I used ASUS' new 27-inch ProArt display and came away (mostly) impressed

For many in the market for a new computer, the monitor is often treated as an afterthought. But for those in the visual arts, like content creators and retouchers, a poor choice here can lead to headaches down the road. And I mean that both literally and figuratively because a poor-quality screen can give both false colours and migraines.

This ASUS 27” PA27JCV monitor is no run-of-the-mill screen. And for those that know, both the ProArt moniker and the 5K designation tipped you off to that right away. This is a high-end and high-quality screen designed for those who need extra quality on a daily basis, such as graphic artists. It uses an IPS screen that is well-regarded for its colour rendering and angle of view. The lower 60hz refresh rate is another tip-off that this unit prioritises picture quality over speed.

As with all other components in ASUS ProArt lineup, this display is not meant for the gamer, nor the business professional running spreadsheets. The target for this screen is clearly the same folks that might otherwise be buying the equally high-end Apple 27” Studio Display, which goes for twice the price, or that narrow pro market that traditionally bought costly Eizo screens.

There’s a lot in this 27” unit, here are some basics:

• 27” IPS screen
• 5120 x 2880 resolution / 218 ppi / 77% over 4K
• LED-backlit display / sensor
• Ambient light sensor
• HDR10 and VESA DisplayHDR™ 500 compatibility
• LuxPixel anti-glare / low-reflection coating
• Wide 178° viewing angle
• 99% DCI-P3 wide color gamut for accurate color
• 95% Adobe RGB color gamut accuracy
• Factory Calibrated Calman Verified / pre-calibrated
• Height adjustment from 16”-21”, swivel and roatation
• HMDI, DisplayPort, USB-C (with 96Wpower), 2-additional USB-A ports, headphone jack
• Fully compatible with Mac, Windows and Linux OS
• Full HDR support

Unpacking and Set-Up

This all-professional 27” monitor from ASUS ProArt line comes in a relatively small and very light box. A reminder that gone are the days of pro screens that used to need two people to manage the installation. This unit comes in three parts that are very easy to put together. The square baseplate, the vertical upright tube (with that contemporary cable management hole that looks great, until you actually use it for cable management!), and the VESA-attached screen. It includes the power cord, and USB-C cable.

Care needs to be taken when hand-screwing the post to the base. And better instructions would have helped me when attaching the VESA screen to the post. But regardless, it went from box to desktop in under ten minutes. The VESA connection will also allow the screen to connect with other stands, arms or wall units.

Looking at the Hardware

Though nicely designed, the monitor itself is made from mostly basic plastic construction.

The stand is also nice, with a contemporary look, but not without a few issues. One being that it is a bit more wobbly when touched than I’d prefer, mostly due to its lack of heft.

The second issue is that while the unit allows a decent level of customizing, it’s perhaps a bit shorter in height than it should be, ranging from just 16” in total height, up to a hair over 21”.

The problem here seems to be that it was designed to be used at a desk where the keyboard/mouse resides on a lower level, like an under-desk drawer. If my desk had that, I would need to lower my chair by 2-3 inches, and my head would be more aligned with the central area of the screen. Rather than the upper edges it does now. And I am not tall, so this might be an issue for those over 6 foot. Back in the day we’d throw a thick NYC Yellow pages under the base to raise it up. But I don’t think they print those anymore.

The screen also offers a decent amount of tilt. The range goes from roughly vertical, to about a 20-degree upward tilt. It also offers full rotation and can be positioned as a portrait display, rather than landscape. Note that there are no detents to confirm either position, so it can require some futzing.

The screen can also be swivelled left and right. However, since this happens at the bottom of the support post, it may not be by design.

There are seven controller/buttons on the front lower bezel, making setting access very easy. These include a great many controls, and even professional screen overlays, such as action and title safe, rulers and others normally found on high-end video production monitors. Nice touch should it be used as a video production monitor!

On the rear we have connections for the power cable (no power block needed), HDMI, DisplayPort, and a 96 watt powered USB-C port that carries DisplayPort and other data. There are also two additional USB-A ports, and a headphone jack.

An item I find to be universally over-rated, but the bevels, particularly on the sides, are rather thin. Making it well suited for a multi-monitor setup.

Hooking it up

I first hooked this up with an Ubuntu Linux workstation, which required nothing more than plugging in both ends. The screen instantly looked wonderful.

