Acer V226HQL monitor review - The Great Dynamic Contrast Hoax

I recently bought Acer V226HQL from a one of the Finland's biggest electronics stores, Verkkokauppa.com.

I wanted to buy a monitor with a good VA panel ( or with similar technology ) because of the better contrast and color accuracy.  There should be a lot of relatively cheap VA monitors on sale, and the new ones generally have around 3000 - 5000:1 static contrast. I also wanted the monitor to have LED backlighting because I believe they tend to last longer. They are also lighter and I need a light monitor for my extended monitor arm. And I wanted it to be cheap.
Prad Lcd-Monitor Feature Guide

But buying a monitor when you know what you want is not an easy task, especially if you want to have it in average consumer's price class. The stores rely on manufacturer's information about features so internet is full of online stores that have the same copy&paste list of monitor's features and nothing else. When a manufacturer decides to release only information about dynamic contrast but nothing about static contrast or even what kind of panel technology is used, only way to find information is to wait for decent reviews.

When I bought Acer V226 HQL I knew that the dynamic contrast they inform is nothing but a joke. The stores have monitors that have dynamic contrast ratio's like 100M:1, 50M:1, 10M:1.

Contrast is measured as a ratio between the darkest black and brightest white so in 10M:1 contrast the white should have 10 000 000 times more light than black.

Static contrast ( also called native contrast ) is measured as ratio between white and black in one picture. Typical TN- and IPS - panels have around 1000:1 static contrast. These new VA-panels have 3000-5000:1. Best high-end projectors have 120 000:1 static contrast. 

Dynamic contrast is measured between white and black as well, but they don't have to be in the same picture. When the picture has more black, the monitor or projector can dim the backlighting or projector lamp a bit to have more blacker black. If the backlight is dimmed for instance to half, it might appear as the monitor has doubled it's contrast ratio. But you cannot get the same constrast ratio if there's white and black in the same picture.

When the manufacturer announce dynamic contrast ratios like 100M:1, 50M:1, 10M:1 they basically turn the backlight completely off in black pictures. Human eye cannot see a difference anymore between these 100M:1 and 50M:1 dynamic contrast ratios. They are only used in marketing. They have no value in real use.

Therefore it's both funny and sad at the same time that only contrast ratio measurements you get from the stores and manufacturers are the dynamic one's. There's no mention about how much is the static contrast ratio.

I have spectrophotometer ColorMunki Photo and colorimeter EyeOne Display. I used spectrophotometer to measure spectrum and to calibrate the colorimeter. For colorimeter calibration I used ArgyllCMS software.

The correction matrix for i1 Disply and Acer V226 HQL is:
0.947442 -0.016717 0.034516
0.015419 0.942598 -0.008304
-0.014463 0.023312 1.056311
You can use these values directly in ColorHCFR. It's of course not 100% accurate with your i1 Display but it might be better than nothing.

Then I measured the monitor with i1 Display and ColorHCFR software.
The monitor has ANSI contrast about 3000:1, the best measurement I got was 3500:1. The ON/OFF contrast was also 3000:1 which meant that dynamic contrast was not in use by default.

There was no mention about dynamic contrast in the manual and I guessed ( right? ) that the setting "ACM" meant dynamic contrast. I switched it on and measured contrast ratio's again. To my surprise,the ON/OFF contrast was lower, about 1500:1! The black levels were the same but the white brightness was a half of what it used to be. And the ANSI contrast was higher with ACM on ! That should be impossible but it wasn't.  Somehow ACM was not treating the left and right sides of the screen similar. The ANSI checkerboard images are mirror images of each other so they both have equal brightness and ACM should have the same backlighting for the both of them but somehow the backlighting was changed. 

I used the default settings, brightness 100 and contrast 50. If you set the contrast setting higher, the white levels start to get clipped, the white looks overexposed.


As you can see the RGB levels are quite good. No need to adjust anything from the monitor.




