UP3216Q, color uniformity complaint

I was also looking at purchasing a UP3216Q for color critical work (as, on paper, has a good price for its features). However, indeed, this is a very worrisome situation for a professional monitor and I wonder what can be done about fixing it.

1st step: Are you sure the cast is not induced by the ambient light reflecting on the monitor? Can you provide test images at night? (the light seems to come from a window on the right of the screen)

2nd step: More openness from Dell regarding the innards of the monitor and firmware would be a very welcome step. Some users are professionals in programming and given the opportunity would do their best in finding a fix for the poor calibration procedure. Considering the 10bit panel such slight, left-to right and monotone cast correction might still leave most if its color-space free for use (perhaps as a full 8bit space as well).

@yumichan

The NEC might have an advantage with color and uniformity quality but beside the high price the input electronics are dated (HDMI can't do 60Hz@4k as far I remember the specs), it weights more than double while also looking to be some 50% more power hungry. Perhaps last two points are not so critical but for the price you'd want no weakness in the inputs, I presume.

There's also the top of the line Eizo CG318-4K,  theoretically... "True" 4k which I don't find as an advantage, really. Anything  more than 16:10 is not useful as 16:9 is marginally tolerable. Too much vertical "real estate" lost to not as useful horizontal one. Same input weakness while you'd have to get used to live with one kidney considering the expense  

Finally, there's the Z32x Dreamcolor from HP which is perhaps the closest to Dell's offering. A bit more expensive but if they got the calibration right might be worth saving time with testing/returns/refunds. It seems to have flexible V-sync @4k as well (24/48/50Hz) which makes it unique in all the offers listed here. We'll see what the end users have to say about it...

A real pity Dell messed up this calibration thing so badly. If they'd be open about the hardware/firmware I'm sure a solution would have been found by now and a lot of frustration, time and money expense avoided. If they can't see how to address this mutual interest properly everybody does as it can, Dell keeps to shuffle the monitors around, hoping some users will not mind or give up their expectations while the users either tolerate the bitter feeling of a not so well performing product or simply keep their money and wait for something better. 

Color uniformity, near "glowless" IPS, 5 step uniformity compensation, 5 calibration slots on the go (updatable factory calibration), plus one slot HW calibration with fast upgrade, L* and custom curve gamma, colorimetric intent gamut emulation (for colorspaces bigger than native ) ....
SO MANY DIFFERENCES! They are not even the same species.

BTW, IDNK about Z32x, but Z27x relies on OEM colorimeter from HP... and Z32x is only 500-700euro cheaper that multisync PA322UHD (EU online stores)
So if you have more than... 700 euro? is a waste of money and time to buy these Dells or HP.

P.S: PA322UHD has a "-2" version with HDMI 2 support.

@ mikvi
As I stated in my post, the light you see is from a WHITE LED source that is located behind the screen, above and to the right. It is not daylight.

I said in the posting, I photographed the "emitted" light from the screen, NOT the ambient lighting in the room, the "light source of the screen was meterd and shot for", if you understand photography, you will know I have provided a true representation of what is being seen by my eyes and the camera.  It is the same technique you use in photography to remove daylight from a model. Meter and light subject (in this case it is self emitting) and use a fast enough shutter speed to remove ambient light.

The lambient ight looks dull and off white, because "it is underexposed" by approximately 5-6 stops. Due to the correct exposure of the self-emitting screen.

The very faint ambient light hitting the screen's bezel is from that source, which is 5200 degrees kelvin, so would not create a pink or green cast.  The ceiling and wall to the right are white. They reflect some of this white light around the room, but not directly on the screen, light simply cannot bend around the screen.

The wall behind the screen is a very very pale lilac in the order of 5% saturated, it is a "cold" hue not a warm pink seen in this issue, AND "this wall is behind the screen" SO any light hitting it would "not" reflect from this wall, all the way to the other side of the room and back to the sceen, some 30 feet distance, with enough strenght to account this strong pink, ON ONE SIDE ONLY of the screen.

Beyond that, I have had the same lighting in-situe for years, and never had "cast" from my controlled lighing on any other screen so I can say for 100% sure that this is not my lighting doing something to this one particular screen, whilst not affecting my others.

And finally, if I move off center, the effect is worse, which shows it is a chroma cast associated with the screen, and it's viewing angle, something you would expect to see in a cheap £300 TN screen, not a £1000 IPS.

@equipped2000

The reason I suggested getting rid of ambient light in your evaluation is to remove yet one free variable in testing. I can see on the back wall an ambient light gradient which I assume would reflect similarly on the screen. As you know, there are good reasons why monitors for color critical work provide a hood to shield against such problems.

Perhaps this ambient light hitting the screen at an angle and with varying intensity is not really visibly impacting on the quality of light emitted by the screen itself, very likely so but from your pictures it looks like a factor that might have had something to do with it.

They need those options, that's why they exist. Funny how would you feed one of these monitors with DCI-P3 or Rec2020 data without them (if no computers are involved). But if we relax the requirements then perfect uniformity and gamut are the key points, calibration could be done perfectly with a cheap AMD card and there are software solutions to LUT3D gamut emulation for video. The lack of good uniformity out of the box and the very limiting conditions to use uniformity compensation feature, make these Dell, Benq, Samsung, HP very unappealing once you pass a certain price.

We buy dell by its prices (which are fair in 24"-27" QHD range), otherwise with expensive models you are cheating yourself: you cannot afford an usable widegamut monitor with those features (32" 4k widegamut... etc) unless you have more money (about 2600-3500 euro in some EU stores for the NEC).

