesync: On


Settings in NVIDIA control panel under "Adjust Desktop Colour settings":
Brightness: +40%
Contrast: +65%
Gamma: +0.92

Digital vibrance: +65%

 

[bythecantloads]

Anybody been having difficulties with using these with DisplayPort?

HDMI is working 100%, however when either of my 27" is plugged in through DP, it would at random intervals drop signal. The same happens when using a DVI to HDMI cable.

I have resorted to using on-board HDMI for my secondary screen as my GPU only has one HDMI out.

 

[SoulStorm]

Anybody been having difficulties with using these with DisplayPort?

HDMI is working 100%, however when either of my 27" is plugged in through DP, it would at random intervals drop signal. The same happens when using a DVI to HDMI cable.

I have resorted to using on-board HDMI for my secondary screen as my GPU only has one HDMI out.

No issues on my side, both ports working fine.

 

[aiccc]

Yes. The cable makes a huge difference.

I finally sourced some good quality hdmi and dp cables. The monitor now works correctly on DP and HDMI.

The supplied cables appear to be of varying specs. some worked fine for people and others had issues.

 

[Theo Lubbe]

For giggles the first time calibratinag, I tried a HDR in Windows on, HDR on monitor on(?) run which took 5h30min only to receive an absolute garbage result (super dark image where it started out super bright, and everything had a strange dark teal/navy-blue hue to it)

Thereafter I did two more semi-proper (2-hour) calibration runs which, while both provided for determining the monitor does in fact have a pretty wide gamut, didn't provide usable profiles (they were better than stock, but the first suffered from a pink hue and huge deviations throughout most of the tontal/colour ranges, while the latter lacked the pink hue but still deviated heavily)

Anyway, my initial findings about the monitor are that:

* With MONITOR HDR setting OFF, WINDOWS HDR setting OFF, the RGB values max at 50, after which they do not adjust colour intensity nor luminance anymore and begin very gradually 'banding' from mid-tones outward. This combination has the lowest peak luminance
* With MONITOR HDR setting ON, WINDOWS HDR setting ON, the RGB values max at 65, luminance peaks, banding occurs incredibly rapidly starting primarily from the brightest tones down. This combo provides mid peak luminance #
* With MONITOR HDR setting OFF, WINDOWS HDR setting ON, the RGB values max at 85, this combo provides the highest peak luminance ##

#, ## These are when the RGB values are tuned for the whitepoint to be correct before attempting to calibrate. The ABSOLUTE maximum luminance I got out of my monitor has been over 230cdm/2 according to my Spyder2, which is pretty bright but still far short of the 400cdm/2 necessary for HDR400 certification; it's also extremely unlikely that we're dealing with a locally-dimming monitor, so whatever the case we shouldn't expect the HDR mode to be particularly good relative to a certified unit anyway. On the bright (haha) side, even at the aforementioned 230cdm/2 I can still get a black level below 0.5cdm/2, which means the contrast of this monitor for its price is insanely good.

* Brightness controls backlight brightness non-linearly, there is a difference at all points in its range, though the difference going above 80 isn't as significant as dropping from 80
* Contrast adjusts contrast, peaks at roughly 85 before clipping/banding is introduced, 45 before it washes tonal values out. 50-80 seems to be a safe range to play within where making an image less garish post-calibration is concerned
* Black level adjusts total gamma but ALSO influences backlight level a bit. I do not recommend changing this at all from its default 50 value. Increasing it brings up the minimum black output (so even if a true-black is sent to the monitor, it will output it as a gray instead) while turning it down pulls back the maximum white output (so even if a true-white is sent, it will again make it gray)


