I tested the PA32QCV’s brightness, contrast ratio, and color-gamut coverage using our standard test gear: a Klein K-10A colorimeter, a Murideo SIX-G 8K test-pattern generator, and Portrait Displays’ Calman for Business calibration software.
Asus lists the PA32QCV’s typical brightness at 400 nits (candelas per meter squared); it tallied 557 nits in my testing. The ProArt supports HDR10, and Asus claims a peak HDR brightness of 600 nits, in line with its VESA DisplayHDR 600 rating. The display did even better in my benchmarking, reading 671 nits.
As for contrast ratio, Asus rates the PA32QCV at 3,000:1. In my testing, it came very close, with a 2,911:1 contrast ratio.
(Credit: Portrait Displays)
Asus rates the PA32QCV’s color coverage at 100% for the sRGB space and 98% of DCI-P3. In my testing, it essentially covered the complete sRGB and DCI-P3 spaces (actually, 99.9% for each of these; see the sRGB chromaticity chart above, and the chart for DCI-P3 below).
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The ProArt panel also covered 89.6% of Adobe RGB, a color space that Asus doesn’t rate for this monitor. (Adobe RGB is commonly used in preparing photos and art for print.)
Our final benchmark for creator-centric monitors is Delta E (dE), a measure of color accuracy, namely the difference between the hue of a displayed color and the color input that the monitor received. The dE figure that appears in monitor specs is the average of a large number of individual color readings from across the spectrum; the lower the value, the more accurate the color. An average dE of below 2 indicates colors that are accurate enough that a casual observer may be unable to distinguish any variation between the color on screen and the intended (source) color.
Asus claims a Delta E of less than 2 for the PA32QCV. It didn’t quite meet this, turning in a dE of 2.5, in my out-of-the-box (without calibration) testing, which is our standard procedure. This is a little above the results we got when testing the Asus ProArt PA32UCDM and the Asus ProArt PA32DC, both 4K creator monitors, which tallied out-of-the-box dE of 2 and 1.9, respectively. Unlike the PA32DC, the PA32QCV lacks a built-in colorimeter, which can be used to calibrate the monitor and lower the dE. Asus does offer a calibration utility, which is compatible with calibrators from Datacolor, Klein, and X-Rite. If precision color matching is mandatory for what you do, you’ll want to make sure you have the proper equipment at hand to tune the PA32QCV.
