NEC MultiSync PA241W

To read more about what all this means, please read the PC Monitors technology article.

Features and aesthetics

From the very first glance it’s clear that the NEC MultiSync PA241W means business; it has a broad, square, unfussy matte look. When you pick the monitor up to put it on a desk these initial thoughts are affirmed – it’s a hefty bit of kit.

PA241W mugshot

From the side the sturdy look is maintained, with a thickness of around 32.5mm and ventilation slits galore. The ventilation holes run all around the monitor – the top, side, bottom and back. This thing is clearly expected to run hot.

The PA241W has sweat glands

Inputs are well hidden at the ‘upper bottom’ of the monitor and are downward facing. The NEC PA241W is well-endowed in this regard featuring; 3 ‘downstream’ USB ports, 2 ‘upstream’ USB ports, 2 DVI ports a Display Port and appropriate power inputs and outputs. Perhaps some HDMI ports would be a nice addition but not essential considering the intended usage of the monitor and the converters that exist.

PA241W's rear end

As you would expect from a monitor of this calibre, the stand offers many adjustment options. You can adjust the height of the monitor by about 18cm, swivel it about 45 degrees either side, tilt it back 30 degrees (and forwards slightly) and even rotate the screen to put it in portrait mode (shown below). This allows you to see well over a page of writing in a document at once, a full Google results pageor work with applications demanding a lot of vertical real-estate but little horizontal space.

A perfect portrait

As you might also expect, the OSD (or OSM – On Screen Manager, as NEC calls it) is fully featured to allow you to adjust many aspects of the picture. Controlling the OSM is very intuitive thanks to the side arrows on the bottom right of the bezel and up and down arrows to the right side of the bezel, at the bottom. If any button is pressed labels come up on the screen to show you exactly what each button does – other manufacturers could certainly learn from this simplicity. One particularly nice feature of the OSM is an ‘auto brightness’ feature that adjusts the screen brightness according to ambient lighting (and user preferences). We tested it out and it worked very well – but as you probably know by now we enjoy scorching our retinas with higher luminance settings. You can also change the colour of the power LED from blue to green if you so desire – but this is quite trivial compared to the huge range of useful adjustments you can make. We could spend all day talking about these, but instead you can read the manual if you want to know.

Performance

Calibration

Due to the ‘professional’ nature of this panel and the complexity of its ‘image tweaking’ controls we felt that using the Windows 7 calibration tool, as we usually would, is not appropriate. If you are going to spend £900 on a monitor then it is advisable to invest in a colorimeter and calibrate it properly yourself – each particular panel and revision is different and things change over time, so it’s never advisable to try and copy somebody else’s settings if colour accuracy is crucially important. That being said; TFT Central provides some excellent ICC profiles that are derived from their full calibration of the screens they have tested. Because the panel we tested is quite possibly the test sample that was tested by TFT Central this means that these ICC profiles can be applied without any further tweaking. Even if it was the same panel, we reiterate the fact that things do change over time. Whichever way you look at it, though, the results are likely to be a large improvement from any ‘by eye’ calibration we could manage.

After loading the ‘High Bright’ ICC profile and setting the PA241W to the corresponding mode we set the white point to 6500k as specified by TFT Central. Since absolute colour accuracy was not of critical importance in our testing, we bumped up the brightness from the ‘calibrated level’ of 160cd/m2 to a retina-scorching 290cd/m2.

Contrast and brightness

NEC makes fairly sensible claims of a 300 cd/m2 typical luminance and a 1000:1 contrast ratio. With the PA241W you should note that there is a lack of a dynamic contrast mode (and hence a lack of insane numbers plastered on the front of the monitor itself). Put simply – this would be a slightly pretentious and fairly useless mode for a professional monitor such as the PA241W to have.

We tested the PA241W using the Windows 7 default calibration profile (i.e. no ICC modifications) primarily using ‘High Bright’ mode and compared the luminance of an entirely black scene to an entirely white scene. ‘High Bright’ is the default mode which gives the greatest freedom over luminance settings and was also the mode we used in our subsequent testing of the monitor. Values are also given for High Bright mode using the ICC profile and brightness settings detailed in our calibration (used during our testing) and other PA241W presets, uncalibrated, using default settings or a 160cd/m luminance level for comparison.