* The monitor itself does seem to have a wide'ish-gamut panel installed. If nothing else, it seems it can cover almost the entirety of the BT.2020 colour space, which is essentially the same thing as the below-mentioned SMPTE ST 2084 where gamut is concerned. Whether it can actually accurately calibrate to that range remains to be seen
* The HDR modes on the monitor (AUTO and 2084 [latter which corresponds to SMPTE ST 2084 (PQ)) both, as suspected, use a built-in LUT which presumably aren't directly user-modifiable in this firmware. Whether they are any good or are trash I won't know because I don't know how to measure them properly just yet; what I can say is the AUTO setting most definitely DYNAMICALLY adjusts the picture based both on whether software is causing an HDR signal to be sent to the monitor (or not) and will also seemingly tackle non-HDR content at its own discretion - this is BAD, because it means it doesn't truly care what the input signal is and will instead look at the picture coming to the controller and screw with it, even if it's a fully-SDR signal, which will cause luminance values to be different to what the design intent for the content was (something like a piece of paper which is simply meant to look white could instead turn into a miniature sun while an actual light source could have the same sort of luminance level, which is not what you want - you want the paper to just look white but be as bright as its surroundings while the actual light-source should obviously be brighter). It also means you can't calibrate the monitor for whatever LUT the 'auto' mode uses at all since the values will constantly change based on whatever criteria the developers of that chose for it
* With the included HDMI cable, 60Hz causes the monitor to identify as accepting a 12-bit input. It's extremely unlikely this means anything of significance as the panel almost certainly doesn't allow for more than 10-bit input/gamut in reality
* Setting the monitor to 100Hz (unavailable if Windows' HDR is turned ON for some reason) causes the monitor to identify as running at 10-bit
* Setting the monitor to 120/144Hz (with Windows' HDR OFF) causes it to identify as 8-bit with RGB 4:4:4
* Setting the monitor to 120/144Hz (with Windows' HDR ON) causes it to identfiy as 8-bit with dithering with RGB 4:4:4 - this should still be fine for HDR use seeing as we're not dealing with a certifiable panel anyway, so it's not like we're necessarily losing information on the signal side the panel wouldn't have been able to display anyway

* In CRU the maximum luminance value for the monitor is set to 98. I still need to go find out what this means, but it may be something which could be tuned to improve the monitor's rendition of HDR content

Overall the panel and firmware/controller seem to actually be pretty decent. Resolution-wise I'm having trouble fiddling with that as for some reason my Windows is crashing on every other time I 'restart' the driver and monitors. I'll just wait until I have a DP 1.4 cable before I mess with that further since doing this on HDMI which I don't intend on using long-term is kind of pointless. The below calibration result is for the unusable profile.

Basically what the take-away should be is that the monitor from a technical perspective potentially has a pretty wide gamut to work with for multimedia purposes (standard sRGB and/or consuming [not mastering] entry-level HDR content), as well as a great contrast ratio for the price and feature combination overall.

As for the power supply; I haven't cracked mine open but can almost guarantee based on it being 12V 4.0A and its weight that it's a switch-mode unit, not a transformer-based one. Mine is getting fairly warm, I can't see it being safe to use mine in my room during the height of summer without it being actively cooled. If you're confident you're going to be keeping yours for the long-term, popping the casing open and heatsinking the relevant transistors/mosfets, maybe including a low-power 12v DC fan patched into the thing's output, would make it safe for long-term use and should see it last a few years without problems. The included kettle cord is definitely worthless for it though, it doesn't seat securely and should be replaced before using the monitor to prevent arcing -> spikes -> damaging the power supply unit -> potentially causing a house fire.

I turned mine upside down and put an old Zalman CNPS7700Cu heatsink (without fan) on it; the power supply seems to remain reasonably cool that way.

The heat coming off the monitor is quite normal, especially if folks were concerned about the heat they were feeling around the edges; since it has a metal trim around the outside edge, it seems this serves as a kind of heat-sink for the edge lighting, so what you're feeling is basically said edge lighting's heat.

I'm probably going to give mine a few months' use to feel confident it's not about to just spontaneously die on me before I crack it open to check part numbers.

Report of the above calibration, showing it's unusable, also some other technical information about it: Measurement Report 3.8.9.3 — Gaming 27 @ 1920, 0, 1920x1080 — 2020-06-21 10-18.html

I'll be doing more calibration runs through the week when I go to sleep, and 'verifying' Jonny's profile to see what its actual accuracy was (or at least is for my unit in particular).

 

[Theo Lubbe]

Oh, another quirk to note for anyone also attempting to calibrate their monitor OR adjusting their on-monitor colours while either the auto or 2084 HDR modes are enabled; while you can still adjust your RGB values on the monitor, enabling the HDR modes OR turning your monitor off and back on will cause it to load some or other preset of colour. Going back to your RGB values (which will still read what you set them to) and adjusting any one of them up or down however seems to re-load one's own RGB values.

NB: When I say 'HDR On' for the monitor, I mean the 2084 selection, seeing as the Auto one is inconsistent.

