Well, I finally took the plunge and picked up the 32GK850G from here at Overclockers, and it arrived today.
Overall impressions so far are great! Not perfect (but then what is), but certainly the most balanced monitor for my needs I've ever come across.
The only downsides are:
- yes, there's a fairly noticably amount of black-smear for fully-zeroed-black areas right next to bright areas, but the response times in 144hz mode appear to be otherwise very sharp with all other shades. (and what black-smear exists is still some of the lowest I've seen on a VA anyway)
- yes, there's that odd effect at the extreme edges if you're close to the screen where the last few pixels fade out to black. I thought it'd annoy me, but I don't even notice unless I'm looking for it.
- yes, the colour saturation fades towards the edges if you're close to the screen. About as much as other good-quality VA panels I've used. Not ideal, but again, I completely forget it's doing it unless I specifically look for it.
- none of the gamma "modes" allow you to precisely hit a gamma of 2.2... but they do come pretty close.
I've fiddled about with the settings for a good few hours, while running and re-running short calibration tests with my X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter.
The accepted story on most threads about this monitor seem to be running with the usual "VA isn't as good as IPS for colour" preconception, and claiming that the colours aren't great.
...according to the probe, they're pretty much perfect, at least on my particular unit. Set a good white-balance point, and the only thing an ICC profile seems to need to adapt for is the overall gamma curve, but the actual colour balance barely shifts. It certainly doesn't need all the digital vibrance and such that people are going on about. The only slightly lacking spot is that there's about 3% missing from full sRGB gamut coverage, exclusively around the extreme blue end of the gamut.
The OSD controls are a little odd - unlike in most monitors I've used which have a contrast control, but where 50 is typically "correct", and anything above or below just mangles the tone curve... on this LG the contrast control seems to be directly tied to the individual RGB channel adjustment controls and acts as a multiplier - by default, if you have the RGB sliders set to 50,50,50... the contrast slider seems to adjust the overall range linearly, up to the default setting of 70, and anything above that will cause one or all channels to start clipping above 100% white. (Edit: Checked again, and with RGB at 50, 70 was the clipping limit, not 75)
I've fiddled around and actually found that I can set the constrast slider to precisely 37, and instead push the RGB sliders up to 100,100,100... and get the exact same result, but it then allows finer tuning of the individual RGB channels.
...so I've settled on a contrast setting of 37, and RGB channels of R-98, G-91, B-100 (colour balance mode "custom", obviously), to give an absolutely perfect 6500k white balance. At those settings, a brightness setting of 19 gives me standard 120cd/m², (and a setting of 34 gives 160cd/m² if you prefer brighter). With those settings, don't set a contrast anything above 37, as 38 will cause the blue channel to clip, and instantly mess up the white balance as a result.
That's all with the default setting of Gamer 1 profile (as far as I can tell, Gamer 1 and 2 both seem identical, neutral, and allow full configuration, and every other preset mode just screws things up horribly and shuts off options)
The gamma modes are a slight sticking point - Gamma Mode 2 is the closest to a correct 2.2 gamma... but unfortunately it skews slightly on the brighter side, so for my taste (and I suspect for many others) Gamma Mode 3 does indeed feel better, even though it's slightly further from 2.2. What we really need is something around a "Gamma Mode 2-and-a-third"
Black Stabilizer just warps the tone curve at the lower end a bit without altering the lighter tones... and washes out the shadows in the process - pretty much ruining the big feature of VA panels - those inky blacks
Best left off I'd say.
"Fast" response does appear to be the optimal setting, as with most monitors... it's the highest it'll go without introducing noticable overshoot, "Faster" will start leaving dark halos.
So, that's my rundown, based on my moderate-but-certainly-not-professional understanding of colour calibration. I'm still interested to see what tftcentral makes of it, given they clearly know a lot more than I do.
I'm choosing not to actually run the monitor with an ICC profile. Being 8-bit-per-channel, instead of 10-bit, there's no wiggle-room, and applying the minor tone-curve correction causes a small amount of banding as it drops a couple of tones. Personally I feel that with the colour accuracy being so close, and the tone curve being close enough, I'd rather just have nice smooth gradients than bother with tuning it in that last 1-2%.
If anyone thinks I'm labouring under any obvious misconceptions in all this, let me know. I'd rather not spread misinformation if I'm wrong on anything
