Condition
Unboxed on Friday. No damage, it was wrapped quite good!
I can see one pale green dead pixel only when on a nearly solid black screen. Yesterday it looked like a group of 2 or 3 dead pixels but today it's clearly only one, so I don't know if it worked itself out.
The screen itself wasn't covered with anything to peel off, just the borders had some plastic peel to remove. The screen had a few hand and finger prints on it, but just wiped off easily with a slightly moist microfiber towel.
Calibration
So far I've only had a few minutes with it. I just can't seem to get the calibration correct. Out of the box it has a severe white washed-out look with the default settings. I can drop the brightness to 0 and it even still seems a little too light on the blacks. I had to change Gamma from 2.0 to 2.4 (which DROPS the brightness, despite showing a higher number), and that helped quite a bit on the blacks, but still not perfect. For example, using the Windows built-in calibration tool never showed the "X" to blend in with the black background in the brightness calibration screen, no matter how low I went with brightness or gamma. Hue and Saturation seem pretty good at the default of 50. I increased contrast from 50 to 72, but it could certainly still be off since I'm not completely sure that the proper brightness/gamma is set. Of course, this is my first AH-IPS, I've only had TN's before, so maybe this is actually just a trait of AH-IPS and I've been used to too dark images for a long time?
Super Resolution is Wasabi's name for sharpness. I toyed with this a lot, at the default of "Off" it seemed pretty good in some of the sharpness tests I found online, however it may be a bit too much on the smoothing out of image side. The other settings (low, middle, high) are actually reversed, so low is the most sharpness with high being the least sharpness (except for "Off", of course). On a few tests, but especially on just viewing some 4K res pictures, "High" was a more pleasant setting. I'm going to leave it on the "Off" setting for now until I get more time to calibrate all settings.
There's also a "Color Bypass" and "Picture Bypass" setting. I don't know what they do, Picture Bypass seemed to do nothing and Color Bypass just made everything brighter and with very little color.
On the color temperature menu, the only thing I changed was the Red down from 100 to 98. I don't have any color filters to hold up to the screen with me, so I'm not 100% sure I've got the right color settings. From the naked eye, however, colors look great. Right click on the image and open in a new tab to get a more visible view.
FreeSync & Misc Settings
Under the MISC Menu, two notable settings are ResponseTime (no space in between) and FreeSync. I can't find any difference so far with ResponseTime set to "On", so I've left it on for now.
I've since turned it off, AndrewWOT notified me that the ResponseTime setting is the overdrive setting and will increase ghosting with it enabled. I've also enabled FreeSync. I'm running two AMD R9 290x's in Crossfire with the 15.7.1 Catalyst drivers. FreeSync is also enabled under the Catalyst driver. I'm using a single displayport cable.
I downloaded AMD's Windmill FreeSync demo and tried it out. No matter what, I could not get the toggle for the FreeSync button to on in the demo. I don't know of any other way to test it. From what I've read, having it enabled on the monitor as well as in the driver means it is on for all programs, so maybe it is on? With Vsync enabled in the demo I saw no tearing whatsoever and an absolutely smooth 60fps image. Turning Vsync off certainly would show horizontally dropping tearing from time to time. FreeSync was one of the big reasons I purchased the 290x's, it'd be a shame for it not to work as I was on the fence about getting Geforce GTX cards instead (I may go that route if I can verify if FreeSync is actually not working, benefits possibly being having access to HDMI 2.0 and full DirectX 12).
Another strange item is that the OSD menu shows I'm at 4K resolution with 59hz instead of 60hz, but everywhere in Windows shows 60hz. Image attached to show the settings on the OSD and driver, right click on the image and open in a new tab to get a more visible view.
Test Results & Observations
All tests below were done at night in a completely dark room with 100% dpi setting on native 4K resolution in Windows 10 and my eyes about 2.5 feet away from the screen and about 6 inches above the center of the screen.
BGR
Any tests for RGB or BGR show much better results being set to BGR. Lagom's test page, as well as the ClearType settings all favor BGR. When NOT set to BGR, however, text still looked quite ok to me.
Screen Coating
Certainly NOT matte, a gloss that will smudge the moment you touch it. On a light background, you cannot see anything reflecting except for lighted objects behind you in the room (a window or a lamp). On a dark background, you can just above make out the features in your own reflection.
Input Lag
I have no real way to test this. I don't have another other than what would be on a completely separate output (my video cards only have one Displayport, one HDMI, and two DVI's. From a purely subjective view, I can sense no noticeable input lag. I'm quite used to twitch gaming in the past on decent claimed 2ms and 5ms LCD's. I wouldn't say it feels anything like a specialized gaming monitor that is best in the market when it comes to input lag, but I can't noticeably place it apart from any normal decent low input lag monitors I've used in the past. Please remember this is purely subjective on my part. It could be 10-20ms for all I know, just doesn't seem like it to me. For gaming, I wouldn't hesitate to use it. For professional gaming competition, I doubt you'd be running a 50" 4K 60hz anyway at this point in time but rather looking into 1080 or 1440 120hz+.
10-bit
Driver verified to show 10-bit color depth.
Image Retension
I'm not sure if this is an issue with calibration or what, but I seem to be retaining the outline of an image. It's only really noticeable if I leave a bright image on the screen (like a webpage with a white background) and then move it. If what was behind the light image was dark (like a black background) I can still see the edge/outline of where the lighter image was. It stays there for a good amount of time, not a quick "ghosting" issue. I've attached a picture to show what I mean, the arrows point to the edges that are running up and down. Right click on the image and open in a new tab to get a more visible view.
