With its fully adjustable stand, a wide choice of inputs, a
four-port USB hub and an IPS panel, Asus's PA238Q is a serious piece of kit.
Asus claims a 100 per cent sRGB color palette, and in our calibration tests the
PA238Q came very close. IPS panels’ response times are improving, and the
PA238Q's styling will appeal to gamers.
Its increased color palette made the jungles and beaches of
Crysis come to life, and we noticed no ghosting or input lag. It’s not quite as
smooth as a 120Hz monitor, but it's certainly close.
The PA238Q needed very little tweaking to get accurate
colors. The calibration process dimmed the display slightly, but it reported 98
per cent sRGB compliance from the factory settings, which is remarkable. A
comprehensive menu system also lets you tweak colors, and you can change the
hue and saturation for the three primary colors, plus cyan, magenta and yellow,
as well as RGB gain and offset.
Image quality is superb, although there's a little backlight
bleed, which shows as a faint blue glow in black areas. Images really come to
life when the monitor has more colors to use. In Casino Royale, the
Caribbean scenes were suffused with a warm glow, while no detail was lost in
darker scenes.
The inside of the bezel is marked with notches, like a
ruler, which gives it a technical look. The stand has a triangular
cross-section that allows for 10cm of vertical movement and the ability to
pivot to portrait mode.
It's surprisingly thin considering the number of inputs, and
is well suited to wall-mounting as all its I/O ports face either downwards or
sideways. It doesn’t have speakers, which isn’t a huge loss, but you can
connect headphones to monitor the HDMI or DisplayPort audio. Having one of each
major input is a real bonus, and DisplayPort is useful if you want to create a
multi-monitor AMD Eyefinity setup.
A year ago, the PA238Q would have been great value, but if
you don't need the adjustable stand, USB hub or DisplayPort input, ViewSonic’s
VX2336s-LED gives you an accurate IPS panel for only $150.
Asus
PA238Q
Technical data
Price:
$274
From: www.cclonline.com
Verdict:
The PA238Q has great color accuracy, a fully adjustable stand and a wide
variety of inputs - but you do pay for them
23in
widescreen LCD: 1,920x1,080 native resolution, VGA, DVI, HDMI inputs,
four-port USB hub, 1x DisplayPort, headphone output
Part code:
PA238Q
Details: www.asus.com
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