OLED PORTABLE PROFESSIONAL MONITOR
ASUS bills its ProArt PQ22U as an OLED Portable Professional Monitor. For DIT’s there’s a lot to like in that description. OLEDs are widely known for their superb image quality and perfect blacks. The word “portable” is music to our ears as we are constantly moving from location to location in tight quarters and very few monitors are built with portability in mind. Professional in this case means calibratable with an internal 3D LUT to ensure color accuracy. Oh, and it’s UHD with DolbyVision and HDR10 compatibility as well. It seems to tick all the boxes, so when ASUS offered me to take a look at any of the monitors in its lineup, I made a beeline to this one. So does it hold up to its promising description?
The Display
The primary draw of the PQ22U is the small form factor 10bit 4K OLED screen. UHD (3840×2160) at 21.6” has plenty of pixel density at 204ppi, it looks perfectly clean and crisp at just about any scaling resolution. In fact, if you’re not using this display solely for video monitoring, you will likely never be using the panels native resolution without a magnifying glass. With this size of monitor you will likely be using it at laptop distances, and even that close you could not make out any of the individual pixels. The display demonstrates all the brilliant colors and perfect blacks that you expect from OLED. While the benefits of OLED result in stunning images, the downside to this technology is the possibility of image burn-in, especially if primarily used as a computer monitor with many static elements rather than a video grading monitor where the pixels are always changing. ASUS has implemented standard OLED burn in protections such as pixel shifting and reducing luminance on static screens, though none of these controls are user accessible. This panel lies underneath a nice matte (not glossy!) front element that dramatically reduces glare and reflections when used outdoors or in brightly lit environments. This does result in some loss of contrast, but OLED generally still has plenty of contrast to spare (ASUS claims 2,000,000:1). Essentially the image looks like how you would expect OLED to look, which is to say very very good.
HDR (ish)
At a peak luminance of 400 nits, and normal luminance of 330 nits, this monitor will trigger HDR-10 and DolbyVision playback and the HDR capabilities of both Windows and MacOS. But this is definitely more of an HDR-ish display, rather than what you would expect of a true 1000 nit+ HDR reference monitor. More brightness requires more power, and this was the conscious tradeoff in creating a low-power portable display. However in practice the display still seemed plenty bright with an good amount of HDR pop in the highlights. Keep in mind the normal viewing range of a monitor this size would likely be a meter or less, compared with 2-3 meters of a standard large screen HDR TV. So while the actual amount of measured nits is much lower, you are sitting much closer to it and relative brightness still is quite high. I’m sure there’s a calculation involving the inverse square law that can tell you how many nits are relative at what distances, but believe me, you wouldn’t want to be sitting less than a meter from a 1000 nit monitor. At 300nits it still pops.
Portability
The portability of the ASUS PQ22U is its next specific draw. Very few displays are designed with portability in mind, and those that are are especially prized by DIT’s who are constantly moving from setup to setup. The whole unit is very thin at only 8.5mm thick, and weighs only 1.4kgs. There are no protrusions from it’s rectangular frame and it feels and handles more like a very large tablet than a video monitor. Deserving of a special call out is the foldable stand. The stand is light, but perfectly stable and balanced with a magnetic attachment to the mounted display. The stand also folds down flat to make it easy to slip into a laptop bag, or even a large pocket. The stand offers a limited but useful range of tilt of 20 degrees to the monitor. In addition there is a large foldable case that is included, that works exactly like the cases on an iPad, allowing not just protection, but the ability to prop up the display at a steeper angle than the stand, and even put it in a lengthwise portrait configuration. In practice this case based support doesn’t exactly seem to scale with size, and it did feel a bit flimsy, while the magnetic stand was rock solid. Once again underscoring the portability aspect was the inclusion of a carrying bag to put it all in, case, stand, monitor and all. Portability was a primary factor in the PQ22U’s design, not an afterthought.
