NEC EA244UHD Review
by Chris Heinonen on August 7, 2014 2:30 PM ESTDisplay Uniformity
As I mentioned earlier, I think giving up some contrast ratio to get better uniformity is worth it for the NEC EA244UHD. When you are a graphics professional, one of the major targets for NEC here, having what you see in one area of the monitor look the same as another section is essential.
NEC has delivered here with the EA244UHD as it has some of the best uniformity I have seen to date. On the white uniformity test, the largest error is +/- 6.8%. I usually consider 10% to be excellent and 15% to be good, so this is very good. It is a shift that is barely visible to the naked eye, if visible at all. You really don’t need to be concerned about the brightness uniformity.
Black Uniformity isn’t as good due to a bright corner in the lower-left. The top of the screen is actually darker which lets it have a better contrast ratio, but the lower left is the main issue here. That’s the only spot that is really bad so this is still good overall for black uniformity.
The contrast uniformity is very good overall except for the lower-left corner. Take that away and we see the main contrast issues is that it gets better at the top, not worse.
The big story is the color uniformity. Since this test includes the brightness and color gamut, it really measures everything at once. Here there is not a single point with a dE2000 over 2.0. You can see that everything is a dark green indicating almost perfect performance. What you see at the center of the screen, or anywhere else, is going to be the same as another point on the screen. This makes the NEC EA244UHD an ideal display for media work.
With these uniformity results I think the trade-off of contrast for uniformity is worthwhile. It might make the display worse for watching a movie, but it makes it much better for the kind of work that is going to be done on the NEC EA244UHD.
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DanNeely - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
The former as in "I couldn't type yesterday"piroroadkill - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
Total disagree. I'd rather have a 40" 3840×2160 monitor and run it at 100%.I don't want increased DPI, I wanted increased size and res :D
AnnonymousCoward - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
piroroadkill, yup, same here. 44" gives 100 PPI. Someone just needs to make one, and curve it while they're at it (and stop curving the damn TVs).althaz - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
Agreed. What I want is a 30" 4k monitor (ideally 16:10) that can handle 4k @ 60Hz. Everything else just needs to be "good enough". Ideally I'd prefer a VA monitor for the better contrast (FAR prefer good contrast over slightly better off-angle viewing), or better yet an OLED (probably still years away), but 30" 4k with good enough everything else at the right price would get me over the line for a pair of them right now.piroroadkill - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
An 8:5 (1.6:1) AR monitor of this resolution? Not a chance. You'd have to go back to 2001.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_mo...
Shadowself - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
Probably true, 16:10 seems to be, unfortunately, a thing of the past. However, an ~ 30" 4096x2560 monitor would be truly wonderful!Tristor - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
I completely disagree. The benefit of 4K to me is the much increased PPI which makes it possible to utilize actual high resolution textures without the need for anti-aliasing in CGI work and having a denser amount of screen real estate for code work. I already run 3x1080P 23" displays, so 24" is about my max size for displays, and being able to quadruple my resolution (and PPI) in the same footprint is amazing and just what I'm looking for.My only holdout is waiting to see the dust settle on all the 24" IPS UHD options so I can pick what will end up being a good choice for the long-term, then I'll be ordering 3 of them. NEC is one company I've definitely been watching, as has Dell. I'm looking forward to seeing what Eizo actually releases. They showed off a new 24" UHD Color Edge at NAB that looks fantastic, including being a native 10-bit UHD panel.
For gaming, maybe it'd be fine to just have one larger UHD monitor, but I could easily see myself using my same setup for gaming with the monitors just rotated into portrait mode with nVidia Surround to make the most of it. There's just no advantage I can see to a larger physically sized display unless you don't have proper vision correction.
MrSpadge - Monday, August 11, 2014 - link
Then simply don't buy it - there are larger models available, of course. The modles around 24" are for people who's desk is not large enough for 30"+.CSMR - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
No need for such a high resolution resolution. 2160p is extreme and goes beyond what is needed for sharpness, adding cost and gpu requirements.The usual 1200p of 24" monitors, or even 1080p, are too low, but 1440p or 1600p would have been perfect.
Why is the PC market quadrupling pixel counts so that we are left with either lowish dpis or extremely high dpis and nothing in the middle?
fokka - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
there have been 1600p/30" and 1440p/27" displays for ages now, i think an upgrade to 4k/uhd is nothing too crazy in 2014. 2160p on 24" is a bit much as we see, yes, but we have 1080p on our 5" phones, 1800p and above on 15" laptops, i think it's good that the market is moving again.where you are right though is that they should offer more 1200p-1600p displays in the 20-24" region, that would be very nice and reasonable indeed.