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The AG493UCX automatically recognizes HDR10 signals and offers four additional picture presets. The best one is called DisplayHDR and was our choice for testing.
HDR Brightness and Contrast
The two Acer monitors both have VESA DisplayHDR 1000 certification, meaning they should hit at least 1,000 nits brightness with HDR media. Both monitors also employ selective dimming to further increase contrast via lower black levels. The second and third charts clearly show the different types of backlights in use here. The X35 has a full-array unit with local dimming over 512 zones so it has the lowest black levels. The next three have edge lights but can dim portions of them to achieve greater contrast (edge array backlights). The AOC and ViewSonic screens don’t employ any dynamic contrast feature, so their numbers are the same for SDR and HDR signals. While the Agon delivers a good picture, the top four monitors will provide a little more impact when playing the latest HDR-enabled games or when watching 4K, HDR-enabled video.
Grayscale, EOTF and Color
The AG493UCX doesn’t have any adjustments available for HDR color, luminance or grayscale, but that isn’t an issue as because tracked quite well out of the box. The white point runs slightly cool in the brighter areas of the image, but the error was barely visible. The EOTF luminance curve is almost perfectly on spec with a soft clip at around 68% as it transitions to tone-mapping. That means HDR content will use a large portion of the Agon’s dynamic range. which helps it stand out from SDR material.
In the color tests, the AG493UCX performed well with only slight oversaturation in the DCI-P3 realm. Like with our SDR test, green was a bit under-saturated, but the other colors reached their full targets. Yellow has a slight hue error, but overall, this monitor is as precise as the best HDR screens when rendering correctly encoded content.
Rec.2020 material tracks well until the display runs out of color, which is as it should be for a DCI-native monitor.
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