Windows was more of a challenge. I tried connecting it with an HDMI cable, and then a DisplayPort one. And in both cases, the monitor came alive and displayed all of the BIOS preamble, but then went black once in Windows. I resorted to the 5-way controller on the front of the unit which brought up input options that corrected the problem. The “Auto Detection” KVM option had been enabled but clearly had not worked.

Let me briefly mention that after downloading and installing the ASUS Display Widget, it took me a while to find its shortcut on the desktop. It was not installed in any logical location until after a restart.

The software itself seemed less than efficient and selecting other colour spaces locked my system. Most of these controls seem to be available via the monitor's front panel controls, and may be better done there.

First Impressions

The first words that came to mind when bringing up some applications and imagery was “snappy” and “crisp”. The display was sharp across all of the screen elements, even smaller icons, and even towards the edges of the screen.

I could also not help but see that the contrast of everything was much higher than I am used to viewing. The white background of a canvas in any paint program was almost searingly white. Yes, too white for regular use, but I was glad to see that the monitor was capable of such brightness. This is due to its impressive 500-nit capacity. Any brighter and I’d be reaching for my Raybans.

On the other end of the tonal spectrum, things got a bit too dark. It felt like both the blacks and the gamma of the entire screen were biased slightly too far towards the darker tones. But, before trying to correct this, I opened Krita and viewed a 10-step test chart.

Just looking at a gradient and step-wedge I can immediately tell you a few things about this monitor. Most importantly, right out of the box, this screen is already very well-balanced for an accurate display of tones, colours and gamma. The blacks “look” reasonably black. And the whites look reasonably white. And if it had any greater range, my eyes would start being the limiting factor.

There was a very mild gamma bias towards dark, which I visually picked up on earlier. There was also the slightest tinge towards yellow. Both shifts were very mild, and easily correctable (using NVIDIA’s software controls would work).

Even though we will be using a Spyder PRO meter to ensure we have great and accurate colour, doing the steps above are really important for creatives. No matter how great our digital tools are, it’s our own tool, our brain, that most needs to be well calibrated!

The other measurable spec that helps create the sharpness seen is the high resolution of this screen of 5120 x 2880. The 218 pixels per inch is literally 3x the linear density of the original Mac’s 72 dpi. When you see such high resolution you know something special is going on. After all, most 27” screens have a resolution closer to HD.

There’s nothing dull about

If you’ve ever worked as a hight-end retoucher may be familiar with the dark room designs for such studios. This is to remove the huge impact reflections and stray lights can have on our screen’s colors. Such rooms are not so popular today, but we still have reflections. So this monitor employs something called LuxPixel, an anti-glare and low-reflection dull coating. And while this doesn’t resolve all issues, it also doesn’t create any new ones, like more reflective screens can do.

Just the Facts

Ok, those are the impressions, now let’s get to the facts. We used a SPYDER PRO calibration unit from Datacolor. This is the kind of calibration tool you want to have when spending this amount of money on mission-critical creative projects. The Spyder Pro can be used to target and match various color gamuts, and even match all of your monitors for consistency. Here, we are simply using it to measure the monitor’s default settings. With mostly very good results.

As ASUS states, the monitor indeed covers 100% of the sRGB colour gamut. Though the Spyder found it covers only 91% of the AdobeRGB gamut. We left the gamma set to its default at 2.2, and the Spyder says it’s 2.1, which is close enough for us.

We shot the full 48-colour stress test at the screen, looking to see how close it can reproduce everything from vibrant colours to subtle pastels. And while the resulting raw data shows delta shifts as high as 2, this is actually very accurate. Most of the colours were much better (zero would be perfect).

The only place where this screen fell short was in its “Luminance Uniformity”, which showed a larger variation in brightness across the screen than we would like to see. We re-ran this test two more times, all with the same results. While this is not evident when looking at the screen, we feel it should have tighter tolerances.

And while I did not go into testing its full HDR support, the screen's colour and contrast are excellent with that on, or off.

Bottom Line

While it may fall somewhat short of perfection, we are dealing in the rarefied world of very high-quality monitors. And it is probably important to remind everyone that this particular monitor is selling for as little as half that of its intended competitors.

The only other small complaint, which is no fault of the monitor, is that 27” screens are starting to feel a bit small today. If you feel the same way, then remember you are trading a bit of size for quality. And we can easily remedy this by adding a cheap second screen to put application pallets and tools on.