Color Performance and Calibration

With a new console on-board, I was curious to come across how the Predator X34P stacks up in color operation, particularly as the X34 is an splendid monitor out of the box. Unfortunately, the same can't be said of the X34P, though with a few tweaks this monitor can evangelize decent results.

The master trouble with the X34P out of the box is white balance: past default, the monitor is besides warm, with a white point around 6000K and an average of 6185K. This screws with grayscale functioning as you can run into, with a deltaE average of four.68 and gamma that's completely wrong. On the other hand, the X34 is near accurate by default, with a much better CCT average that leads to a sub-1.0 deltaE average in grayscale.

Default Calibration

Poor color temperature skews color performance in saturation and ColorChecker tests, again producing deltaE averages above 4.five. Had Acer shipped the monitor with a better color temperature, more in the line of the original X34, performance would have been great every bit the monitor is capable of 98.7% sRGB coverage.

OSD Calibration

With the following set of tweaks in the on-screen display, you tin can go the Predator X34P dorsum on rails to producing great colors. Note you volition take to set the gamma to ane.nine, rather than the default ii.2, as the 1.9 gamma manner actually produced gamma two.2 in my testing. Strange, but that's how information technology is.

The chief thing to annotation is making these adjustments to the X34P does reduce the contrast ratio to around 830:one, whereas the X34 can maintain a 1100:1 contrast ratio with similar performance. That's a notable deviation and a key negative impact to the different display used.

Setting Default Calibrated
Brightness lxxx 77
Contrast 50 50
Colour Mode Warm User: R=42, G=42, B=46
Gamma two.2 1.ix
Overdrive Normal Normal

On a more positive note, you tin reach pretty decent functioning with a few OSD tweaks. The console doesn't perform too as the original X34, just deltaE values effectually 1.0 across all tests is still very practiced without performing a total calibration. Colour temperature I slightly besides loose at the low stop, though gamma is stock-still and only a few color points exceed a deltaE of 2.0.

Full Calibration

Even better greyscale operation can exist achieved through full scale using SpectraCAL'due south CALMAN 5 software. In particular, the colour temperature curve is flattened and greyscale performance improves to a sub-0.5 deltaE. Saturation and ColorChecker results remain largely unchanged, however with deltaE values near 1.0, this is a decent place to terminate up anyhow, especially for a gaming monitor.

However information technology'due south disappointing to run into the X34P unable to match the X34 at any stage. When fully calibrated, my X34 achieves sub-0.5 results in the saturation and ColorChecker tests while maintaining a decent contrast ratio. It's unlikely anyone would be able to tell the divergence betwixt this and the results put up by the X34P, merely information technology's clear the older panel is improve from a colour performance standpoint, and more than importantly, comes better calibrated out of the box.