ASUS PA238Q 23 vs Dell UltraSharp U2312HM 23"

Looking for a good ips panel for doing some mid level graphics/editing work.When dealing with graphics work its all about color accuracy and reproduction...  

Edited by Dsnewb210 - 16 Mar 2012 at 12:52pm

Ultrasharp

Color reproduction on the asus is pretty amazing... 1.07billion colours from its 30-bit colour depth.

Just read some reviews on the Asus PA238 and it compares to the Dell's in gaming, some liking the screen a bit better.  The much higher color needs special hardware, etc to make use of.  For gaming it's not noticable.   You'd know more than me, but I'm sure editing, graphics, etc would welcome the color. 

Edited by bprat22 - 18 Mar 2012 at 4:02am

Decided to go with the Asus pa238q, I will let you guys know how it turns out. Ive always purchased dell monitors but wasn't very impressed with the 2408wfp I purchased awhile back.

Originally posted by Dsnewb210 Looking for a good ips panel for doing some mid level graphics/editing work. When dealing with graphics work its all about color accuracy and reproduction...

I would err towards the Asus in that case, as I currently am in mine.
 

Originally posted by Dsnewb210 Decided to go with the Asus pa238q, I will let you guys know how it turns out.

Has it arrived yet? Do you have any comments, good or bad, that might help a person who is trying to make exactly the same decision?

Nice..   Thanks for the feedback.  The review I read gave it high marks.

Originally posted by FrankW They all display 16.7mil colors. The Asus does have a 30bit lookup table but it still only displays 16.7mil colors. At least that is what their site says.

I can't find the links (I forgot to bookmark those ones...) but I've read that the panel used in the Asus is a 6-bit one just like in the Dell, so it will use FRC or similar trickery to achieve/claim 16.7 million colours. The difference is in the processing behind the screen, the Asus using 10-bit processing when translating the data from your graphics card via the various calibration options to the values it asks the panel to display. I assume the difference between 8-bit and 10-bit here is similar to scanning at 16bit/channel rather than 8 even though the output is going to be 8bit/channel in the end: if you keep a higher precision internally and sample down at the last available opportunity you introduce less error along the way and hopefully get a better result out.

I'll have to hunt through my history and see if I can find the sites that opened the thing to find out exactly which screen it uses to see if it is the same one Dell use, some other 6-bit IPS screen, or something else...

Originally posted by FrankW I think the Dell is 8bit/color or 24bit True Color giving 16.7 million colors. Frank

I though I'd read that they both had 6-bit e-IPS panels that use temporal or spatial trickery to attain the impression of 16-point-something million colours, but that both used higher depth internally (8 bit for the Dell and 10 bit for the Asus) until the last point in the chain. I'm happy to be proven wrong though, this is not my area of expertise and I can't (re)find the article(s) that I think I'm remembering as stating those things.

As of this morning (about 12 hours ago) I have one of each sat on my desk, so I'll throw down my initial assessment in case it helps anyone else trying to make a choice. I've not spent much time tweaking them as I had other kit to assemble and install (I'm building a new desktop, new OS and the works, and upgrading the old one for other uses, and making a third machine with the excess parts and a few other spares).

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  * Both seem very very nice on first impressions.
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  * The Asus is about 35UKP more expensive than the Dell which could be the most significant factor for many people. This may obviously very depending on your local market conditions.
  
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  * The colour reproduction seems noticeably but not earth shatteringly better on the Asus, I've tweaked the Dell a little, the Asus is currently in sRGB mode as it came out of the box except I've reduced the brightness (both are too bright for me out-of-the-box, there may be room to improve both of the screens with further fiddling when I have time to experiment). If I'd just got a pair of the Dells so couldn't see them side by side I don't think I'd be complaining at all - both are significantly better then the cheap LG and old-but-was-quite-expensive-at-the-time-I-bought-it-and-bettered-the-much-newer-LG ViewSonic I previously had and the screens I use at work. Both the Asus and the Dell appear manage vibrant colours when they should and subtle ones at the appropriate time too. They show good detail (but not too much) in both light and dark areas (a good test of that it the opening sequence for S01E01 of Game of Thrones which contains a fair amount of black/dark detail and bright white detail, sometimes on screen at the same time), the the Asus doing slightly better, certainly when it comes to dark detail, though the Dell produces a very slightly deeper black.
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  * The backlight bleed people report in the Asus is there but it not nearly as bad in my unit as some people seem to be seeing - I don't know if that is others overreacting, my eyes not being all that good so not picking it up, or if I've been luckier than other people and have a better unit. It follows the pattern others describe (a little top-left and bottom-right, worse in the top-right and bottom-left). Unless I have a pure black display (I created a pure black web page and put my browser into full screen more on each) and have all other light sources turned off (night so no sun, direct or otherwise, and all artificial lights in the room save for a few LEDs turned off) it doesn't jump out at me. When playing dark video sequence (I chose a few scenes from 200x's Battlestar Galactica remake to test that) under less artificial circumstances I can see it but only if I consciously look for it. The Dell has some backlight bleed too, most noticeably in the bottom left - though when I say "most noticeably" it should be noted that it isn't as noticeable as the Asus's anywhere on the screen (fyi, my cheapish LG that I'll be selling on soon now these have arrived has bleed top and bottom, and the old faithful ViewSonic that unfortunately died recently had no bleed that I remember noticing at all).
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  * The Asus feels a little sturdier, particularly the stand. In both cases the main unit is pleasantly understated (black bezel, not too thick, the thing that most stands out being the small shiny brand name in the middle bottom (which is subtle enough in both cases) and the bright blue "power on" LED on the Dell (I have a thing against bright blue LEDs, the power indicator on the Asis is more to my liking, but that is really nit-picking!)). The Asus definitely wins in the feel/look design department IMO, but it is a close match.
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  * I haven't decided if the picture-in-picture (and two sources side-by-side) feature of the Asus is something that I'll find really useful or if it is just a gimmick. I have a usually-headless server plugged into its VGA input at the moment. The Dell does not have this feature at all.
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  * Being able to rotate the screens on their standard stands will be very useful to me - I like having a portrait orientation for some document work. I've previously mounted one monitor on a third-party arm in permanent portrait orientation but now I can keep both landscape by default and rotate either or both when I want to, this extra flexibility could be most useful. Both have good adjustability beyond rotation too. I'd would have liked to see some way of securing the power connectors though - the DP plug holds in pretty tight in both cases (and DVI and/or VGA can be screwed in if you are using those) but the power lead could very easily pull lose when rotating either of the monitors if you are not careful (it did first time it rotated the Dell).
  

I'm happy with both screens though based on today's impressions I prefer the Asus a little. Neither are perfect, but they are at least as near as I think I can reasonably expect at these prices so both seem to be good value for money IMO. I think the main deciding point if you are trying to chose between the two will be if you want the better colour overall and slightly better physical package (in which case get the Asus) or if you want to save a little money, have less potential backlight issues, and don't mind not-quite-as-good stand and main unit design (in which case go for the Dell).

One little warning: the Asus didn't auto-detect which input was in use (DP in my case) so I panicked slightly (have I got something wrong? or is something broken?!) when first turning the new machine on - it has an SSD instead of any spinning metal and its fans are surprisingly quite compared the machines near-by so I got nothing on screen and no significant sound and though it just wasn't working at all!


Edited by dspillett - 06 Apr 2012 at 7:29pm

When I was looking for an IPS monitor I picked the NEC due to its much better stand than what was on the Dell at the time.