LG 29EA93 Monitor Review - Rev. 1.25
by Chris Heinonen on February 12, 2013 8:49 PM ESTThe initial revision of the LG 29EA93 was very uniform overall, where I remarked, “For white uniformity, the 29EA93 is truly a cut above.” Despite this, LG was unhappy about the performance of the corners and went back and tightened the tolerances of assembling the screen to get better performance out of it. Unlike before, no areas drop below 180 cd/m² of light output, keeping the whole screen uniform within 10% when using the same 5x5 ANSI test pattern as before.
Light Output in cd/m2
Output Deviation Relative to Center
There are two points on the side that are slightly darker, in the same location as before, but the light loss in those areas is less than before. Overall the white uniformity manages to maintain its reputation of being great.
Black Uniformity is what had the issue before, with the corners having a lot more light creeping into the corners. This time that condition no longer exists. The only actual error that you can see is that one of the dimmer areas from the white uniformity is very dim in the black uniformity screen as well, but something being darker rather than lighter is a good thing.
Light Output in cd/m2
Output Deviation Relative to Center
Now looking at contrast uniformity, we see the most impressive result for the 29EA93 yet. The average contrast value here is 1267:1, and the corners maintain a contrast level of 1252:1. This is now the best display I’ve seen in terms of contrast uniformity, with no areas of the screen that are a cause of concern to me at all. I really hope other manufacturers see what LG was able to do here with better quality control and bring that to their displays to provide similar results.
Contrast Ratio
Contrast Ratio Deviation Relative to Center
For dE uniformity, I used the Uniformity tool available in CalMAN that can measure up to 45 points on the screen. For this display I used 21 points, in a 7x3 grid, which was a perfect match to the 21:9 ratio of the screen. The Uniformity tool isn’t completely finished yet, which is why I didn’t use it for brightness yet, but the dE uniformity is close to what we used to do, only with more data. Once the Uniformity tool is finished it’ll provide even better data, and I can go back to this review and update the graphs to match.
As you can see the center of the screen has very good color quality that we saw earlier. The extreme corners exhibit a bit of color drift with dE values that are a little worse, but only the upper-right corner moves past the 3.0 value that would indicate a color change that we can see. In comparison to the contrast numbers the color quality is only very good, but as this is the first display to be tested this way, it wouldn’t surprise me if this is the best display we see for a while and this method only accentuates the errors.
Colorchecker dE Uniformity
The LG 29EA93 was already a very good performer when it came to uniformity, and the improvements that LG made only increase that performance. The extra attention paid to make sure that the assembly of the extra-wide panel is done right has served to produce the most uniform consumer display that I’ve seen so far.
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cheinonen - Wednesday, February 13, 2013 - link
On every recent LED in house I've tried to test for PWM, but all photographs wind up with a solid line which indicates one of two things:- No PWM
- I'm doing it wrong
Believe me, I'm testing it, but unless I can get a positive result to ensure that the testing method is correct, I am not confident to state for a fact that a display does or does not feature it.
paradeigmas - Wednesday, February 13, 2013 - link
Thank you for the most useful and insightful review. Do you think you would be able to review the new ASUS MX299Q which is sold at a significantly lower price point ($599) than the LG29EA93? That would be tremendously helpful in determining which one to buy.99sport - Wednesday, February 13, 2013 - link
It makes absolutely no sense to me that LG would sell a home calibration kit (that only works with one particular model of monitor) for $100-$150. For that money, why wouldn't LG calibrate the display at the factory? That would save me the hassle of doing the calibration myself and LG wouldn't have to stock, ship and support the calibration kit, which I would only need once or twice in my lifetime.I have some experience doing display calibration, and my next monitor purchase will be a factory calibrated Dell (if I had a Mac it would be a factory calibrated Apple display). For those interested, the process of calibrating my Samsung TV consisted of buying the colorimiter for $150, finding and burning a BluRay of the test patterns (need a BlyRay burner for this), downloading the calibration software, and then figuring out what all the terms mean and how to do the calibration. Unfortunately, display calibration is highly iterative as changing one setting often upsets others. Plus the calibration is never perfect, so you are constantly trading one parameter for another - hoping to maximize as many parameters as possible. In the end, I was able to achieve a very good result, and this saved me from returning the TV (I was very disappointed in the color accuracy before calibration), but I spent three days figuring out what I was doing and then iterating a number of times - Like I said earlier, I would gladly pay $100 to be able to take the display out of the box and use it knowing the factory achieved an acceptable baseline. I assume LG's product is much more of a point and click affair then what I used, but that would mean it would be that much easier for them to do in house. They could even have a separate SKU for those willing to pay more for factory calibration.
