Cheap monitor for color grading

Hello
I'm new to color grading, but my monitor isn't up to it.
Prompt please the inexpensive monitor to 200 300$ for a start?
Thank you!

I have the ASUS ProArt Display PA279CV 27” 4K HDR UHD (3840 x 2160) Monitor, IPS, 100% sRGB/Rec. 709, ΔE < 2, USB-C DisplayPort HDMI USB hub, Calman Verified
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08K2GFDKM/re ... UTF8&psc=1


There is a non-4k version for $369.
ASUS ProArt Display 27" Monitor PA278CV - WQHD (2560 x 1440), IPS, 100% sRGB, 100% Rec. 709, ΔE < 2, Calman Verified
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08LCPY1TR/re ... =UTF8&th=1

BenQ makes good monitors especially for color grading on the cheap (well not all are cheap). But if you don't mind not being able to see from the sides and work directly in front of the monitor, this is a very good deal. It has (10-bit with FRC) and supports HDR10, more importantly it is a decent monitor that will let you grade for cine and broadcast. This 4K monitor has 95% DCI-P3 and 100% Rec. 709 gamma. If you are planning on grading for festivals and theater deliveries, at 95% the DCI-P3 is great. For general broadcast (or even web) delivery, this monitor is 100% Rec709. Just get a calibration tool like a SpyderX from DataColor or X-rite color checkers, and this free software https://displaycal.net/.

The 31.5" is about $399 and the 27.9" is about $249.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/ ... x2160.html

Important Note: Always calibrate your monitors regardless of kind and do so often.

Good advice, but I wouldn't trust the Spyder, get X-rite.

Buy secondhand, eg Dell Ultrasharp U3014T.

Buy secondhand, eg Dell Ultrasharp U3014T.

The Dell Ultrasharp U3014T are nice monitors but are best for photos and not much for videos, especially if you want to grade for film or broadcast quality. It supports adobeRGB and sRGB gamut which are pretty standard for photography but not DCI-P3 and/or Rec709 gamut which are used for movies and broadcast respectively. I think for web delivery (like YouTube, Vimeo), the Dell is a good choice to since sRGB is a computer monitor standard gamut.

I second Ellory Yu's recommendation.

BenQ has consolidated their Video and Photo lineup of monitors into the Photo models. Those will support calibrating of the monitor itself. (Plug the color probe directly into the monitor and no mater what system you connect to it, it will keep its calibration. Also means no display LUT management within resolve if you are using an UltraStudio or DeckLink) The other option is getting a Design series monitor from them and calibrating it in your system/Resolve. If you do get one of the photo/design monitors from BenQ, they will warranty most color accuracy/uniformity issues with them as well and their support has been friendly in the past for me. (so will most other manufactures that sell a monitor designated for "creators" like the ProArt from Asus etc.)

Regardless of what monitor you get, DisplayCal is great and make sure not to skip the interactive display calibration step in the beginning of calibration. Just adjusting the RGB settings in the monitor directly so that the probe sees an accurate white at your desired brightness level will make a huge difference. Obviously don't skip out on the rest of the calibration but I find just that step brings accuracy a great deal in the right direction.

I have the ASUS ProArt Display PA279CV 27” 4K HDR UHD (3840 x 2160) Monitor, IPS, 100% sRGB/Rec. 709, ΔE < 2, USB-C DisplayPort HDMI USB hub, Calman Verified
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08K2GFDKM/re ... UTF8&psc=1

Looks like a bargain, how does it perform?

There are likely better choices but if you're looking at working with something at the low-end...I've been doing a fair amount of (non-commercial) work with this for the last 5 years: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00YD ... UTF8&psc=1

Good evening.
I am also interested in the ASUS ProArt PA279CV model, regarding color grading, I would like to ask if it is worth working in HDR mode in an LED panel.
Thank you

Good evening.
I am also interested in the ASUS ProArt PA279CV model, regarding color grading, I would like to ask if it is worth working in HDR mode in an LED panel.
Thank you

My simple advice, if you are doing SDR monitoring work or just using it as the NLE display, most of the mentioned prosumer monitors with the appropriate and calibrated contrast and gamma should be fine. If you are looking to do HDR, then invest in a grade 1 monitor at the least, or one that is TRUE 10-bit or higher. Don’t mistake HDR with high resolution like 4K, 8K etc. You can monitor SDR on 4K and 8K too, just as you can monitor HDR on 2K. Important thing to note is that SDR is mastered at 100 nits while HDR is mastered at 400 nits. This is regardless of resolution.

