ASUS PA279Q Professional Grade LCD Monitor Unboxing & Overview
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
2,337 words · ~11 min read
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welcome to my unboxing and overview of my new best friend this my friends has
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already been out of the box I've already seen it and it is absolutely gorgeous
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this is the ASUS PA 279 Q it has a
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10bit ah IPS panel so what that
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basically means is full support for deep color that is it can represent a broader
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range of colors and more intermediary steps between them so that you have very
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fine shifts from one color to another or from one shade to another one even in
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between different Shades of Gray it okay
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so on top of the 10bit panel it has a 14bit lookup table which means the
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monitor itself can understand even more
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information than it can actually display because all monitors are going to
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approximate they have to approximate most monitors are capable of displaying
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around 16.8 I think it is million colors
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and so anything that isn't one of those 16.8 million discret colors has to be
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approximated to one of those 16.8 million colors so what a 14bit lookup
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table and 10 bit panel means is fewer approximations and much more True toli
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Colors this is particularly important for Creative professionals such as photo
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or video editors that want to have the most accurate whoops color possible in
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their photos or videos but it can also be something that's valued by General
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users as well the first thing we find inside the box is the included Hood so
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this is if you have bright ambient lighting and you want to maintain the true to life colors that the monitor can
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produce if I had to criticize something about this monitor which I guess I
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probably should it would be this it it's not a very good implementation it's
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flimsy plastic it has what appears to be a non-reusable adhesive on the inside so
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you just have to decide once only once whether or not you want to use it and I
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think I'm going to opt not to going instead for controlling the ambient
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light and using the panel itself you get a usb3 cable A to B you get a mini
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DisplayPort to full-size DisplayPort cable you get an audio cable for the
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integrated dual 3w speakers which are actually surprisingly not bad you get a
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power cable which you can see we've already used a full-size DisplayPort to
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full siiz DisplayPort cable a dual link DVI cable driver dis don't use that and
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finally an HDMI cable but don't use this either because HDMI in is not going to
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be capable of driving the massive 2560x1440 resolution that this monitor
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supports for any kind of professional application you're going to want to be
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using DisplayPort in order to get full
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res and deep color support but much in the same way that lots of bass in music
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is not necessarily good lots of colors that are oversaturated and ugly are not
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necessarily good but don't worry this is a PA monitor which means that it comes
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with a calibration testing report so they show you the equipment they're using and the results that were obtained
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on this exact monitor this does add
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additional cost to the manufacturing process but on proart monitors they want
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you to know that you're getting what you paid for it comes with a guaranteed
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Delta e of less than two this is a huge step up from the promised Delta e of
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less than five on previous Pro art monitors and for those of you who aren't
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familiar with Delta e it is basically the difference between what the color is
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supposed to look like and what it actually looks like on the display
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itself now they use a couple of tricks in order to make sure that the
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uniformity of the colors on the monitor are is as good as possible and one of
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them is called uniformity compensation so that ensures that you're not going to
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have uh brightness and color that is dramatically different in this corner
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compared to a central reference point and the same goes for any other segment
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of the Monitor and that's included on your calibration report as well so let's
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have a look at it physically it's got all the usual adjustments height
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adjustable stand as well as tilt
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pivot and or swivel I guess this one's called and finally pivot that's right
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portrait mode so you can put it in this setting if you really really wanted to what I usually use this for is to plug
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in my port so you've got a nice solid base and then wow all the expansion you
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could pretty much ever want so there's your your USB 3 in there's three USB 3
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ports for the included Hub DisplayPort
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okay hold on DisplayPort in and out so this support ports daisy chaining so
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this is the output so what that means is you can actually hook up multiple
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monitors up to four depending on the resolution from One DisplayPort port
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HDMI don't use that DVI and then we've
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got audio in as well as a pass through for your headphones should you so desire
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power in is here and a dedicated power switch as well as Kensington lock are
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down here on the bottom lots of ventilation you can see pretty much the
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entire back of the monitor is covered in perforations because it does need in
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order to have you know really fancy Electronics inside it some passive
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cooling although there is no cooling fan included and then finally on this side
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you've got a couple more things so that's three more usb3 ports and an SD
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card reader that supports all the latest standards on the other side you don't
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find a whole much of lot of anything other than the onscreen display which is
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on this side of the panel right here and uses a bit of a different implementation
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so you can now browse the menu by using it as a bit of a joystick up down left
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right and then pressing to confirm and and there's all the other stuff here you got some programmable buttons and
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whatnot for presets as you can see we've fired up the monitor now this amazing 4K
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clip was shot on the Sony fs700 not by us guys you can click The
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annotation or check out the link in the video description to see it we didn't we
