Asus XG27AQDMG failing lagom black test

[Argus]

I recently got an Asus XG27AQDMG and the first 4 squares in the lagom black square test are indistinguishable. The 5th and 6th squares are just barely different. My previous monitor dell sd2716dg displayed all squares perfectly but it was a TN.

Is there something I'm doing wrong? haven't touched any of the OSD settings aside from putting it in user mode and doing no-video srgb clamp trick. I made sure it was on wide gamut.

Also the bottom of the screen is very dark compared to the rest of the screen, even with the uniform brightness setting on.

Any ideas what's going on? Thanks.

[RealNC]

You can load the ICC profile supplied by Asus in novideo_srgb as described here (near the bottom of the post):

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13659#p106354

As for the bottom of the screen, I don't have that issue on my unit. Did you disable the "Screen Saver" and "Auto Logo Brightness" functions in the OSD? I keep them off to maintain screen uniformity.

Keep in mind though that the first four squares being indistinguishable is still a good result and can actually look better in games and movies.

[jorimt]

Also the bottom of the screen is very dark compared to the rest of the screen, even with the uniform brightness setting on.

If you've just received the unit and have yet to do a compensation cycle, one or two can even out near black uniformity to a degree on some OLED panels out-of-box.

[RealNC]

I forgot to mention that when sRGB clamping (either with novideo_srgb or through the monitor itself,) it's important to remove any ICC profiles that are active on the display, if any. Otherwise you get double-clamped, which will affect colors and gamma in color managed applications (like web browsers.)

To make sure, run the Color Management tool in Windows, make sure the correct display is selected, and if there are any entries in the "Profiles associated with this device" list, remove them and reboot.

I mention this because I believe by default Windows will download and install "monitor drivers" when you connect a new display. This "driver" include an ICC profile, which you don't want when doing an sRGB clamp.

[Argus]

You can load the ICC profile supplied by Asus in novideo_srgb as described here (near the bottom of the post):

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13659#p106354

As for the bottom of the screen, I don't have that issue on my unit. Did you disable the "Screen Saver" and "Auto Logo Brightness" functions in the OSD? I keep them off to maintain screen uniformity.

Keep in mind though that the first four squares being indistinguishable is still a good result and can actually look better in games and movies.

Turning off screen saver and auto logo brightness made a massive difference! The screen is much easier to look at now. The icc profile helped too. Thanks.
One more question: do you use the uniform brightness setting and what exactly does it do besides making the screen dimmer? It doesn't seem to do much on my panel.

[Argus]

Also the bottom of the screen is very dark compared to the rest of the screen, even with the uniform brightness setting on.

If you've just received the unit and have yet to do a compensation cycle, one or two can even out near black uniformity to a degree on some OLED panels out-of-box.

Is there a way to force a compensation cycle? I couldn't find much on this relating to the XG27AQDMG. Is it similar to the pixel cleaning function? Thanks.

[RealNC]

One more question: do you use the uniform brightness setting and what exactly does it do besides making the screen dimmer? It doesn't seem to do much on my panel.

Uniform brightness is controlling whether or not ABL is used. Disabling it means ABL is enabled, and the screen can get brighter than normal, like it does in HDR mode.

This means that brightness can vary though, depending on how many bright elements are currently displayed. See:

https://tftcentral.co.uk/articles/oled- ... -explained

For uniformity, I keep uniform brightness enabled. If you've set the monitor to 100% brightness but you think it's still not bright enough, you can disable the uniform brightness setting to allow it to output more nits. If you don't use 100% brightness, then I'd say disabling uniform brightness makes less sense, since if you want more brightness, just raise the brightness.

Is there a way to force a compensation cycle? I couldn't find much on this relating to the XG27AQDMG. Is it similar to the pixel cleaning function? Thanks.

No. Pixel cleaning is the so-called "short compensation cycle." I don't know if it's possible to have a long compensation cycle like on OLED TVs. From what I can tell, the short cycle deals with image retention issues due to TFT layer voltages and it only takes a few minutes (4m and 10s on this monitor.) The long cycle deals with the actual OLED pixels themselves and can take like an hour. But there's no option for this anywhere. I don't know why, or if it will run automatically every few months when the display is off, like on TVs.

I've seen a Samsung statement somewhere that modern panels run continuous compensation at every opportunity without the need for a long cycle. But this is an LG panel and I don't know if they're doing the same or not.

[jorimt]

Is there a way to force a compensation cycle? I couldn't find much on this relating to the XG27AQDMG. Is it similar to the pixel cleaning function? Thanks.

On my LG TVs, yes, on your monitor, I don't know. You can check the manual to be sure.

I've seen a Samsung statement somewhere that modern panels run continuous compensation at every opportunity without the need for a long cycle. But this is an LG panel and I don't know if they're doing the same or not.

It's the same for the LG C2 and up; a full manually triggered compensation cycle used to take ~1h, but now that same option is ~10m. Again though, I don't know if it differs for monitors.

Anyway, I've seen some panels come in "etch-a-sketch" form out-of-box (blotchy and uneven near-black), and need at least one short cycle to clean things up.

[Argus]

Uniform brightness is controlling whether or not ABL is used. Disabling it means ABL is enabled, and the screen can get brighter than normal, like it does in HDR mode.

This means that brightness can vary though, depending on how many bright elements are currently displayed. See:

https://tftcentral.co.uk/articles/oled- ... -explained

For uniformity, I keep uniform brightness enabled. If you've set the monitor to 100% brightness but you think it's still not bright enough, you can disable the uniform brightness setting to allow it to output more nits. If you don't use 100% brightness, then I'd say disabling uniform brightness makes less sense, since if you want more brightness, just raise the brightness.

Very interesting. Is there a way to get a middle ground? Uniform brightness on is way too dark for me but leaving it off also makes the screen a bit bright and I can notice the brightness shifting upon changing images. Is there a way to have uniform brightness but also manually edit the nits limit it places on the monitor?

[jorimt]

Is there a way to get a middle ground? Uniform brightness on is way too dark for me but leaving it off also makes the screen a bit bright and I can notice the brightness shifting upon changing images. Is there a way to have uniform brightness but also manually edit the nits limit it places on the monitor?

The maximum average nits level of the uniform brightness setting would be limited by the peak full field luminance of your particular panel. I.E. if your OLED has a full field 100% white of ~120 nits, for instance, that's the nits level it would be clamped to in uniform brightness mode, as that number is where ABL doesn't kick in.

The ABL threshold itself isn't user adjustable on any OLED of any brand, to my knowledge, as the algorithim is hand-tuned by the engineers per model, and is in-place to prevent overheating, protect the longevity of the panel, and to ensure it meets energy standard requirements.

According to the RTINGS review, with uniform brightness enabled in SDR mode at Brightness 100, it's ~270 nits on the XG27AQDMG, which is very respectable for SDR in even a moderately lit room, especially on an OLED.

For perspective, SDR standards are, historically, only 100 nits calibrated (some standards specify anywhere between 100-200 nits), so the XG27AQDMG is already nearly double that.