In the table above you will notice that the luminance settings are given in cd/m2 rather than the usual percentage brightness. The brightness controls of the PA241W offer more precision than most and give a useful estimation of the actual brightness level rather than percentage intensity. The backlight consistently provided a higher pure white luminance than the intended setting. This could have something to do with the luminance control becoming a little looser from the extensive use, but more likely is that the value represents the luminance of a typical scene (not an entirely white screen). Below 130cd/m2 the backlight intensity cannot be lowered any more in ‘High Bright’ mode and instead the white level is digitally altered (whilst black level remains constant). It is for this reason that 150cd/m2 was the lowest value we used when testing high bright mode. Contrast is controlled by the monitor itself and was not manually adjusted.

With the PA241W we achieved a peak white luminance of 540 cd/m2 – this is just searingly bright. It is significantly higher than the stated 400 cd/m2 of the OSM (which is typical luminance and not that of an entirely white screen) – we could feel a headache coming on after just a few minutes at this setting. Interestingly; blacks at this setting have a slight silver sheen to them but still look pretty deep – there was no excess backlight bleed, thankfully. By lowing the OSM setting to ‘250 cd/m2’ we were able to achieve blacks that appear pleasingly deep whilst whites remain very bright. At this setting the white point of 340 cd/m2 and black point of 0.36 cd/m2 gave us a contrast ratio nearing the stated 1000:1. We did actually manage to achieve spot on the stated contrast ratio of 1000:1 using the calibrated profile and our seemingly random choice of a fairly bright but not headache inducing ’270cd/ms’ monitor setting. The black luminance was reduced to 0.34 cd/m2 whilst the white luminance remained a high 340 cd/m2 – a pleasing result and kudos to us for our excellent judgement .

The contrast performance of the NEC MultiSync PA241W in our ‘real world’ tests was equally impressive. We fired up The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Blu-ray and were greeted by deep-looking blacks and bright and clear whites with excellent distinction in between. There was no loss of detail evident in dark scenes or shadows – on the high end, lights and roaring flames within the film were suitably bright at night. On Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising the PA241W also displayed pleasing contrast. There was no noticeable loss of details in shadows, although building interiors appeared a little too dark at first. This was quickly remedied by raising the in-game gamma from ‘50’ to ‘60’, which improved things without noticeably affecting contrast elsewhere. Bright muzzle flashes, glare from cloud breaks in the sky and explosions really added to the atmosphere – fires were particularly bright and quite stunning to watch.

Moving away from dragons; we found the contrast performance in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 to be every bit as sumptuous. Bright explosions, dazzling sparks when the engineer repaired tanks and bright muzzle flashes were particularly impressive. The whites of the snow were also nice and bright and we almost got a strange feeling of snow blindness in such scenarios – as if we should put on some shades… or perhaps tone down the monitor brightness somewhat. This effect was also more pronounced due to the slight ‘CCFL flicker’ exhibited by the backlight of the PA241W – not something most people would really notice and certainly preferable to dithering. Outside in the dessert the bright glare was also very impressive. In contrast (pardon the appropriate pun), building interiors and other dark places dark places exhibited no loss of detail and appeared appropriately dark. We also tested the fantastic Dirt 2; there was an excellent level of detail, even in the darkest areas on the game. Artificial lights at night were dazzling (just as they should be), immersing you in the experience that little bit more. Car headlights appeared a very pleasing and clean shade of white – or an icy blue, depending on the lamp type.

Finally came the Lagom LCD tests. These tests highlight any weaknesses that are present in a computer monitor’s performance; even if they would not usually be noticeable. For these tests we used our calibrated profile, but adjusted various settings to see if this changed the results.

Full marks on the contrast test with distinct brightness steps for each coloured bar. The high-end of the red bar in particular was fairly intensely saturated, but all bars remained distinctive.

Another flawless performance on the black level test. Each square was distinct and distinguishable from the other squares. No dithering was evident, either, although some minor flickering could be seen at times that was probably due to the CCFL backlight.

White saturation performance was very good – all but the final square had a distinctive checkerboard pattern. Despite adjusting brightness and colour settings the final checkerboard could not be revealed. In ‘real’ situations this would have very little impact.

