Asus PA246 review: Asus PA246

Update: Asus has informed us that its pixel policy has been updated from needing three bright/dark pixels for a warranty service, to only needing one for a complete swap out. This review has been amended accordingly.

8.0

Asus PA246

The Good

Six axial colour calibration allows for fine tuning. IPS means better viewing angles. Decent stand. Good interlaced performance over HDMI.

The Bad

Manual calibration will take forever thanks to no ability to plug a colorimeter directly into the monitor. Bizarre purple colouration in Lagom.nl pixel walk tests when using the user profile. Pixel policy could be better for a professional monitor.

The Bottom Line

At AU$699, the PA246 offers great value. We're concerned, though, by the colour shift in the inversion pixel walk test under some colour profiles, and proper calibration will take a long time thanks to a lack of hardware automation.

It's always interesting to see something badged as a professional monitor after you've seen HP's DreamColor. Asus' PA246 is exactly that — a 24-inch, IPS-based black, chunky monitor whose design hallmarks you'd usually expect to see on something NEC branded. It even takes a little longer than usual to hit its full brightness after you've switched it on, usually a sign that you're on to something good.

Then there's the six axial control of hue and saturation, and RGB control of gain and offset. This lets us know that firstly, Asus is quite serious, and, secondly, that easy calibration is out the window — it is a manual job for ultimate tweaking.

Dubbed "ProArt", it's a 1920x1200 screen that has measurement markings around the bezel, although these are for look more than anything; the horizontal markings are just over 6mm, the vertical almost 5mm, meaning they're not that useful as points of reference.

What is interesting is a grid mechanism that's part of the on-screen display (OSD) — press the left-most button, and suddenly you have a grid overlaid on the screen in 5mm increments up to 50.5cm horizontally, and 30cm vertically. Press again and you're given inches, again and a nine-segment "alignment grid" appears, and there's also A4 and letter aspect rectangles in landscape and portrait modes, and the same again for 4x6, 3x5, 2x2, 8x10 and 5x7 formats. It's an interesting touch, although one that's replicated wholesale in programs like Photoshop, and so while it's cool, its usefulness is questionable.

Specs at a glance

Stand and ergonomics

Asus' stand is what we expect for a monitor of this size and calibre, offering height, tilt, swivel and rotate adjustments. The sliding mechanism takes more force than Dell's UltraSharp range to adjust, making smaller adjustments more difficult.

Connections

The only connection here with a difference is the 3.5mm audio jack — if you have an audio stream coming through HDMI or DisplayPort, then you can use this jack to hear it. Otherwise, it's a fairly standard complement of ports.

Buttons and on-screen display (OSD)

Asus' front-mounted buttons are practical and usable. You have the aforementioned grid button here, menu and adjustment buttons, as well as a quick input selector.

There are six presets included with the PA246: Standard, sRGB, AdobeRGB, Scenery, Theatre and User. Since the PA246 has a huge range of adjustment, you'll get the most out of the user mode, and bypassing the presets.

On top of brightness and contrast, the user can also set hue, saturation and gamma, six axis hue and saturation, gain and offset. Sharpness can also be adjusted, and scaling is available in full screen, aspect and 1:1 modes, complete with nifty animation switching between them.

Picture in picture is supported, but it seems the HDMI and DVI circuits are shared, as when plugged in over DVI you can only have VGA or DisplayPort as the second image. This image can be toggled between three different sizes, placed in any of the four corners of the screen, and the inputs can be reversed if desired, making the smaller picture larger and vice versa.

Performance

Lagom.nl LCD tests
After calibrating to a target brightness of 140cd/m² with an X-Rite i1Display 2, Eye-One Match 3 and tweaking with HCFR, the PA246 was run through the Lagom.nl LCD tests.

While most tests passed without a problem, the Asus gave us an oddity we haven't seen before: it turned the patterns in the Inversion pixel walk test purple, instead of the monochrome it should be. It seems this is an effect of the User and Scenery modes — although there is still a tinge of colour in the other modes, they are much closer to the expected grey. Needless to say this is an issue, as those who wish to properly calibrate their monitor will be greeted with this oddity.

Input lag
Measured against a Samsung SyncMaster 975p CRT, and using a Canon 40D set to a shutter speed of 1/320, an average of over 60 photographs was taken using StoppUhr. The PA246 registered 2.71ms of lag over DVI, meaning the input lag should not be perceptible and fine for gaming.

Colour accuracy
ΔE is the measurement of how far a measured colour deviates from its expected value, allowing us to determine the colour accuracy of a monitor. While a ΔE value of one is considered perceivable, as long as it's less than three, the shift shouldn't be too obvious. HCFR was initially used to determine ΔE for the monitor in tandem with an X-Rite i1Display 2 — only to discover that the i1Display had real issues detecting blue shifts in the PA246. Thankfully, if you're one of the first 200 to pick up a PA246, you'll get a Spyder 3 Express, something that Asus included in our review kit — so we used that instead to see how the PA246 went.

Not exactly the <5 ΔE that's promised on the box. We spent hours tweaking the colours by hand before we discovered the i1Display's weakness in regards to the PA246's blue gamut, and after realising we would be here for days tweaking to get the perfect profile, we gave in and used the supplied Spyder 3 Express colorimeter and software.

No doubt with a lot more time and patience, you could get a lot better results — Asus definitely gives you the tools in the OSD to do so. With so many variables, though, we found ourselves wishing for an automated solution, as per NEC's ability to plug a custom i1Display into the monitor directly and adjust that way.

HDMI performance
While a monitor might have an HDMI port, there's no guarantee that it'll display images as expected. We hooked up a PlayStation 3 and checked for 24p capability as well as judder, and ran the HQV Blu-ray test to see how well it coped with an interlaced source and noise.

The Asus handles interlaced content reasonably well compared to its competitors, and while judder is present, it's minimal.

Viewing angles
Viewing angles were taken with a Canon 40D in spot-metering mode, with only shutter time adjusted to obtain a good exposure.

Light bleed
Uncommon for an IPS monitor, our Asus review sample actually had a small amount of light bleed coming from the top left. This may just be a defect with our particular sample.

It's important to note that the effects of light bleed will likely change from monitor to monitor, regardless of make.

Power consumption
We measured power consumption using a Jaycar mains digital power meter. It's important to note here that, due to limitations of the meter, measurements are limited to values of 1W and greater, and are reported in 1W increments.

All measurements, screen brightness and contrast were set to 100 per cent, and a test image displayed.

Juice Box
Maximum power draw	83W
Power-saving mode	<1W
Off	<1W

While it does draw heavily on the juice while on, in power-saving or off modes the PA246 is excellent at saving power.

Warranty

Asus covers the PA246 with a three-year warranty. Asus has updated its pixel policy, and it's quite straightforward: if you have more one or more faulty dots within the warranty period, bright or dark, you can request a complete swap out — an excellent fall back plan.

Conclusion

At AU$699, the PA246 offers great value. We're concerned, though, by the colour shift in the inversion pixel walk test, and we'd like a better pixel policy. We'll be curious to see if Dell outs an updated 24-incher to challenge Asus, but as it stands this is not too bad a monitor at all.