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of 4NEC PA272W Review: A 27" Professional Monitor
6/16/2014
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Focus On: NAS
By Christian Eberle
We’ve reviewed a lot of professional-class monitors, NEC's PA272W may be the most accurate and capable
one ever to hit the Tom's Hardware lab. At almost $1300, it’s expensive for a 27-inch QHD screen. But there
are features here you won’t find elsewhere.
Regardless of what your computer is used for, it's hard to imagine a monitor with too much resolution. Sure,
you might discover that your graphics card isn't fast enough to drive a 4K screen at its native 3840x2160 in
your favorite shooter. But once you step up from FHD (1920x1080) to QHD (2560x1440) and then to UHD,
it's really, really hard to go back.
We looked at a lot of QHD monitors over the past 12 months, each step of the way lamenting that prices
simply refuse to budge. Full HD screens are a dime a dozen. Quad HD will still cost you $600 or more
(potentially a lot more), though. For that reason, most vendors are reserving the high-res stuff for their
professional monitor families.
Of course, Tom's Hardware readers know that it takes more than just high pixel density for a display to be a
true professional-grade tool. Accurate color, and a high degree of flexibility and adjustability are important
too. I believe that a wide-gamut option is mandatory, and many screens do indeed have this feature. Only a
tiny few, however, include the ability to select multiple color gamuts, white points, and gamma curves (and
then fully adjust them).
Today we're reviewing NEC's PA272W 27-inch QHD monitor. It's part of the company's Color Accurate line,
aimed squarely at users needing reference-level accuracy and the functionality to work with multiple imaging
standards.
Brand NEC
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Model PA272W
MSRP $1299
Panel Type AH-IPS
Backlight GB-r LED, edge array
Screen Size 27-inch
Max Resolution 2560x1440
Max Refresh Rate 60 Hz
Aspect Ratio 16:9
white LED. Its spectral properties make
wavelengths are
gamut that falls
within those parameters. To that end, NEC includes a Digital
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of 4NEC PA272W Review: A 27" Professional Monitor
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10-bit (8-bit w/FRC)
Native Color Depth
Native Gamut Adobe RGB
Response Time (GTG) 6 ms
Brightness 340 cd/m2
Speakers -
VGA -
DVI 1
DisplayPort v1.2 1 mini, 1 standard
HDMI 1.4 1
Audio In -
14-bit internal LUT
Headphone -
USB v2.0 - 2 up, 3 down
Media Card Reader -
Panel Dimensions
W x H x D
Panel Thickness 3.3 in / 85 mm
Bezel Width .8 in / 20 mm
Weight 28.4 lbs / 12.9 kg
Warranty Four years
The latest wide-gamut monitors all pretty much use a GB-r-LED backlight, rather than the more common
produced with equal intensity. Consequently, far less internal processing is required to
produce a large and accurate color gamut on-screen.
25.2 x 15.6-21.5 x 9.3 in
640 x 396-546 x 236 mm
it ideal for this application because red, green, and blue
Of course, when a monitor has a native Adobe RGB gamut, it should be able to produce any
seen or talked about before now. The Digital Cinema Initiative is a set of parameters that specify not
only color, but also resolution, light intensity, audio, and a whole host of other guidelines for digital
movie presentation in commercial theaters. For our purposes, we’ll just talk about the color gamut,
grayscale, and gamma specs.
Cinema preset, which is something we haven’t
The DCI color gamut lies between Rec.709/sRGB and Adobe RGB. Theoretically, a wide-gamut display
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of 4NEC PA272W Review: A 27" Professional Monitor
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should have no trouble rendering it, and the PA272W can. The color temperature spec is decidedly green in
hue and intended to compensate for the spectral properties of the high-powered Xenon lamps used in
commercial projectors. Finally, the gamma value is a good deal higher (2.6 instead of 2.2).
After a little research, I discovered that the only other desktop display capable of meeting DCI specs is
Dolby’s PRM-4220. It’s a 42-inch reference monitor with FHD resolution and a very exotic full-array RGBLED backlight incorporating 1500 diodes. It sells for an astounding $40,000. You might see a few of them in
Hollywood post-production facilities. But most of us need something a little more down-to-earth.
Photographers looking for a color-critical display will certainly be attracted to this panel’s 10-bit native color
and 14-bit internal LUT. You need a 10-bit signal path to take full advantage, but the bandwidth is there for
those who need it.
Other features we’ll look at closely are the PA272W’s factory calibration, comprehensive OSD, and
SpectraView software, which gives the user full control over all image parameters and interfaces with
popular meters from Datacolor and X-Rite.
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