The greyscale gradient was very smooth. If you looked closely you could see faint banding at the low end and flicker from the CCFL backlight, but under normal circumstances this would not be an issue.

Colour reproduction

The MultiSync PA241 has a broad colour gamut covering 107% of the NTSC colour space. Some people see this as a curse rather than a blessing, as they may need to design content or work with images that are created using or designed for smaller colour spaces. There is extensive discussion about this on the internet and we don’t really want to say anything that may be deemed too controversial (or simply boring you by repeating what’s already out there). If this is a concern to you then let us put your mind at ease – the sRGB emulation mode of the PA241W works very well (especially when calibrated correctly). If you would like to know exactly how this may affect your work, check out the comprehensive TFT Central review that covers the PA241W from a ‘professional use’ perspective. For our purposes the broad gamut is fantastic, because it adds an extra depth and vibrancy to the whole image. Colours appear much more vivid and the range of shades displayed really adds to the atmosphere in games, movies and even plain old (or indeed new) photos. The image below shows how broad the colour gamut is, using the calibrated ICC profile, compared to the sRGB region typical for a ‘standard gamut’ monitor – note in particular the extremes in red and green.

PA241W colour gamut - image from TFT Central

We found the Blu-ray of Futurama: Into the Wild Green yonder to be a particularly good test for colour reproduction – and in this regard the PA241W impressed. Neon greens, oranges, blues, pinks and purples were brilliantly vibrant and the range of shades displayed was fantastic overall. Even subtle differences in skin tones were evident; this small detail is usually lost on TN panels. Not only were the colours exceptional in both range and ‘pizazz’ – they were also perfectly consistent. This is quite obvious from the skin tones, in particular, which on a TN-based panel show variation across the screen. We also tested The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Blu-ray to see how the PA241W handled movies depicting the real world. Overall the film had a very natural look. Woods, human eyes and skin tones showed excellent variety without over-saturation. Elsewhere colour range was excellent with some standout ‘brilliant’ colours such as the deep reds of blood and red wine (although not usually in the same scene) and deep but varied natural ‘planty’ greens. A Christmas scene in the film was a particularly good example of red and green reproduction – there was an excellent range of shades and appropriate levels of vibrancy. Fires in this scene and elsewhere in the film were almost warming to look at and really added to the atmosphere.

In our game testing we fired up a few of our favourite titles including Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Colin McRae: Dirt 2. Firstly we had a look at Dragon Rising. Anybody who has read our previous reviews will know that we are quite particular about the ‘natural aesthetic’ of this game; muted khaki tones are preferred over wildly oversaturated colours. We found the greens to be much too vibrant on this game and it is clearly not designed around a colour gamut as large as that of the PA241W. A quick remedy was to switch the monitor to sRGB mode; we still weren’t happy, as regardless of brightness level the beautiful roaring orange fires and various subtle colour details in the character models, vehicle models and environment lost most of their brilliance. Switching back to ‘high bright’ and raising the gamma in the game from 50 to 60 muted the vibrant greens somewhat whilst retaining much of the vibrancy elsewhere. Skin tones, the sea green of the ocean and earthy browns/greys also looked pretty natural using this setting – whilst the roaring orange flames, deep reds of blood and red marker smoke added some impressive vibrancy. We were happy with this result.

To keep our faster paced readers happy we also testing out Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Colours were, in a word, stunning. The range and vibrancy of the lush forest greens, earthy browns and glowing amber fires all added greatly to the visual feast. We were in for a similar treat on Dirt 2, as the PA241W displayed an excellent range of colours from deep, to pastel, to neon colours – all of these were brought to life by the PA241W. Pink and green ‘neon’ texts throughout the game were particularly vivid and the range of colours and vibrancy really made the paintjobs on the cars great to look at. We were equally impressed by the greens of the forest. This was not only due to the flair and vibrancy, but also the variety of shades covering what seemed to be ‘the whole green spectrum’. From the deepest lush dark green to minty greens, lime greens and ‘brown’ greens – all were captured beautifully. Furthermore; our wobbling Christmas tree dashboard toy that was left over from our festive testing was another shade of bright plastic green that, thankfully, wasn’t seen in the natural environment. In the desserts of Utah the PA241W handled the dusty greens, browns and ‘red sandstone’ very well, too. This gave a realistic feel to the vegetation, rocks and ground that simply wouldn’t be captured on most screens. Considering the tendency of wide-gamut monitors to oversaturate, this was particularly impressive.

