How do I find monitors with good uniformity?

[mia_k]

I've been in the market for a new monitor for a bit, and I am having a lot of trouble finding a good one. I'm willing to spend up to ~$1200CAD and I'm looking for at least 3840x2160, but it seems like most monitors have serious white uniformity issues. I'm only looking at IPS-type panels, so I'm not expecting great black uniformity from any of them. A lot of online reviews only seem to do nine samples of brightness, which miss edge brightness issues. rtings does actually note edge brightness/vignetting but they don't seem to care at all about it.

I've gone through a couple (the Gigabyte M28U, Dell S2721QS and S2720Q). All of them are very noticeably darker right around the edges, and the Dells both had a very noticeable green cast (as well as support so bad I'm very seriously considering never buying Dell products again). They all seemed dimmer than advertised as well. I've given up on finding one with high refresh rate, but I'd still greatly prefer VRR at least. Seems like budget pro-branded monitors might be the best bet? Photography is just fun for me, so I don't need the absolute best accuracy. E.g. the BenQ PD2705U has uniformity options, but it seems like at a serious hit to the already mediocre brightness. It's just very frustrating because I have a ~6 year old Dell 24" IPS with absolutely perfect edge brightness, so how has this gotten worse? I have half a mind to just edit photos on one of those OLED TVs...

 

[Simon Garrett]

How uniform do you need it to be?

I have two monitors in front of me now: a Benq SW271 (definitely mid-range) and an Eizo CS2420 (higher quality). If I put a plain white display on the screen, the Benq is noticeably less uniform in brightness, and with iProfiler I can measure and confirm the difference.

A while ago, I went through a sample of probably 50 plus photos - some with plain areas of sky, for example - but I couldn't see the difference of uniformity on any of that sample between the two monitors.

I guess it depends how sensitive your work is to monitor uniformity, and perhaps the useful test is with images you want to work on, rather than plain colour displays or measurement numbers.

 

[Austinian]

I've been in the market for a new monitor for a bit, and I am having a lot of trouble finding a good one. I'm willing to spend up to ~$1200CAD and I'm looking for at least 3840x2160, but it seems like most monitors have serious white uniformity issues. I'm only looking at IPS-type panels, so I'm not expecting great black uniformity from any of them. A lot of online reviews only seem to do nine samples of brightness, which miss edge brightness issues. rtings does actually note edge brightness/vignetting but they don't seem to care at all about it.

I understand that attitude; I often see and measure nonuniformity on all-white screens, but for me it hasn't been a problem with real-world photos.

On many monitors with uniformity correction; when used it exacts a significant loss of contrast ratio; that particularly bothers me, but if you're mostly printing your images it may not matter to you.

I've gone through a couple (the Gigabyte M28U, Dell S2721QS and S2720Q). All of them are very noticeably darker right around the edges, and the Dells both had a very noticeable green cast (as well as support so bad I'm very seriously considering never buying Dell products again). They all seemed dimmer than advertised as well. I've given up on finding one with high refresh rate, but I'd still greatly prefer VRR at least. Seems like budget pro-branded monitors might be the best bet? Photography is just fun for me, so I don't need the absolute best accuracy. E.g. the BenQ PD2705U has uniformity options, but it seems like at a serious hit to the already mediocre brightness. It's just very frustrating because I have a ~6 year old Dell 24" IPS with absolutely perfect edge brightness, so how has this gotten worse? I have half a mind to just edit photos on one of those OLED TVs...

As far as OLED TVs go, the ones I've looked at appear to have non-standard subpixel designs such as RWBG that can create problems with text sharpness in some cases, as well as the usual burn-in issues. Still, OLED is tempting; I have an OLED screen on a laptop.

 

[mia_k]

It's less an issue with photos and more a major annoyance for general computer use. I'm mostly asking here because in more general consumer forums a lot of people seem to not even notice it, and I guess I was hoping there was some secret tip I didn't know about for finding better monitors...

 

[BobKnDP]

I was going to suggest visiting rtings.com, but they gave fairly good uniformity ratings to the 3 monitors that you didn't like.

I'm happy with a Viewsonic XG320U. (Not a pro photo monitor.) I sit close enough to it that viewing angle effects are obvious at the sides of the screen. I don't see a lot of bleed on black screens, even though it is edge lit. I don't see a significant DSE (dirty screen effect).

Maybe a monitor with a full array backlight? However, I'm not sure how helpful local dimming (as in FALD, full array local dimming) is for photo work.

OLED would be nice, if you could afford one, and if LG has improved the basic uniformity over what my 2017 55" B7A TV shows. (I have never used it as a PC monitor.)

 

[mufanito]

Prad.de - use chrome´s auto translation.

 

[MichaelAwkward]

Very easy, the best monitors for Uniformity are the ColorEdge range from Eizo.

"Digital Uniformity Equaliser (DUE)

Homogeneous luminance distribution and good colour purity are key to achieving very accurate image rendering. The Digital Uniformity Equaliser (DUE) circuit takes care of this. It automatically corrects non-uniformities in terms of luminance and chrominance for all tone values across the entire image area – pixel by pixel."

Mike