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didn't shoot it I want to be really clear about that but it looks amazing even like 2 in from the screen how much
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detail there is especially when watching on a greater than HD monitor but before
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we get too much further into this guys word from our sponsor sponsor are you
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details in the link in the video description on the lus tech tips Forum
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so without further Ado this monitor man
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I love it so we're going to do the usual things where we do our tilt test so you
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can see that not only is the color extremely uniform but even at extreme
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angles you're not going to lose that color accuracy yes some of the
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brightness goes away but that's perfectly natural because the light is
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being emitted out the front of the panel so not all of it is going to reach your
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eyes obviously if you're looking at it from an extreme angle but maintaining
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color accuracy from an angle is extremely important for professional use
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so we're just going to go ahead give you guys that full range there man it looks
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good and according to the video review done by digital versus we're looking at
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about 30 milliseconds of input leg which is actually not bad now one thing that
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makes it not really optimal for gaming is the fact that it does exhibit reverse
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ghosting which is kind of like ghosting where there's an image trailing the
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other image except that those are reversed in terms of the colors so red
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would be green etc etc so it can be a little bit more distracting than regular
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ghosting personally I've been dealing with this kind of ghosting since my old
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Ben or rather Dell 2405 fpw so it
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doesn't really bother me anymore but if you're not used to it then there you go
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uh very decent speakers as I mentioned before but I actually can't find them so
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I'm not sure exactly where they are because they're they're not visible on
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the front they're probably hidden somewhere behind all these grills in the back but both slick and I were surprised
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at how usable they are if you don't need like a subwoofer and a you know
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dedicated gaming speaker setup and you mostly use headphones I think you'll
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find yourself not really requiring any additional desktop speakers which is
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quite nice they have a completely new onscreen display control mode so I
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actually found it extremely easy to navigate so they've got their usual
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Splendid stuff you can see it supports srgb RGB as well as ntsc somewhere in
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there so it does 99% Adobe RGB 100% srgb
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And 120% ntsc they've also got some unique
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picture and picture settings so you can actually do picture and picture or well
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okay obviously we don't have two monitor set up but you can do picture in picture or picture by picture for pretty much
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any of the inputs which is extremely flexible so it's it's really nice to see
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that again this is really easy to navigate I actually quite like it so you
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can turn uniformity compensation on and off it's nice that they give you control
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of stuff like this because not everyone necessarily wants that again this is a
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professional monitor so being able to adjust things like color temperature is
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again very very important and they've also got although I can't find find it
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right now but they've also got a pretty unique six AIS independent color control
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setting that allows you to actually adjust each of the different colors
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independently without affecting any of the other ones so how do you take
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advantage of its greatness because not
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every application is going to I mean not every computer is even going to be able
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to Output 10 bit color so every part of the chain has to support 10 bit color
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your application your hardware and the
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monit itself in order to take advantage of deep color so okay the monitors for
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Creative professionals whether it's photo editing or video editing or anyone
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who has to work with color in any kind of accurate capacity but what about
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Gamers why am I interested in this monitor or even General users well it's
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less fatiguing to look at even if you aren't taking advantage of 10bit color
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man it's beautiful it is absolutely unbelievable so while I wouldn't
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recommend it to someone like a competitive gamer where you want as many
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updates on the screen per second as possible you're going to want a 120 HZ
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monitor preferably with a strobing backlight so that the image is extremely
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crisp um in order to get like every last Competitive Edge for you I wouldn't
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recommend it but for someone who's more of a sightseer maybe you play Batman or
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maybe you play games like Skyrim and you just want to be as immersed in as
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beautiful a fantasy world as you possibly can you know what if you're
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willing to spend the money it's not a terrible recommendation this is my new
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personal favorite monitor I'm one of those people who believes that a monitor
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is something a part of your computer you spend more time looking at than any
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other component and it is worth investing heavily in them once in a
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while versus doing frequent upgrades from one TN panel to another cruddy TN
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panel that might be slightly better than the old one I've only bought two
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monitors in about the last eight years because again I spend about $7 800 on
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them and then I expect them to last for multiple upgrade cycles of the rest of
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my components so in conclusion not for gaming for professional use serves its
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purpose extremely well is absolutely beautiful and not fatiguing to look at
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has great on screen options however I personally plan to use it for General
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use and gaming because it's absolutely beautiful extremely well built looks
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great on your desk and all those other good things that are about it but yes it
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is extremely expensive so like this video if you liked it dislike it if you
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disliked it leave me a comment letting me know what you do for your monitor
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upgrade cycle how often do you upgrade how much do you expect to spend and last
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but not least guys don't forget to subscribe to lus Tech tips unboxings
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