Color quality
The quality of colors is measured with the LaCie BlueEye Pro colorimeter, which in fact is a Gretag colorimeter coupled to the software suite developed by LaCie.
Just to remind you, we work with a value called DeltaE. It represents a measurement between the color requested and the one really displayed on the monitor. The higher the result obtained, the less true colors are. The value is also counter-balanced for human eye color sensitivity.
Delta E > 3 the desired color is noticeably different from the one on the screen.
2 < Delta E < 3 color quality is satisfactory but a graphic designer probably wouldn’t be content
1< Delta E <2 colors are accurate.
Delta E < 1, the result is perfect.
Each time, 18 patches of color are studied and 16 results are reported in a graph.
Here are the average gaps (DeltaE 94) measured for our 18 color patches (the smaller the better):
This monitor claims a wide gamut, 114% of NTSC space, but Samsung has optimized it for sRGB, which is quite obvious. We can choose the display mode via the small control in lower left corner of the monitor. In sRGB, according to the average dE at 3, colors are accurate form the start. If we choose the Adobe RGB table, it increases to 5.8.
Calibrating it with a good probe is enough to correct the RGB Adobe colors to not only have better but richer colors.
If you aren’t familiar with this, it might surprise you. Skies, for example, show colors inaccessible to other monitors. We could even believe that they are too saturated and pushed too far, but they aren’t.
For calibration, you can use the probe that comes with the monitor, the Gretag Huey. We don’t like it too much, because it’s too instable and makes imperfect corrections. Also the brightness adjustment function is more toy-like than anything. It is unfortunate that Samsung hasn’t instead given us the possibility to have a price reduction of €99, the price of the Huey, to choose another probe. Perhaps we expect too much.
In terms of the gamut, the improvement is quite spectacular form one space to another:
This time, the entire ISOcoated space of professional printers is comprised in the monitor space. Professional graphic designers won’t be surprised when they will see the result on paper.
This gamut is much wider than with monitors equipped with new CCFL backlights or the wide gamut recently found in the Nec 26” monitor:
IPS 6 ms: Nec MultiSync LCD2690WUXi
