NEC EA294WMi Review
by Chris Heinonen on February 10, 2014 6:00 AM ESTAll calibration measurements are done using SpectraCal’s CalMAN 5.1.2 software with a custom workflow. Measurements are done using a C6 colorimeter that is first profiled against an i1Pro spectrometer to ensure accurate results. There are two sets of targets we use. Pre-calibration and our first calibration aim for 200 cd/m^2 with an sRGB gamut and a gamma of 2.2. This is a common real-world setting for a display. The final target changes the light level target to 80 cd/m^2 and the gamma curve to the tougher sRGB standard.
The EA294WMi features a number of preset modes. On my sample they all ran a bit warm with the 6500K setting measuring closer to 6100K. Using the 7000K preset gave me a color temperature that was closer to the 6503K ideal value. It still runs a bit warm, at 6413K, but that is very close to 6503K for not being calibrated.
If you look at the charts you’ll see that the color temperature, while having the correct value, is excessively green. There is a large push that grows worse as the intensity increases. This is why just looking at the raw temperature value is really pointless, as you can get to 6503K without having an ideal balance of red, green and blue. Looking at the individual RGB breakdown can show you the actual accuracy of the color temperature.
Pre-Calibration |
Post-Calibration, 200 cd/m^2 |
Post-Calibration, 80 cd/m^2 |
|
White Level (cd/m^2) | 201.85 | 198.96 | 82.427 |
Black Level (cd/m^2) | 0.2024 | 0.2061 | 0.0867 |
Contrast Ratio | 997:1 | 965:1 | 951:1 |
Gamma (Average) | 2.1847 | 2.1959 | 2.493 |
Color Temperature | 6419K | 6580K | 6476K |
Grayscale dE2000 | 5.9004 | 0.6941 | 0.922 |
Color Checker dE2000 | 4.1192 | 1.1519 | 1.2513 |
Saturations dE2000 | 3.6287 | 1.1265 | 1.1144 |
The gamma is good overall and tracks close to the 2.2 target value. It has a little bit of a rise at the top and bottom, but the deviation is fairly small overall. As you see in the Grayscale dE2000 values, the incorrect RGB balance shows up as very visible errors with an average dE2000 that approaches 6.0.
Color accuracy is a bit better than the grayscale. The saturations dE2000 average is 3.6 and the color checker average dE2000 is 4.1. However the more saturated reds are over-saturated which leads to skin tones having a slightly sunburnt look. Blue is a bit under-saturated and cyan has an incorrect tint. These overall numbers are good but issues are still visible on screen.
Post-calibration the 200 cd/m^2 target improves a lot. The gamma tracks perfectly and so does the RGB balance. Our average grayscale dE2000 is an invisible 0.69 after calibration. Colors improve with the tint of cyan being correct now. The EA294WMi lacks the internal LUT of NEC's professional monitors but the performance still improves. The main remaining flaw comes from yellow being over-saturated which pushes it and some orange shades above the visible error limit of 3.0 dE2000. Both the color dE2000 averages are very good in the end.
When we target 80 cd/m^2 and the sRGB gamma curve our results are virtually identical. For these tests I bumped up the number of points that CalMAN samples to the maximum possible and will do this on future reviews as well. We see that the RGB response is very level across all measured values and the gamma tracks almost perfectly. The CIE chart for saturations is harder to make out as there are too many targets, but we see that the color error gets higher as the saturation percentage increases. Yellow and Green are the worse offenders here, as we expected from the CIE charts, while the other colors are all close to 2.0 or below.
Overall the post-calibration performance is impressive. The pre-calibration numbers are not great due to the poor white balance and so for ideal viewing you will want to calibrate it. Other displays offer a better out-of-box experience than the NEC.
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ShieTar - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - link
> 3360 x 1440? That's nice!The LG Electronics 34UM95-P actually comes with 3440 x 1440, so its even a bit wider (2.39:1). I've ordered this one around Christmas, but it still hasn't arrived yet. Current prediction by the shop is a delivery around Feb. 20th.
piroroadkill - Monday, February 10, 2014 - link
19" 4:3?I've only really seen 19" 5:4 - 1280x1024.
Colin1497 - Monday, February 10, 2014 - link
Back in the day I know we had a lot of 1600x1200 Dell monitors, but they may have been branded as 20" instead of 19"? Eventually they ended up paired with 1920x1200 24" monitors before being phased out...DanNeely - Monday, February 10, 2014 - link
I know there were 20" 1600x1200 panels, I've got NEC and HP versions of them, but don't think I ever saw them in a 19" version.kwrzesien - Monday, February 10, 2014 - link
Maybe he meant 19" CRT's? We had a host of them from Mitsubishi and they worked great at 1280x1024 @ 85Hz, or 1600x1200 @ 60Hz. They were our "coding" monitors, our production user spec was still at 1024x768 on a 14" CRT at the time!!! (where is the horror emoticon when you need it!)purerice - Monday, February 10, 2014 - link
A lot of monitors vintage '98 were 20 or 21" but 19 or 19.8" viewable with 1600x1200 resolution.It could just be a difference between official vs viewable size.
GTVic - Monday, February 10, 2014 - link
That is what I have, Dell 2007FP + Dell U2410 plus a matching pair at the office. Both monitors have 1200 vertical pixels, unfortunately the height is not identical, 2107 would have been a near perfect match.blackmagnum - Monday, February 10, 2014 - link
It's still 1080p. Good for movies and spreadsheets but bad for reading Anandtech (unless you want it towering over your head).DarkXale - Monday, February 10, 2014 - link
Its rather intended to be used instead of two adjacent 1280x1080 monitors. You completely eliminate the border in the middle which provides greater flexibility in how you display your content.In other words, maximising it to use the entire width is doing it wrong.
KnightRAF - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - link
Exactly. It's a 1080p high monitor that's wide enough to view two webpages side by side without problems due to the window not being at least 1024px wide.