 

[EmileS]

Oh, another quirk to note for anyone also attempting to calibrate their monitor OR adjusting their on-monitor colours while either the auto or 2084 HDR modes are enabled; while you can still adjust your RGB values on the monitor, enabling the HDR modes OR turning your monitor off and back on will cause it to load some or other preset of colour. Going back to your RGB values (which will still read what you set them to) and adjusting any one of them up or down however seems to re-load one's own RGB values.

NB: When I say 'HDR On' for the monitor, I mean the 2084 selection, seeing as the Auto one is inconsistent.

Great stuff man! So you haven't found a suitable quality setting yet?

 

[Theo Lubbe]

Great stuff man! So you haven't found a suitable quality setting yet?

Not yet. I let a run go today while I was at work, on over 4000 patches, and got this for a result:

With rather-excellent accuracy/consistency, to boot:

Measurement Report 3.8.9.3 — Gaming 27 @ 1920, 0, 1920x1080 — 2020-06-23 20-42.html

drive.google.com

But for some reason, even after recompiling it from the measurement data, it simply refuses to activate. The strange thing is I can 'preview' it via DisplayCal just fine, but it won't actually install as an available/usable profile in Windows... Here it is anyway if someone else wants to give it a bash. Even without the profile running, white balance should be fixed for 6500K rather'n the tinted image the thing has out of the box.

Note the filename contains the colour temperature (6500K in this case) the profile is for, and acronyms and values for the requisite display settings. Ergo B(rightness) C(ontrast) BL(ack Level) R(ed) G(reen) B(lue) - for this profile in particular, B100 C80 BL50 R48 G40 B42

Here's the profile (zipped as DisplayCal dumped the files) for whoever wants to try it and see if it works. I'm going to redo the calibration again when I go to sleep, hopefully wake up to one I can actually install... other profiles are installing fine, it's just this one which isn't, so I don't know... I'll also do a 5000K one at some point for those who may prefer an overall warmer image; though know 5000K isn't 'right' for HDR use, particularly not if you're playing in a room lit by daylight.

Xceed 27i 6500K B100 C80 BL50 R48 G40 B42.7z

drive.google.com

If you want to use the same profile with the 2084 HDR mode
* Enable HDR in windows
* Enable the 2084 HDR mode on the monitor (remember turning the monitor off/letting it go into standby etc will require this next step be repeated)
* Go to your RGB settings and turn any one of the RGB values up and down again

By my understanding, enabling HDR in Windows should NOT be necessary for a game to properly communicate an HDR 'signal' to the monitor, so you shouldn't actually need to go separately enable HDR in Windows' settings. For The Division 2 as far as I can tell this is the case. In this case, all you'd need to do is enable it on the monitor and change the RGB values to match the profile's white point.

On the monitor itself the RGB values for HDR for use with this profile (I haven't 'verified' it yet, I don't have time tonight and the results are bound to be completely screwy since HDR changes a lot about the image) R60 G54 B55. This gives a near-correct (0.9 deviation) white point for the profile in Displaycal.

The only HDR-capable game I've tried the monitor with so far is The Division 2, and imo it looks substantially more realistic with this combination of profile and monitor shenanigans. In the game I've got the peak brightness and menu brightness all the way to their minimums, to reduce clipping; the monitor's settings are also chosen to minimize clipping, though there is a huge difference between the luminosity it ends up displaying vs what the monitor could theoretically reach.

Here is a 'consistent' scene in the game with HDR (ignore the blurriness, I wanted to avoid the camera moire and was overzealous in focusing my camera). The exposure on my camera is identical between the photos and the measured whitepoint brightness in Displaycal in the non-HDR scenario is 140cdm/2 while in the HDR scenario is 143cdm/2.

Here is the same scene with HDR off and the monitor set for the ICC profile.

I really hope I'll at some point uncover a way to modify the monitor's built-in 2084 LUT so the thing can stop screwing unnecessarily with colours etc, and the HDR mode can be utilized with confidence and consistent results, without one having to fiddle with anything anywhere beyond turning the feature on...

 

[Skylark]

Not yet. I let a run go today while I was at work, on over 4000 patches, and got this for a result:

With rather-excellent accuracy/consistency, to boot:

Measurement Report 3.8.9.3 — Gaming 27 @ 1920, 0, 1920x1080 — 2020-06-23 20-42.html

drive.google.com

But for some reason, even after recompiling it from the measurement data, it simply refuses to activate. The strange thing is I can 'preview' it via DisplayCal just fine, but it won't actually install as an available/usable profile in Windows... Here it is anyway if someone else wants to give it a bash. Even without the profile running, white balance should be fixed for 6500K rather'n the tinted image the thing has out of the box.

