right now you're watching the very first
Linus tech tips video in high dynamic
range or HDR or if that is you're
watching it in HDR if you're on an HDR
10 compatible display and video platform
one reason it took us so long to do this
was that we didn't have the budget for
an appropriate HDR mastering monitor
that is until now introducing the
product that we are both reviewing today
and creating today's video on the Asus
PA 32 ucx
it's a 32 inch 4k mini LED monitor with
over a thousand full array local dimming
zones and support for HDR 10h LG and
dolby vision all at a whopping 1200 nits
of brightness but at a definitely too
expensive formal people yet somehow
still cheaper than the Apple Pro display
XD our price of 4500 dollars
who exactly is this monitor for the
answer is fascinating almost as
fascinating as today's sponsor the Rs 15
G features Intel's 10th gen processors
and is a pro gaming notebook with strong
performance battery life and features
check it out today at the link in the
video description
[Music]
here's something fun let's start with
who should not get this monitor if
you're a professional doing color
critical work but you're not doing HDR
video or if you're like a tech
trendsetter showing off for your friends
then there's no reason to buy it
save your money graphic artists buy a TV
influencer gamers on the other end of
the spectrum if you're mastering a
$200,000,000 Hollywood feature film in
HDR well it's probably not wise to bet
the farm on a consumer display you're
better off with a Sony BVM X 300
mastering monitor or one of the
newfangled ones with dual layer LCDs
this is for The Inbetweeners independent
filmmakers VFX artists or even colorist
or quality control personnel at large
YouTube channels which don't get any
ideas
another potential customer is game
developers who want to see how their
work renders in multiple HDR standards
on a display that can actually fit on
their desk now many TVs would fulfill
this function but think about it a
studio can't exactly put a 55 inch TV
and everyone's cubicle though that may
actually change with LG's new 48 inch CX
OLED which is on its way right now
subscribe for that review because I'm
really excited about it for now let's
see what the PA 32 u CX can do out of
the box with no additional calibration
our set performed well there's just no
other way to put it
phenomenally I mean we're already used
to seeing 95 plus percent coverage of
the DCI p3 color gamut on OLED and other
displays that have quantum dot films but
check out this coverage of BT 2020 that
is huge in terms of accuracy ours did
oversaturate blue and under saturated
red a little bit but it still managed to
keep the Delta II average under 2 so
we're talking about deviations that
would be imperceptible to the human eye
and if you want to go to the next level
you can immediately calibrate it
yourself which will be especially easy
given that the North American models are
gonna have an X right eye one display
Pro calibration device right in the box
that's a pretty good value considering
that they're two hundred and eighty five
dollars on X right store even if you
don't calibrate it right away you're
gonna need to do it at some point though
you might
no but monitors don't stay tuned forever
and you should be recalibrating the
modes that are important to your
workflow at least every couple of months
one thing that's cool about this monitor
is that calibration profiles can be
saved on the scalars integrated circuit
rather than on the PC so you don't have
to fiddle around with any settings if
you move this puppy in between devices
not that you would want to the PA 32 ucx
is straight chunk at nearly 15 kilograms
including the stand which by the way
I've got to say I'm a real fan of it's
not sold separately and has a wide
stable base 28 degrees of tilt a hundred
and twenty degrees of swivel 13
centimeters of height adjust and full 90
degree pivot both ways
the reason this thing is so big and so
heavy is because of the backlight
technology the PA 32 ucx has full array
local dimming which means that the
lights are right behind the panel as
opposed to at the edges and it uses mini
LEDs which at 200 microns wide are about
1/5 the size of traditional LEDs so this
army of around seven hundred and twenty
thousand little lights is then divided
up into 1152 dimming zones meaning that
in theory this display should be able to
illuminate objects as small as five
millimeters wide while leaving the rest
of the screen inky black with no halo
effect now in practice the blooming is a
little bit bigger than that but it's
still very good and this is really fun I
don't know if you've ever noticed this
before but you'll even still get
blooming on an OLED display where each
individual pixel is an independent light
source turns out that's because of
something called veiling glare which can
actually occur in your eye so to some
extent halos are inevitable kind of like
call-outs to Ltd store comm speaking of
LEDs the brightness of this monitor is
something to behold
it holds vases display HDR 1000
certification which means that it's got
to be able to hold a thousand nits
across 10% of the screen or a full
screen flash but it actually takes it to
another level not only does it do a
thousand it does 1200 nits and it can
sustain that brightness across the
entire
screen for long periods not just flashes
now that will cause the display to heat
up to the point where it's cooling fans
kick in but the good news is that in our
testing the monitor stayed pretty quiet
even after 20 minutes of blasting pure
white so thing is even though many
movies are mastered using 4000 it
displays there's only about 20 of those
in existence so more and more features
are being mastered at a thousand nits
which means that the PA 32 ucx can
handle that nicely plus a little bit of
headroom on the flip side for content
consumption asus has given us three
options for how to interpret HDR signals
that contain values beyond 1200 nits you
can either hit the ceiling and display
everything at 1200 minutes you can roll
the top end off so that at least you get
some gradation at the highest brightness
levels or you can normalize the whole
curve so if you own this monitor and
you're wondering what in the heck these
options mean you're welcome one other
feature that's clutch when you need it
is HDR preview mode now asus advertises
this as a function that triggers all
content to be HDR simulated which sounds
like a weirdo SDR to HDR conversion that
nobody should actually use but it turns
out it's for situations where your
source is HDR but the metadata isn't
sending because like let's say your SBI
2 HDMI converter isn't passing it
through or something so this mode lets
you manually configure the monitor to
have the same settings as the source and
force it to display HDR without a
handshake pretty cool now to acknowledge
the elephant in the room
apples Pro display XDR has some clear
advantages it's higher resolution it
boasts a higher peak brightness it's
software control through Mac OS is way
more convenient than mashing buttons on
your display and despite having half the
number of dimming zones we actually
observed similar levels of bloom looking
at our units side-by-side but the thing
is the decision between them is kind of
made for you because once you plug the
pro display XDR into a PC most of its
benefits evaporate plus it's anywhere
between 500 to $2,500 more depending on
the glass option you choose
whether or not you want to stand the
good news is that even if it's not quite
at the level of the pro display XDR it's
close enough that PC shops who don't
want to switch their whole ecosystem
over to Apple and Final Cut have a
legitimate choice which still doesn't
mean that I'm buying one for you today's
video is brought to you by drop com in
the Sun Heiser PC 37 X gaming headset it
features angled drivers and an open back
design and the drivers actually come
from the same family as the HD 598 and
HD 600 series headphones it offers
excellent stereo imaging and locational
accuracy and comes with a noise
cancelling microphone they've sold over
40,000 of these things and new users who
sign up to the website are gonna get 20
bucks off their purchase if it's over
$50 which these headphones would be so
go check them out at the link in the
video description so thanks for watching
guys if you want the full scoop on the
other Pro display the pro display XDR go
check out our complete review of that it
really is a fine piece of machinery as
well