If you have 1500-1600 euro and are willing to spend it on a monitor, then get a PA272W QHD ("2k")... otherwise you are wasting your money and your /OUR time with endless threads. Dell even seems unable to fix issues with DCCS  for 24"-27" models and other companies like LG or HP offer even worse software solutions. I bought my dell on 2013 and I've seen too many DCCS versions without solving them.

Of course you a free to spend between 1700 and 2500 euro with a Z32x, for me is just another way of wasting your money.

I didn't know about the "-2" version, time to take a 2nd look... If it can also do the 30/48/50/60Hz v-sync I wouldn't mind that much the 3x price (the large input lag might be more of an issue though).

Otherwise, while HP is an unknown, as far I know it does provide an OEM colorimeter but does no lock you into it. It remains to be seen how good it is for real.

Even most professional users do no need all the fancy options you listed for NEC. Good (not necessary perfect) color coverage and uniformity with proper working hardware calibration does the job nicely. Dell was aiming very well here and HP even better with the flexible v-sync, a pity for the so poor implementation...  (an even bigger pity if this is actually fixable if not for the secrecy and all the bureaucratic hurdles related with closed hardware) 

Also note that these photographs are from a camera RAW source. That means white balance can be changed and corrected pefeectly, unlike jpegs.
As I said in the post, if you download a copy of one of the images and "try to set the grey background to neutral in "your own copy of photoshop or whatever" you will see it is impossible to get a consistent neutral tone across the image" becuase the screen IS NOT emitting a consistent neutral tone across the screen.

Simple physics, and a simple test you can perform yourself.

@equipped2000 

Agreed, I'm not debating the problem of the monitor which looks to be real. I was only suggesting (perhaps for other users having similar screen quality issues) to post pictures of the monitor preferably in a dark room, avoiding ambient light completely, if possible. To remove camera calibration effects you'd even have to compare pictures with different orientations (eg. like a 2nd one, same exposure but with camera or monitor upside down :))

@yumichan

This is getting a too long conversation...  A "true" graphics professional would consider the time/money equation in favor of the additional 2-4k for Nec or Eizo but even for him, if he runs into a problem he's bound to pay dearly. I'm just one potential buyer in this market, maybe others like me are also too cautious before risking their cash and time into a product so I just listed a perspective and options. In my case, I happen to have more time than cash and Dell (or even HP) looked like hitting a good spot until getting into such nasty problems for Dell. From my perspective, what I dislike the most is not being able to do anything about it, even if the monitor's hardware would allow for a solution. Being stuck to a *** implementation dully done by a 9am-5pm engineer too tired and bored by his job is not at all appealing. 

I did not write "three star" implementation, the word was  deleted.

Thanks for the analytical breakdown of the other models, I did look at them all, I "was" tempted by the Eizo, but at £3000 I decided it was not a good value investment.  I don't want 2k. I have been using 2k for years now and wanted more ppi and resolution, hence the 32" 4k format, which for a photographer is almost perfect due to the invisible pixel pitch and extra room when post processing.

I wasn't really fussed about the LuT callibration features of the screen (which are a /fail anyway)
What I do need is grey to be grey. White to be White.  My cheaper screens managed to achieve this reasonably well, so I was not expecting this screen to be any worse, as Dell advertise this as " a professional grade screen with *** uniformity ". 

If you get a good copy of the Dell, and "IF" you can forgo all other settings and ONLY use the unifomity compensated setting in standard mode, which has a gamut larger than aRGB, then the screen is reasonable. If you need to profile outside this, this screen is a dud.

You just can't use aRGB mode to reduce the gamut to your aRGB workflow, nor can you reliably use CAL1/CAL2 due to the shadow compression you see post callibration.

I've had to resort to using the screen with uniformity compensation on and not working within the adobe RGB gamut that I use inside Lightroom and Photoshop and Kolor Auto Pano Giga and Illustrator, and Corel and all my other aRGB profiled applications....

All I can do is adjust "brightness".

Uniformity is a bit better, I still have some *** cast, white is not white evenly, and for the sacrifice in this respect, I double-check my work on another (more reliable but smaller) screen before anything goes to print.

It's not ideal. It's not exactly what I paid for either, but time wasted on this is time I can be productive elsewhere.  I plan on getting rid of this screen the moment something better comes along, quantum dot, oled, whatever.... so long as it can display even white and grey.  4k prices will continue to fall. 

My bad for assuming they had matured enough for the mid-range screens to be reasonably good.
For this money, I should have purchased and Asus ROG 34" 144Hz and at least I could have done some hardcore gaming on it too, lol!

It's Dells loss in the long run.

equiped2000. This is not about you, it's about potential buyers of widegamut monitors:

• 450-700 € dell are more or less OK in 24-27" range
• 900-2000 € NEC PA series 24-27"
• more than 2000 €  needed for an usable widegamut 32" 4k

You made an uneducated purchase... so it's your fault, not other people's fault. DCCS & uniformity issues have been here for years, how to test it, how to measure them... even without doing a research before buying, EVERYBODY knows that you have to purchase, measure uniformity (i1displaypro should be in your house before) and return to store if it does not fit your needs or quality standards for its price.

Of couse you can keep going to 4-5 page thread for our amusement or to free your anger because of uneducated purchase... that will not change that "3 step" budget in widegamuts.
There are people happy with their dells although they could be better... but they are in the "1st step".

Actually I answered you (everybody knows it, but it seems that you don't):

-purchase

-measure

-if bad results, then return for refund

...you can do it several times until by quantum chance you get a good one (or realize that you cannot afford a 32" 4k with your current budget)


This is going to be funny... specially if you trully believe that there will be an special update of DCCS (or uniformity compensation data for your unit) for a dell bought from a reseller.

All that Dell can offer you is that 3 step loop, no trolling, it's the truth... so your questions have been answered.