The Monitor Hardware and Menus
From a hardware perspective the PQ22U has a minimalist design. This strategy can either be efficient or limiting depending on your use case, and for DIT’s it does fall into the limiting category fairly quickly. The Monitor has only three video inputs. 2 USB TypeC DisplayPort connections and one Micro HDMI. The monitor has no separate power connector, and so one of the USB C ports must be dedicated to power, (TEST USBC FROM LG MONITOR) leaving you with one Display Port and one HDMI connection. You can power the monitor through the supplied AC to USB TypeC adapter, or by any power bank or battery solution that can provide a sustained 65watts to the USB Type C connector. Power draw would vary widely I imagine, so while it is possible to battery power the display I’m not sure how practical it would be. I didn’t have a powerful enough powerbank to test it with. This leaves you with 2 different 10-bit video inputs. There is no SDI capability, which would have been much too wide to fit on the monitor. Micro HDMI is not exactly my favorite connector, as my multiple broken Micro HDMI cables will attest to, but it does get you 10 bit UHD HDR in, so I’ll take it and just try to be more careful.
The menu system in the ASUS PQ22U is just plain horrible. There’s really no sugar coating it. The menus are navigated by the two up/down buttons and the power button tripling as on/off, select, and menu back depending on how long you press it. As you can guess, turning the monitor off by accident is very easy to do, as well as to select something when you wanted to go back and vice versa. I was never able to really navigate the menu effectively, more of a press and pray and try again approach. This large tablet design is really asking for a touch screen interface for the menu, but I’m sure there are practical reasons why they couldn’t include it in the display. However they certainly could have added another button or two on the side to simplify navigation. DIT’s are always in the menus. The menu’s themselves have a decent amount of control and options if you can get to them.
- ProArt Preset: Choses the color gamut, presets include: Standard, sRGB, Adobe RGB, Rec.2020, DCI P3, Rec.709, HDR PQ DCI, HDR PQ REC2020, HDR HLG, HDR DolbyVision. As well as two user modes that can hold a custom calibration.
- Color: Various manual color adjustments if you need to override the calibrated options above.
- Image: Adjust Sharpness and Aspect Ratio Control.
- PIP/PBP: These are extremely robust Picture in Picture controls that allow you to have multiple signals displayed on the same screen in differing color gamuts.
- QuickFit: On screen Ruler and Alignment grid controls which would be useful for print operations, but less useful for video work where are layout is strictly proscribed by standards. A missed opportunity to include aspect ratio guides here for video.
- Input Select: Choose the source from the PQ22U’s 3 video inputs.
- System Setup: Adjust the monitor power and menu interface settings.
Calibrating the ASUS PQ22U
Proper calibration is critical to any color grading display, and here is where ASUS has gone the extra mile in its Pro Art Lineup. The normal OS level monitor calibration in windows and MacOS is essentially useless for critical grading. A simple icc profile is nowhere near the quality of a 3D LUT, and that’s before its clouded with OS “features” like True Tone and window transparency. ASUS wisely has decided to save it’s calibration data directly into the monitor itself, bypassing all the OS level shenanigans. The PQ22U uses it’s own internal pattern generator in conjunction with a simplified calibration software designed for that specific display. This is the perfect solution for monitor calibration I feel, as professional calibration software is very expensive and can be difficult to parse the arcane technical details of many different display technologies. The simplified software approach allows you to focus on “I can calibrate this exact monitor that I own” rather than “I need to try to create my monitor profile out of a subset of all possible monitors and display technologies.” In practice the calibration of the PQ22U is a little tricky, requiring all three ports on the unit to be occupied, (probe, display, and power) so some clever adapter work may be necessary to get everything in it’s place. Once all the hardware connections are in place the actual calibration is straightforward. Launch the calibration software (windows only, though it worked perfectly well using a virtual machine on MacOS), and follow the step by step instructions for the gamut/gamma/white point you want to hit. These custom profiles are saved in the user modes. (At the time of this article I was told that a firmware upgrade would enable the more extensive Version 2 calibration software found on ASUS’ flagship ProArt displays, but I was unable to test this.)