I just found this one, although not the cheapest, it looks like a good display.

Philips 4K UHD Mini-LED Thunderbolt™ 4-monitor 27B1U7903 for around 1299 euro

2304 local dimming zones.
1000 (SDR), 1400 (HDR) cd/m²
1.07 Billion Colors (10-bit)
DCI-P3: 97,2%, NTSC 121%, sRGB 154%, Adobe RGB 99.2%, REC 709 99.1%, REC 2020 80.4%

Don't look blindly at these quoted numbers as they are "just on paper".
From cheaper models BenQ, Asus ProArt is good choice (not so sure about Dell). If you can stretch then Eizo is good choice (or get used one).
HDR wise- forget about it if you don't have good money to spend. It has to be zoned panel or OLED as otherwise HDR in unrealistic.
If you want HDR then probably better to go LG OLED.

Also- it's better to get decent HD monitor then some average UHD. You can always grade on HD and judge other UHD bits on cheap UHD monitor.

It's also important that monitor is made for video work, supports video formats (I/P and multiple refresh rates).

Always read- there is about always fairly decent review for given monitor.
HDR in ASUS ProArt PA279CV is a gimmick. It does 400nits, so you can hardly call it HDR.

Prade.de is quite good: https://www.prad.de/testberichte/test-a ... arbeitung/
just use browser translation.

I thank you for the answers.
Another question I would like to ask.
I need a 27 inch, would a 4K reslution make sense on this size or would sabbbe more suitable a resolution of 2560x1440 ?
Thank you

I'm working all day long on a 27" UHD (non OLED).
If you need to check for detail and sharpness, I'd go UHD, if you need to save money and just check colors, go HD.
LG has an OLED model in 27, the LG 27EP950. Its 32" brother was highly acclaimed by Marc, one of the truly professional colorists around here.
Cheap is relative, of course. If you want to grade HDR, it seems to be the cheapest right now.

Those OLEDs do just 500nits. Not enough for HDR.
They are mainly used for SDR.

I checked the price on the LG site, honestly 3000 euros is a high figure for a 27 inch, it seems strange to me that this monitor is not adequate for HDR.
Otherwise I'd better spend lower figures with fake HDR like the ASUS ProArt PA279CV.

You should be able to buy it cheaper. Its bigger brother was available for about 2K Euro if I'm correct.

LG is an OLED panel, so very different monitor. It peaks at 540nits, not <400 as Asus. It calibrates extremely well for SDR.
There is no consumer OLED panel which can do 1000nits.

Check other shops as manufacture's website is typically most expensive.
I would buy 32inch one as it's basically same price.

If it's not what you need/want don't buy it
Don't buy Asus if you want to do HDR as it's totally unsuitable. If you want to work with HDR cheapest is probably to buy LG OLED TV (700nits peak). There are now 42inch models for about 1K euro. Great price.
LG G models now hitting 900nits and cheapest is around 1.5K Euro if I'm correct.

There is nothing decent <1K Euro for HDR. Even pass that it's always somehow compromised.
If you can't afford forget about HDR and stick to accurate SDR

The 32" version is only 2.260 at Amazon in Germany, and Amazon is not always the cheapest.

Might become even less in January.

Those OLEDs do just 500nits. Not enough for HDR.

My understanding to be considered HDR, you have to at least be at 400nits. If so, then you should be able to monitor HDR with a 400 nits calibrated monitor. Of course the higher the better but 400 should be enough.

It all depends on the market you are working for.

My work is amateur as an enthusiast for private footage, and making upscaled and regraded of old or SD films only for passion and personal use as a collector.

My understanding to be considered HDR, you have to at least be at 400nits. If so, then you should be able to monitor HDR with a 400 nits calibrated monitor. Of course the higher the better but 400 should be enough.

I think it all depends on your clientele and their expectations. If you're doing sub-$1M movies destined mostly for streaming platforms where the expectations are pretty low, you could probably fake HDR on just about anything.

The biggest issue that I see is that color grading is branching out to all corners of film production, from literally glorified home movies to Avatar 2. Depending on what tier you work on, solutions might be either perfectly acceptable or not at all.

I noticed this while surfing B&H today. $1100 for a 10bit UHD oled sounds amazing, but I'm betting once someone calibrates it it won't have good uniformity.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/ ... _9_4k.html

Stay away from Philips....it's crap.