Spoelie - Wednesday, February 13, 2013 - link
Calibration is dependent on the device outputting the video signal. You could calibrate your TV perfectly for your bluray player, but have it completely miss the spot when connecting your xbox (or whatever). That's why each input will have its own settings on a "sane" TV.Some calibration can already be done in the factory though, that's true, it just won't be perfect. Panasonic does this with their G-range (and up) televisions, called THX-Cinema mode. See http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/news/panasonic-tx-p50gt5...
cheinonen - Thursday, February 14, 2013 - link
You can go back and read some of my comments about the meter and how they likely build in profiles to account for the spectral signature of the LED backlighting.With a $100 colorimeter, like the i1Display2 or a Spyder, the simple fact is they are decent at what they do, but they drift relatively fast, and they work best on CCFL or CRT based displays. LED based LCDs and other lighting systems typically don't work well on them. The issue is that when using software to do the calibration, neither one of those items knows if the meter is reading correctly or incorrectly. Without verification by a spectrometer, you'd have no idea.
The human eye is also very adaptable to what we see in front of us, and we adjust very fast. Whatever the brightest white is, we take that to be pure white and adjust from that. If a display is 9300K or 4500K instead of 6500K, I can typically spot that. If it's 6200K or 6800K and there is no 6500K reference in the room, your eye is going to adapt to that being correct.
If they can program their meter to work better with their displays than the XRite or Datacolor solutions, and sell it for less, then for many people it's going to work fine. Calibrating at the factory adds time and money that many people don't care about unfortunately. For people like myself, we might pay the extra $100 for it, but for many people that $100 would mean they buy a different display. Multiple SKUs also make vendors and dealers unhappy, as it's more inventory to track and they'd rather just carry a calibration device.
99sport - Wednesday, February 13, 2013 - link
I want to thank AnandTech for being one of a few websites that check greyscale and color performance of displays - this site does an outstanding and thorough job. However, I agree with many other posters who believe this follow up test should be of a retail unit.As I understand it, some manager at LG read your previous review and then ordered his engineers to improve the display and have it retested. As an engineer who worked in a large corporation for many years, it is unthinkable to me that LG would pull a display off the assembly line and send it to you without first verifying it's performance. It would be a great way for the person given the task of improving the display to get fired if the second review does not live up to whatever goals LG management had. My hunch is that they either pulled a number of samples off the line, checked their performance and sent the best one, or took a random unit and then tweaked it to achieve the performance goals they were after.
While it may be cost prohibitive to purchase every device tested on this site, this is clearly a case where the lack of a store bought sample casts doubt on the validity of the results.
flamefox777 - Wednesday, February 13, 2013 - link
No Gold award?Is this "the" gaming and movie-watching monitor out right now?
Am I 100% absolutely certain to get this new revision if I order from Amazon or Newegg?
xaueious - Wednesday, February 13, 2013 - link
Can you provide information on where you can tell the difference between the two?Also, there's a typo on the first page '28EA93'?
DelphiOracle - Thursday, February 14, 2013 - link
I would be very suspicious of any piece of hardware delivered for review with an company engineer. I suggest re-evaluating the monitor using a retail version. It is all too easy (and tempting) for the company to deliver a piece of hardware that has been screened and tweeked by the gift bearer!Wolfpup - Thursday, February 14, 2013 - link
And surprising! I'm more used to companies just ignoring things, never responding, or worse. Really cool to see they were so awesomely responsive and fixed it!Will make me less nervous about buying an LG monitor or display...