Note the filename contains the colour temperature (6500K in this case) the profile is for, and acronyms and values for the requisite display settings. Ergo B(rightness) C(ontrast) BL(ack Level) R(ed) G(reen) B(lue) - for this profile in particular, B100 C80 BL50 R48 G40 B42

Here's the profile (zipped as DisplayCal dumped the files) for whoever wants to try it and see if it works. I'm going to redo the calibration again when I go to sleep, hopefully wake up to one I can actually install... other profiles are installing fine, it's just this one which isn't, so I don't know... I'll also do a 5000K one at some point for those who may prefer an overall warmer image; though know 5000K isn't 'right' for HDR use, particularly not if you're playing in a room lit by daylight.

Xceed 27i 6500K B100 C80 BL50 R48 G40 B42.7z

drive.google.com

If you want to use the same profile with the 2084 HDR mode
* Enable HDR in windows
* Enable the 2084 HDR mode on the monitor (remember turning the monitor off/letting it go into standby etc will require this next step be repeated)
* Go to your RGB settings and turn any one of the RGB values up and down again

By my understanding, enabling HDR in Windows should NOT be necessary for a game to properly communicate an HDR 'signal' to the monitor, so you shouldn't actually need to go separately enable HDR in Windows' settings. For The Division 2 as far as I can tell this is the case. In this case, all you'd need to do is enable it on the monitor and change the RGB values to match the profile's white point.

On the monitor itself the RGB values for HDR for use with this profile (I haven't 'verified' it yet, I don't have time tonight and the results are bound to be completely screwy since HDR changes a lot about the image) R60 G54 B55. This gives a near-correct (0.9 deviation) white point for the profile in Displaycal.

The only HDR-capable game I've tried the monitor with so far is The Division 2, and imo it looks substantially more realistic with this combination of profile and monitor shenanigans. In the game I've got the peak brightness and menu brightness all the way to their minimums, to reduce clipping; the monitor's settings are also chosen to minimize clipping, though there is a huge difference between the luminosity it ends up displaying vs what the monitor could theoretically reach.

Here is a 'consistent' scene in the game with HDR (ignore the blurriness, I wanted to avoid the camera moire and was overzealous in focusing my camera). The exposure on my camera is identical between the photos and the measured whitepoint brightness in Displaycal in the non-HDR scenario is 140cdm/2 while in the HDR scenario is 143cdm/2.

Here is the same scene with HDR off and the monitor set for the ICC profile.

I really hope I'll at some point uncover a way to modify the monitor's built-in 2084 LUT so the thing can stop screwing unnecessarily with colours etc, and the HDR mode can be utilized with confidence and consistent results, without one having to fiddle with anything anywhere beyond turning the feature on...

That gamut ratio and range is very common with many IPS panels, what panel type is the Xceed using?

 

[Skylark]

My experience with IPS panels was to get the highest gamut you have to select the factory mode with the highest gamut.

Probably HDR mode with the Xceed and then calibrate the screen in that mode and stay in that mode from then on.

You can calibrate it either with the internal LUTS via hardware, mine was via the service menu of the screen and set via the screens hardware buttons, or all in the OS. Not many screens seem to give you access to the hardware LUTS unless you pay a serious amount of money.

 

[Theo Lubbe]

My experience with IPS panels was to get the highest gamut you have to select the factory mode with the highest gamut.

Probably HDR mode with the Xceed and then calibrate the screen in that mode and stay in that mode from then on.

You can calibrate it either with the internal LUTS via hardware, mine was via the service menu of the screen and set via the screens hardware buttons, or all in the OS. Not many screens seem to give you access to the hardware LUTS unless you pay a serious amount of money.

Not sure what panel type it's using, personally. Supposedly it's a IPS-like AH-VA, but I don't know for sure. Using this page's chart: Creative tools for Creative mind the result I get points to S-PVA, with a green tint to the display. I haven't tried doing a calibration run with a correction for a PVA type display yet, so that'll be today's, along with doing it at 100Hz which exposes 10-bit without having to enable HDR in Windows. For some reason, today I retain access to 100Hz when enabling HDR mode in Windows...

I forgot about the service menu and just popped mine open now, see it allows for fine tuning of the color values there where the OSD's gives pretty big jumps between values (requiring the red value as example be set to 46-48 as opposed to being able to leave it at 50), will be interesting to fiddle with this later and see how it 'translates' to what the OSD does (if there's any difference at all). It may be that it could be used to pre-define the SDR and HDR colour values for an ICC profile in the 'warm' and 'cool' colour profiles, which would make changing between the two much simpler.