If you happen to have an iPad Pro with XDR screen, you can use that as a decent monitor. It works out of the box with MacOS and by using DuetDisplay it also works for Windows. Especially with the recently released reference mode function in iOS you get a very decent quality HDR monitor for photo and video work.

I often use my iPad Pro as an extra monitoring screen for my Macbook Pro when editing on the go. Nice portable setup.

If you happen to have an iPad Pro with XDR screen, you can use that as a decent monitor. It works out of the box with MacOS and by using DuetDisplay it also works for Windows.

I think that's a bad idea because it's still not color managed. Read page 2756 of the Resolve 18.1 manual, "Limitations When Grading With the Viewer on a Computer Display." This explains why it's unwise to try to use a computer display for final color correction. The same problem also exists with the "Clean Feed" output, since it's not color managed. You really need a color-managed output with a Blackmagic UltraStudio or Decklink adapter, plus an external calibrated display. And to calibrate it, you need proper test signals, probes, and software outside of Resolve to ensure that it meets normal industry standards.

Steve Shaw of LightIllusion has a good essay on the importance of using grading displays for judging color:

https://www.lightillusion.com/grading_displays.html

If you happen to have an iPad Pro with XDR screen, you can use that as a decent monitor. It works out of the box with MacOS and by using DuetDisplay it also works for Windows.

I think that's a bad idea because it's still not color managed. Read page 2756 of the Resolve 18.1 manual, "Limitations When Grading With the Viewer on a Computer Display." This explains why it's unwise to try to use a computer display for final color correction. The same problem also exists with the "Clean Feed" output, since it's not color managed. You really need a color-managed output with a Blackmagic UltraStudio or Decklink adapter, plus an external calibrated display. And to calibrate it, you need proper test signals, probes, and software outside of Resolve to ensure that it meets normal industry standards.

Steve Shaw of LightIllusion has a good essay on the importance of using grading displays for judging color.

Of course an iPad is not a professional high end solution but in my opinion will yield better results than any $200 to $300 PC monitor can give you, which is the price range that the OP was asking for. That is of course if the OP happens to have an iPad already. One simply can’t buy a professional calibrated monitor for $200 to $300. A Decklink Monitor card alone will cost you that money.

I believe X-Rite even has an iOS solution to calibrate an iPad screen.

I think that's a bad idea because it's still not color managed. Read page 2756 of the Resolve 18.1 manual, "Limitations When Grading With the Viewer on a Computer Display." This explains why it's unwise to try to use a computer display for final color correction. The same problem also exists with the "Clean Feed" output, since it's not color managed. You really need a color-managed output with a Blackmagic UltraStudio or Decklink adapter, plus an external calibrated display. And to calibrate it, you need proper test signals, probes, and software outside of Resolve to ensure that it meets normal industry standards.

Steve Shaw of LightIllusion has a good essay on the importance of using grading displays for judging color:

https://www.lightillusion.com/grading_displays.html

This preview is color managed, which your mentioned BM page actually says.
Fact signal is not going over BM card is meaningless. Preview will be as accurate as screen which you feed it to.
It just may not be easy to calibrate iPad screen (not sure if common probes have profiles now), but you can at least measure and add white point offset. At the end will be enough for prosumer use or work on the go. It will give fairly accurate preview with correct gamma, color gamut, so at least you see HDR as HDR, SDR as SDR with correct gamut etc.

These statements sum it up quite well:

I had a DP come by with a Showtime special a month or two ago, and we compared the "Rec709/BT1886 HD" settings on my M1 Max laptop to our calibrated display... and it was not terrible. It's not accurate, but it reassured the DP that what he sees in the "real world" (whatever that is) will be reasonably close to what we saw in the color room. The assumption is that the new iPad Pro's "reference" setting will be in that same ballpark.

Reference mode makes calibrating display much easier (especially for review purposes) and it locks display to certain brightness. It is great to have that ability on iPad... Can't really grasp why would anyone have problem with that. All these arguments remind me of a time when people were saying it is impossible to grade on a monitor without SDI connection because it is magically more "accurate" with SDI...

Video path is correct - rest is quality of the screen, which is another matter.
https://developer.apple.com/videos/play ... ks/110337/

At least in informal tests, "Clean Feed" output from a nvidia card is indistinguishable from Decklink output. Certainly close enough for "prosumer" work.