After disabling the ResponseTime option in the OSD I found a bit of an improvement with it not retaining an image. A few days later and I wasn't noticing it anymore.
Light Spotting & Edges
WARNING: I only have my smartphone to use to take pictures, so the pictures are quite bad in low light and exaggerate the issue I'm about to show. In the dead of night, with NO other light in the room, and ONLY with a nearly black background can I see some light spots in the corners of the screen. Even then, it's only very slightly that I see it. If you look at the attached image below, it looks like it is absolutely awful, but to the naked eye it is barely noticeable to me. You can see on the picture that the crappy smartphone camera doubled up a ghost image of the Windows logo (you can see it just below the real Windows logo in the center of the screen). This is NOT what you see with the naked eye. As for actual light bleed along the edges of the screen, I could detect none at all.
POOR CAMERA QUALITY!!! NOT INDICATIVE OF ACTUAL LIGHT BLEED TO THE NAKED EYE!!!
POOR CAMERA QUALITY!!! NOT INDICATIVE OF ACTUAL LIGHT BLEED TO THE NAKED EYE!!!
Now, for the image being stuck behind the edge of the screen. I've read a lot of people complaining about this lately on different monitors.
AndrewWOT clarified this as being the parallax effect, common on Crossover and Wasabi LG based IPS panels. From what is shown in the two pictures below, however, reveal on this monitor it to be that the image only appears to be stuck behind the edge of the screen when looking at it from an angle. When looking at the edge of the screen directly from in front of the edge, however, the image is not trapped at all. Doesn't really bother me in particular.
Image taken from directly in front of the edge of the screen:
Image taken with the camera held near the center of the monitor but pointed towards the edge of the screen:
Chroma 4:4:4
I don't have the setting in Catalyst Control Center to switch from YCrBr, RGB, 4:4:4 or anything like that, I think it's because I'm using a DisplayPort for a connection. I can't test HDMI either because my video cards aren't HDMI 2.0. Under "Video", however, I can set it to a dynamic range of Full (0 - 255), but I believe that is just for video playback. I tried to look it up but couldn't find out if a DisplayPort forces R9 cards to 4:4:4, maybe someone can enlighten us? From the tests I could run such as the one with "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" text as well as the large 4:4:4 image on purple background, it passed as verified running 4:4:4.
I looked at this for quite some time as I came by a thread talking about other monitors having a washed out look that they couldn't get rid of, just like I feel like I'm experiencing with this monitor, because of an incorrect chroma setting or possible being a BGR monitor. But since it is clear I'm getting 4:4:4 it may be a different issue altogether. Or I could just be too accustomed to crappy TN monitors with dark images?
Ghosting
I need some assistance on how to accurately test this. Keep in mind I only have a crappy smartphone camera on hand, and I don't have any shutter speed settings.
Response Time
I need some assistance on how to accurately test this.
Overclocking
I need some assistance on how to accurately test this. I've only just used ToastyX's custom resolution tool once on my old monitor, didn't really get that much into it, so if that's what I need to do someone give me a rundown of how to do it properly and what resolutions/rates to test.
I tested 1080p at 120hz in Windows 7 with the DisplayPort. Results are shown in images below. It can be set to 1080p and 120hz just fine, but it looks like it drops every other frame. I don't know if the board on the TV is detecting 120hz and flipping to a 3D mode or if it simply cannot output the 120hz.
Later, I tested with HDMI, but take the next report with a grain of salt because my HDMI cable may not be able to carry the signal properly. With HDMI, I couldn't even sync at 4K with it. 1920x1080 would go to 60hz but drop frames at 75hz. 2560x1440 was fine at 60hz and scaled perfectly to the panel.
Other Notes
Vuffi-Raa, you asked to compare this between the Crossover 494K. I don't own one, but the reason I went with the UHD490 is because they advertised it already comes with the MStar board (the 494K came with the Realtek board, and they are offering a upgrade to the MStar board). The Mstar board is supposed to address the issues with HDCP 2.2 content, which I've read the Realtek board has an issue with. As for the rest of it, nearly everything I've read from what Spypet posted seems to be identical with this monitor.
The feet on the monitor are short, only raising the monitor up about 1.5 inches off the table. They are metal underneath the feet with the ends of the feet having two tiny rubber pads. The problem is that the pressure pushes down on the center of the feet, so dragging the monitor across a desk will likely scratch it up because the middle of the feet are pressing down further than the ends of the feet. I scratched up my new desk a bit.
You can read the specifications and features on the website, but I can't stress how awesome it was to have a USB 3.0 hub built into the monitor. I'm running a powered adjustable desk, that can be raised or lowered for standing and sitting, and having to only run a few cords up to the monitor from the floor was far better than I have had to do in the past when using individual cords for every single USB device.
Overall
Absolutely great buy, even if I find out FreeSync is not working. Even with a bit of the washed out look slightly remaining after all my adjustments, I still have quite a bit of more calibrating to do and I believe I may be able to resolve it. However, if this is as good as the image gets I'm still MORE than pleased. I also used a lot of monitors with PWM in the past, and eventually had to get polarized glasses for working all day on the computer. So far I don't have any strain using this monitor and it is likely because it doesn't use PWM.
If anyone wants other tests run, just let me know. I'll probably need some guidance on what to run and how, as I haven't kept up with a lot of testing methods over the years. I'm willing to spend just a bit of money if I need to buy something like 3D Mark.
Here's some images of the entire office setup, a shot from about 4 foot, and a close up. Banana included for scale.