This seems to be the controller board in the monitor according to the service menu (haven't opened my monitor, can't confirm)

I wonder whether one couldn't install a better controller which allows for more control over the panel/backlighting etc. I don't know much about doing this at all though...

I got a near-identical repeated calibration result to the last one, but once again can't install it (over 2k patches this time). I thought it might have been because I messed with the HDR attributes in the monitor's EDID, so I loaded in the base configuration bin (here, for whoever might need it). Beginning to think it might be because I've still got DisplayCal on 'advanced' mode even though I'm currently using no funky settings it exposes, so I'll be trying it again while at work today, hopefully finally come home to one I can 'install'...

Trying to calibrate in HDR mode is so far proving disastrous; at least, has done when trying to do so with both Windows' HDR and the display's HDR modes enabled (though I'm uncertain whether Windows' setting influences the test patches from DisplayCal or if the software bypasses it somehow)

 

[EmileS]

Not sure what panel type it's using, personally. Supposedly it's a IPS-like AH-VA, but I don't know for sure. Using this page's chart: Creative tools for Creative mind the result I get points to S-PVA, with a green tint to the display. I haven't tried doing a calibration run with a correction for a PVA type display yet, so that'll be today's, along with doing it at 100Hz which exposes 10-bit without having to enable HDR in Windows. For some reason, today I retain access to 100Hz when enabling HDR mode in Windows...

I forgot about the service menu and just popped mine open now, see it allows for fine tuning of the color values there where the OSD's gives pretty big jumps between values (requiring the red value as example be set to 46-48 as opposed to being able to leave it at 50), will be interesting to fiddle with this later and see how it 'translates' to what the OSD does (if there's any difference at all). It may be that it could be used to pre-define the SDR and HDR colour values for an ICC profile in the 'warm' and 'cool' colour profiles, which would make changing between the two much simpler.

This seems to be the controller board in the monitor according to the service menu (haven't opened my monitor, can't confirm)

I wonder whether one couldn't install a better controller which allows for more control over the panel/backlighting etc. I don't know much about doing this at all though...

I got a near-identical repeated calibration result to the last one, but once again can't install it (over 2k patches this time). I thought it might have been because I messed with the HDR attributes in the monitor's EDID, so I loaded in the base configuration bin (here, for whoever might need it). Beginning to think it might be because I've still got DisplayCal on 'advanced' mode even though I'm currently using no funky settings it exposes, so I'll be trying it again while at work today, hopefully finally come home to one I can 'install'...

Trying to calibrate in HDR mode is so far proving disastrous; at least, has done when trying to do so with both Windows' HDR and the display's HDR modes enabled (though I'm uncertain whether Windows' setting influences the test patches from DisplayCal or if the software bypasses it somehow)

What should happen if you calibrate with Windows HDR off and Screen HDR on? Colours would look too wonky?

 

[Andrew_Smith]

Anybody been having difficulties with using these with DisplayPort?

HDMI is working 100%, however when either of my 27" is plugged in through DP, it would at random intervals drop signal. The same happens when using a DVI to HDMI cable.

I have resorted to using on-board HDMI for my secondary screen as my GPU only has one HDMI out.

No issues my side with DP. Warzone is crazy smooth with no intervals drops or losing signal at 144Hz.

 

[Skylark]

I'd get the the calibration as close as possible using the OSD and then do the final calibration via software.

 

[Theo Lubbe]

I'd get the the calibration as close as possible using the OSD and then do the final calibration via software.

Yeah, OSD for RGB values and brightness/contrast as pertinent.

Here's the 100Hz '10-bit' (non-HDR) calibration result, done on the provided HDMI cable. From the looks of it, the panel and/or controller may in fact genuinely be able to benefit from the 'extra bits'; which would translate directly over to HDR usage. Which may imply if one is trying to get the best HDR picture, a lower refresh rate inherently needs to be used if the cable or controller in use isn't allowing for an adequate bit depth, and that the 12-bit capability might be more than just text in Windows at the end of the day.