CIE diagram shows it's not possible to get all the colors of sRGB even with calibration. A little bit of cyan side of blue and green will be missing.
( White triangle is the measured colors, black is what it should be. Think monitor color primaries as three crayons, red, green and blue. Mixing these three crayons you can get any color that's inside the triangle but not the color's that are outside the triangle. So when you calibrate your monitor, you are adding a little more blue to your red crayon( primary) so that the color is the same red primary that is in the black triangle. )


The gamma is around 2.


I measured saturation shifts using the sRGB primaries, not "Use measured colors(when available)". That's why the blue primary shows way off.

After measurements I uninstalled the Acer's default calibration and did recalibration with ArgyllCMS&DispcalGUI. Sorry I didn't get any measurements after that because I've done calibration with ArgyllCMS so many times and the results are always near perfect. Of course even ArgyllCMS cannot give the monitor it's missing shades of cyan.

Here's the calibration file, but this is calibrated only for my monitor. I also like to use gamma value of 2.4.
"V226HQL 2013-06-05 max D6500 min native 2.4 HQ XYZLUT+MTX.icm"

The viewing angles should by 178 degrees according to Acer but I can see with my own eyes they are not even near that. It's more like in typical TN panels. When I'm watching to monitor at a distance of a half meter, I can see that in the edges the blacks start look more pale. That means that even when watched at front in 25 degree angle I can see variations of the picture. That does not happen with my other monitor which has an IPS panel.  I did not measure the viewing angles but would like to see the real world measurements. Even though the black start to look pale when viewing from the front, it's still watchable from 45 degree angles. But don't expect to watch movies at those angles. (And why should you?)

After I bought this monitor, I wrote a public question about the dynamic contrast in Verkkokauppa.com's web site. They have a feature you can ask questions in public about specific product's or write reviews. They replied I should ask AcerFinland about this one and removed my question so it wasn't any more public.( I could see with other products the questions did not get removed after answering). Then I sent an email ( 15.6 ) to AcerFinland about the dynamic contrast. I'm still (13.7) waiting for an answer...

I could return this to store because the dynamic contrast ratios are not what are advertised but I bought this for the good static contrast ratios. The brightness is good, right now I'm writing this text in my balcony. Not in direct sunlight, but in daylight conditions.



Verdict:
+ static contrast is very good 3000:1
+ 3 years warranty
+ bright enough and matte screen good for daylight viewing.
+ light, as are all the monitors with LED backlighting ( I move this monitor a lot with Ergotron Quick Release LCD Bracket )
+ low energy consumption

- dynamic contrast is a hoax.
- viewing angles are definitely not 178.

Comments

  1. Could you post full model name of your monitor? Here in Poland there are 4 variants with V226HQL symbol and I'm not sure which should I choose.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Actully the "Model No." is V266HQL but there's also "Version" which is V226HQL Abd. "Part number" is UM.WV6EE.A01.

    There's one Dilbert comic strip about this:
    - There's negative review of our product in the internet. Nobody's gonna buy this product!
    - Ok. Here's what we do. Remove one or two features, make a new model number and sell it at old price.

    Sad but true...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Last question ;) Could you post your settings (brightnes, contrast etc)? I'm trying to set it right and I can't find best values.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I used the default settings, brightness 100 and contrast 50, colour temp is User but all the values RGB are 100. Did you install the calibration file? It's not the best because it wasn't calibrated for your monitor but it still might be better than nothing.

      Delete
  4. One more question, after few months ;) Could you post your settings from service mode of your monitor? You can get it folowing this steps:
    1/ Turn off monitor
    2/ Holding most left button, turn on monitor
    3/ Enter to menu
    2/ Menu will be moved to upper left corner. Use 4th button to highlight F option and enter using 3rd button

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I can't enter service menu that way. It brings up some kind of service menu that contains Burn In, ADC etc. but no F option.

      Delete
  5. Acer V226HQL monitor review - The Great Dynamic Contrast Hoax. I recently bought Acer V226HQL from a one of the Finland's biggest ... sacermonitor.blogspot.de

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hey bro, im intrested in this monitor,
    i had an IPS screen which is have a bad panel so this time i thought to go with small budget with this screen.

    can u please post a picture of side-by-side with an IPS display?
    hope you're enjoying youre screen!

    ReplyDelete

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