Looks like they gone even further and if you have correctly tagged video iPad Pro with reference modes enabled will automatically switch to proper screen profile to display given content at 1:1. If you play 1-1-1 tagged file screen will use BT.1886 gamma and Rec.709 gamut and display video on screen locked to 100nits. For HDR it will be PQ or HLG with 1000 nits and P3. Anything outside (gamma, gamut wise) will be simply clipped. There is no tone mapping etc. exactly as ref screens do.
I assume Resolve signals correct mode based on project settings so iPad screen switches accordingly (where on laptops you actually can force any ref mode manually- more like studio way).

I just got my new UltraStudio Monitor 3G and I have installed the drivers and connected the device to my 2019 MBP. The computer sees the device, but FCP X does NOT. Please advise! -Dave

I does depend on the end product. Enthusiast work, social media, Youtube etc, a nice GUI monitor from BenQ, ASUS or Eizo will do a good job.

If you're going for TV or features things get a bit more complex as the demands to work to a standard are much much higher. If you're doing work for broadcasters or SVODS, they will actually have minimum requirements for your display and calibration. If you're doing work for features, colour management becomes quite complex as you'll be working in a wide gamut log, aces or raw format and using some kind of display transform for your monitoring.

In my experience, I like Flanders Scientific. Their monitors come properly calibrated, have built in calibration software, they will do the spectral offsets for your colourimeter for free, and they are just nice to deal with.

With the FSI monitors, I have yet to walk into DI or mastering and see anything different from what I see in my project studio. This is what you want from a monitor if that is where your work will end up.

For online content, it is also useful when a client is speaking about colour. If your monitor is accurately calibrated to a specification, you will be able to confidently assess any issues with the materials without being tripped up by variations in displays.

At least in informal tests, "Clean Feed" output from a nvidia card is indistinguishable from Decklink output. Certainly close enough for "prosumer" work.

In my formal tests, they were different. I believe you're wrong on this one. Often in video mastering and post production, "close enough" is anything but. It's just an excuse to try to do the work cheaply, which to me kind of degrades the post business. I think there's a point where if you try to ignore the minimal hardware needed to do the job, things will go off the road very quickly.

Would like to see formal proof. For now it’s one word against other. Walter said it’s the same and few other people who have both connections.
Validation from BM connection with some probe and then the same with GPU connection( of course same monitor). All what we need to know if data which comes from HDMI is the same. Rest is down to monitor accuracy.
I don’t have anymore access to needed gear otherwise I would do it.

I found the monitor for my needs, 27-inch QHD oled.
It is designed for gaming with a refresh rate @240Hz, but would it be good for video-editing and color grade?
LG 27GR95QE-B

Would like to see formal proof.

The cheap monitors won't calibrate well (generally). Go read Steve Shaw's essay for more.

This one is pretty good:

Why Master On A Calibrated Display?
https://www.lightillusion.com/grading_displays.html

I have a dozen friends who all have worked as independent colorists and editors in the last 10-12 years here in LA, and we've all gotten by by using "reasonable" calibrated displays like the LG OLED's, which have been out throughout that time. They work fine for Rec709, which will translate reasonably well for online distribution.

When I first started out in color in the 1980s and 1990s, the options for critical monitoring in post were very few, and they started at around $15,000 ($20,000+ for HD). To me, I was incredibly happy to find that I could get something like an LG 55OLED6 for a fraction of that, maybe $2000. Now, the new version of that same set is maybe $1200 (in 2023 dollars), which is a huge bargain. It's lightyears better than a $350 computer display. To me, rather than ask, "why is a 2023 monitor so expensive?", I'd ask "wow, why is a 2023 monitor so affordable?"

Please don’t change subject.
It was about GUI preview vs. SDI preview, not about monitors.

Validation from BM connection with some probe and then the same with GPU connection( of course same monitor). All what we need to know if data which comes from HDMI is the same. Rest is down to monitor accuracy.

Regarding monitors.
So you think LGs are not cheap then? They calibrate quite well.
300$ monitor is just for Microsoft Office and Paint. Cheap can mean a very different thing depending on usage.

I would suggest an RGB-OLED monitor, JOLED panel monitors would be cheaper around 1000$, and it will do better than most nano IPS black monitors, also works with HDR, if with HDR 400 True Black certification.

A review can be found on Youtube comparing the LG EP950 with SONY HX310, with just a little issue with color interference in narrow extreme dark gradient, say it reaches 90% of SONY HX310.

LG EP950 is the RGB-OLED panel monitor type around 2000-5000$, whereas Philip 27E1N8900 is just less than 1000$.