The ASUS PQ22U as a Computer Monitor
The PQ22U makes a great second display for a laptop in the field, and this is not an easy niche to fill. While you can’t throw it in you laptop bag or backpack, the monitor is light and portable enough to take with you in the car, walk it over to a hotel room, or put it on a table on set. It’s designed to be moved around frequently and easily. Aside from that it has enough screen real estate to effectively expand the GUI of professional NLE and make the laptop editing experience feel less restrictive. This would be a fantastic option for those editing on set. While not bright enough to be true HDR, its 330 nits is bright enough to use outdoors, especially coupled with the reflection resistant matte display. Due to the multiple video inputs, there are some interesting configurations you can do for color accurate monitoring. The most obvious is to use the DisplayPort connector for your GUI connection and connect the HDMI input via a bus powered Blackmagic UltraStudio or AJA T Tap from the same laptop. That way you can easily switch between your NLE and a full screen color accurate image that bypasses all the OS color management nonsense. The Picture in Picture options can also be invoked in this configuration. You can have your color accurate HDMI input laid over your GUI main screen in a small Picture in Picture box. PiP sources can even have their own color gamuts independent of the main source. So for example you could have your DCI P3 video output in a box overlaid on your sRGB NLE interface. By adjusting both the PiP parameters on the monitor, and rearranging the NLE screen interface you could effectively replace the program monitor on your NLE with the PiP instead, allowing you to accurately color grade inside your NLE GUI. The ASUS PQ22U is a portable color accurate monitor, there is really no use case for using this display just as a simple monitor if you don’t need the color accuracy.
The ASUS PQ22U as a Grading Monitor
Properly calibrated, the ASUS PQ22U is perfectly acceptable as a SDR rec709 and P3 grading monitor. This monitor can easily be used on set for live grading, and off set for grading editorial proxies and dailies. However it is limited in many ways operationally from professional grading monitors. For example, while it is calibratable, you can not load a LUT from a 3rd party application into the monitor. Nor are there other useful things like scopes, false color, and aspect ratio overlays. It does not qualify as an HDR grading monitor, but it is fine as an HDR viewing device. This would also be great dailies monitor for the director/producer, by giving them HDR h.265 dailies instead of SDR h.264 to watch. It does still have that wow factor, and can show off the rushes in their best format. This may be a way to offer HDR dailies at a reasonable price point and ease of use. Many directors and DP’s would love to see HDR dailies, but not want to cart around a huge OLED TV, or pay for renting a $30,000 HDR mastering monitor.
You will want to adjust the following options when using this as a standalone grading monitor. ECO mode should be turned off, you don’t want any automatic dimming to happen while you’re grading.
Also you will want to make sure the “Human Sensor” is off, which is an OLED anti burn in feature, that uses small sensors in the front of the unit to detect if there is a person sitting in front of the monitor. If it can’t detect a human after a period of time, it automatically dims the display. Obviously if the monitor is to one side as a grading monitor there isn’t a person in front of it.
There isn’t a big downside to defeating these anti burn-in technologies if you’re using this as a full screen grading monitor as the entire monitor will likely be constantly refreshing with different pixels anyway. These features are really designed to avoid GUI screen burn in if you’re using it as a computer monitor.
Conclusion
The PQ22U is a truly unique monitor, and ASUS should be commended for trying something this niche, especially because it’s our niche. The menu system is abysmal, but the calibration software is simple and powerful. ASUS has a lot of room to improve, and with the economies of scale involved with all their gaming monitors, ASUS ProArt may just be a name to watch in our market moving forward.
This monitor costs 150,000 baht (where I live in Thailand) or about $4,000 USD in other places. While everyone in YouTube/Creator land seems to freak out about this price, for DIT’s 4 grand for a grading monitor shouldn’t raise an eyebrow (ok maybe 1/2 way). The overall price isn’t as important as how much you can bill for it. Can this monitor make you money, or even failing that enough money to defray enough of the cost to enjoy it’s usefulness?
In my mind if you just need an extension to your laptop monitor for your GUI, the portability aspect alone isn’t worth the price. If you’re renting this out to editorial as a combined laptop GUI/Color Monitor for on set editing, you should be able to bill this out. If you’re using this as your primary grading monitor for SDR 709 and P3, you should be able to bill it out, and lastly you may be able to use this as part of an HDR dailies system for the directors/producers and bill for that. Lots of ways to make money with this unique monitor I think. At the $4K price point, there are a few other options for professional HD monitoring with LCD screens and all the production bells and whistles. But nothing directly comparable to a small, portable 4K, OLED HDR (-ish) display. My advice is that if think you can bill it, buy it.
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