Viewing angles

It was clear from our application testing that the ‘colour shift’ that plagues TN panels was not a big issue for the PA241W’s P-IPS panel. Even if you look at a TN-based computer monitor from directly in front a particular colour will appear differently at one section of the screen to another. To get a better idea of how the viewing angles really compare, we fired up the Lagom viewing angle tests. As we had hoped, the results of the PA241W were favourable to the TN panels we’ve used. The purple block did appear very slightly pink at the extreme left edge (i.e. practically underneath the bezel) but was uniform elsewhere. The red block appeared a brilliant and vibrant ‘cherry red’ throughout. This was very impressive but also a little painful to look at. This was an experience we also felt staring at the similarly uniform and rather stunning block of lime green. Thankfully our eyes experienced some degree of relief when it came to the blue block. This was perfectly uniform and in no way headache-inducing.

The final part of the Lagom viewing angle tests is the ‘text test’, which shows the degree to which a monitor’s gamma curve is viewing angle dependent. Put simply – you can see how much colours will ‘shift’ depending on their position on the screen and your position relative to the screen. The test confirmed that the gamma curve of the MultiSync PA241W is not viewing-angle dependent to the extent of a TN panel. There was a slight hint of red to the far left but overall the text appeared a well-blended grey. You can see the results of this Lagom text test as well as the red block test at ‘extreme viewing angles’ in the video below:

Response times

Amidst the wonderful colours that the PA241W produces it’s easy to forget about the issue of response time completely, so unless you’re really obsessive about it then it’s probably going to be fine. If we are to focus specifically on response time, in a comparative and critical sense, then it is best that we use some specific examples of applications we have seen on some much more responsive panels. The Futurama Blu-ray is a good test of response time as it features bold black lines and solid colours moving against one another. The PA241W provided a fairly smooth experience overall, although trailing was marginally more evident than on the LD220HD we tested the film on previously. In ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ Blu-ray, which is slightly more forgiving, trailing was not much more evident here than on other (often TN panel) monitors we’ve tested. Overall the film was very watchable with the trails only becoming a distraction during the ‘white on black’ scrolling end credits and during rapid camera panning that was fairly infrequent on the film.

On Dragon Rising there were no major issues with response time and the overall experience was a surprisingly smooth one. There was some blurring if the character quickly strafed near an object and whilst driving. At times textures appeared to ‘vibrate’ due to the effect, but it was not particularly distracting. In Bad Company 2 the trailing was a little more noticeable due to the pace of the action, but again this didn’t affect our fragging performance (mind over matter). And finally – Dirt 2. Even when watching replays and concentrating on responsiveness, specifically, nothing looked out of place. There was frequent blurring in the background, but you’d expect this when driving at such high speeds anyway. There were no distracting trails behind vehicles, which was good.

Conclusion

The NEC MultiSync PA241W is designed from the ground up to be a no-nonsense professional monitor. The stand is highly adjustable, the bezel has a no-fuss matte finish, there is a ‘better-than-HD’ (1920×1200) resolution for extra vertical pixel space and the colour reproduction of the panel is excellent. Some of the qualities that colour professionals look for in a monitor are also desirable in games and movies – and this is what we tested. The PA241W delivered a stunning range of colours, including some extremely vibrant and also more muted tones. The broad colour gamut of the monitor really bought the games and movies we tested to life, without over-saturation (or indeed poor viewing angles) being an issue. Contrast of the PA241W was also strong, with pleasing blacks and an insanely bright and powerful. This powerful backlight produced a considerable amount of heat – at times having the PA241W in our testing room was almost like having a small radiator in there. Aside from the issues heat, energy efficiency and overall bulk – the PA241W’s price is probably the largest issue for non-professional users. Then there is the issue of response time. Although we didn’t see this as a major issue that distracted from the fantastic issue, the PA241W does lag behind the modern and ubiquitous TN (Twisted Nematic) panels in this regard. For home users; at around £900 the investment seems as heavy as the monitor itself, especially considering the imperfect nature of the solution.

PC Monitors score – 67%