ASUS PROART PA329Q

And the winner is...

FIRST, A FEWWORDS ON HDR. It’s undoubtedly the screen technology dujour. But it’s also of marginal benefit on the PC—currently. The hardware is ready. You can buy an HDR screen, and the latest graphics cards from Nvidia and AMD are ready to roll. The problem is the content. There almost isn’t any.

It’s a particular problem on the PC at the moment. Service providers who are currently streaming in HDR, such as Amazon Prime, are yet to support the PC. Meanwhile, true HDR PC games—rather than games that render in HDR internally, but then knock the output back to SDR— have yet to arrive. With that in mind, we would recommend viewing HDR more as an investment in the future, rather than a killer feature today. The fact that few PC monitors are currently HDR-compliant is therefore no huge loss.

HDR or no, there are some fabulous screens on test this month. However, two stand out as relative stinkers, namely the Philips Brilliance BDM3490UC and the LG 38UC99. The Philips is undone purely by pricing. It’s not a flawed product, it’s just far too expensive. As for the LG, we had very high hopes. But its subdued, even dull, image quality pulls the rug out from under our enthusiasm. The remaining six screens have a huge amount to offer, though. The AOC U3477PQU is the easy pick as the value proposition. For around $600, you get a great 34-inch superwide IPS panel, wrapped in a slick chassis. Sure, it isn’t exactly loaded with extras, but it’s a large heap of screen for the money.

As for the Samsung 9 Series SUHDTV, in many ways, it’s the most stunning display that we have ever hooked up to a PC. Thanks to its HDR-capable feature set, 4K resolution, and epic panel size, it makes for a simply stellar gaming experience, even without frame synching or high refresh support. It’s not badly calibrated for use as a PC monitor, either. However, its size is also its downfall, both in terms of practicality, and the impact on pixel pitch. Epson’s PowerLite 5040UB, meanwhile, falls into a category all of its own. As a vaguely affordable way to go beyond 1080p with a projector, we highly recommend it. But just like any projector, it has niche, albeit highly cinematic, appeal.

That just leaves us with our podiumposition competitors, all three of which are superb displays. The Samsung CF791 is a fabulous multimedia display. Whether it’s games, video, or productivity, it’s a delight to use and genuinely innovative, with its quantum dot tech and extreme curve. The BenQ PD3200U, on the other hand, is the perfect foil for the CF791. It delivers precision and accuracy in a straightforward package, and at a competitive price.

But the overall honors have to go to the Asus ProArt PA329Q. It’s a serious piece of precision display engineering. It has a strong feature set for professional content creation, gorgeous high-DPI 4K image quality, and plenty of future-proofing with the likes of quantum dot color enhancement. If you are serious about computing, it’s one of the very best monitors money can buy.

The Asus ProArt PA329Q is a serious piece of precision display engineering, future-proofed with quantum dot color enhancement.