Note, I didn't rename the files this time (and it still doesn't want to install for me, so a graphics driver reinstallation is probably in order...)
[Profile here]
[Verification report here]

B100 C50 BL50 R48 G41 B45

Note that while it has a greater total gamut volume, it covers less of the sRGB space than before, meaning that in terms of actual displayed variations of colours there's less than in the last, 8-bit+dithering calibration (at 144Hz). Having more volume of the AdobeRGB space in this case isn't really relevant seeing as it's exclusively in the direction of green and yellow, not red/magenta/violet/blue/cyan/teal at all, and has less overall coverage than the last profile had (which was a near-complete match at 75'ish% volume, 74'ish% coverage).

Haven't verified @johnny_h's profile yet, having trouble finding the post in the thread where he gave the B/C/RGB values for it.

Tonight's will be a 12-bit run specifically at 6500K and tomorrow a 12-bit run at 5000K, just to see how volume changes (if at all) between the two, as well as what the coverage and accuracy spreads are like. For HDR use though, 5000K remains highly suboptimal since 'daylight' won't look like actual daylight and intead look like 'sunrise/sunset' lighting, which would obviously cause a serious break of immersion for games/films/series - noting that when viewing content with 'real' HDR, the whole purpose is to see a 'more realistic' image and that any discrepencies in lighting thus stand out more readily than they would have otherwise.

Edit: the 12-bit 6500K run ended up turning into a 12-bit 6500K HDR run... It's still gonna take a while😅

Need to figure out a way to block the light from the monitor glaring over my bed while it's calibrating at night, it's wrecking my sleep...

 

[johnny_h]

Haven't verified @johnny_h's profile yet, having trouble finding the post in the thread where he gave the B/C/RGB values for it.

Hi, I had these values set for the profile:

Anybody tried the checkers gaming monitor ? | Tech support & Hardware Advice

How is the power brick on this thing guys? I saw this about the Newsync: "One of the reviews on Newegg said the power brick started melting and he had to get a third party one." Whats the power specs/power brick specs on this? Edit: Ah i see the guys who were having this problem were using...

carbonite.co.za

 

[Theo Lubbe]

12-bit 60Hz run I did last night produced this:

B100 C50 R49 G42 B44

I find it interesting this combination produced such a comparatively-constrained amount of green/yellow volume (though more orange/red in relative terms when comparing 'extents' - though again all four are irrelevant if stretching outside the displayed colorspace).

The '12-bit' HDR run produced abysmal results again, though the coverages went up from the 25%'ish for sRGB and 35%'ish for AdobeRGB to around 70% and 55%(?) respectively. The image was dim and dull though.

A driver reinstallation (utilizing DDU) along with altogether reinstalling DisplayCal and ArgyllCMS, with DisplayCal reverting to defaults in which I changed nothing I hadn't before, still isn't producing profiles I can actually install. The above run was done with 1140 patches; I'll next try one at the 425 I usually went with for my monitor calibrations in the past and see if that's perhaps the 'limiting factor'... If anyone else could try installing one of the ICC profiles I provided and let me know whether it does without a problem, that'd be great. If it does it'll mean I'm dealing with some gremlin besides how the ICC profile is 'built'.

 

[EmileS]

12-bit 60Hz run I did last night produced this:

B100 C50 R49 G42 B44

I find it interesting this combination produced such a comparatively-constrained amount of green/yellow volume (though more orange/red in relative terms when comparing 'extents' - though again all four are irrelevant if stretching outside the displayed colorspace).

The '12-bit' HDR run produced abysmal results again, though the coverages went up from the 25%'ish for sRGB and 35%'ish for AdobeRGB to around 70% and 55%(?) respectively. The image was dim and dull though.

A driver reinstallation (utilizing DDU) along with altogether reinstalling DisplayCal and ArgyllCMS, with DisplayCal reverting to defaults in which I changed nothing I hadn't before, still isn't producing profiles I can actually install. The above run was done with 1140 patches; I'll next try one at the 425 I usually went with for my monitor calibrations in the past and see if that's perhaps the 'limiting factor'... If anyone else could try installing one of the ICC profiles I provided and let me know whether it does without a problem, that'd be great. If it does it'll mean I'm dealing with some gremlin besides how the ICC profile is 'built'.

Which one should I try? Should I enable Windows HDR and default screen settings?

 

[Hopethisisnttaken]

@bythecantloads I've been having the same problem, thought it was my display cable... It played perfectly, suddenly in game it loses signal and comes back.. Used hdmi.. Worked perfectly.
Solution : i turned off freesync on the screen.. Everything works perfectly... Not sure why.
If anyone else has a solution, let us know!