We Chose the WRONG Monitors 5 Years Ago

Our editors are kind of overdue for a monitor upgrade. And Apple's new studio display got me thinking. If Apple has those, ASUS probably has something that's better or less expensive or both. After all, that's a huge part of why we went with the PA32 UCX Pro rather than the Pro Display XDR in the first place. So, we reached out to ASUS, who, as luck would have it, has a really comprehensive lineup of ProArt displays these days, and offered to sponsor this video, sending over 12 of their 32-in PA32 QCVS. Compared to the Studio Display, these are much larger. They're 6K versus 5K resolution. They have the same brightness, the same 60 Hz refresh rate, and all of this for $300 less. Now, it only uses Thunderbolt 4 rather than Thunderbolt 5, but you get a built-in KVM for controlling multiple systems without an external accessory. So, these are going to be our editor's new workhorse monitors. But, ASUS also sent over one unit of something really, really special. The PA 32KX, an 8K monster with over 4,000 dimming zones and sustained 1,000 nits brightness. This has the potential to be among the sickest displays I've ever seen, and I cannot wait to use it. No, no, no, not now. Before we get started, the keen it among you might have noticed there are only 11 displays in the pile. Asus asked me to point out that that was not them cheaping out. It's actually because we allocated one of the ones they sent to Linus Torvalds' build. The good news though is that some of the members of our editing team are really more like supervisors these days and don't really need the extra resolution dayto-day. Let's actually start then by getting rid of one of the old UCX displays and explaining both what's still great about them and also what isn't so much. Uh, is Nicole remoteed into her system or are we good to just We're not doing Nicole's. No, we're moving PE. She's You just said that she doesn't need it because she's a supervisor. So, we're not switching hers. We're switching Peters. Oh, well, why did WE PUT THE PILE IN front of Peters? Move the pile. That was just for the intro. Oh, okay. As I mentioned in a couple of key ways, this old monitor is actually kind of better than the replacement. Thanks to its mini LED backlight with local dimming, it supports HDR at up to 1200 nits peak brightness. By contrast, pun intended, while the new units do support HDR, they don't have local dimming. They only reach about 600 nits peak brightness, and they won't really pop the way that a true HDR display will. So, why the step down? Oh, sorry, Peter. Hopefully, whatever you were doing wasn't important. Oh, man. I forgot how heavy these things were. I haven't moved one in a while. Okay, come on. And that's a little dramatic. Here's the thing. HDR felt really important to us last time we made an upgrade because we were certain at the time that high dynamic range was the future of our channel and the YouTube platform in general. And it is, and we've dabbled in it. But as it turns out, that future is taking its sweet time. The whole workflow is still more cumbersome, and the juice just hasn't really been worth the squeeze. Also, while a thousand plus backlight zones seemed pretty good at the time, in practice, the blooming is pretty noticeable in day-to-day work. As for the new unit, I already went over some of the sort of highlevel specs, but let's talk about some of the things that make this a great monitor for cutting together footage. And a big one is the resolution. While we and most YouTube channels aren't shooting higher than 4K these days, as it turns out, editors just love having more real estate and a super sharp image. The more the pretty much the better. Okay, is that fair to say? Yeah. Okay, editors. Yeah, you're nodding. This is also a pretty nice thing. I was about to show you guys the IO and I noticed instead the matte coating that ASUS has on this. That is that is really nice. That's not a lot of glare. here. Uh, you know what? I'm going to grab the old one and hold it side by side. That's practically a mirror by comparison. See that? Yeah, that's a big difference. Yeah, that one looks glossy next to Yeah. And it's not glossy. I know. That's the thing is like like here coming to the IO, we've got HDMI 2.1, Display Port 1.4. That's all we need for 6K 60 Hz. We've got two Thunderbolt ports. one that does 96 watts if you wanted a single cable solution to something like a MacBook Pro or a PX13. And then finally, another USBC headphone jack, as well as wait, what the hell is that? A single USB type A. Oh, that's nice. Oh, but wait, there's more. There's another type A and another type C over here. I totally missed that. All right, this took me a minute to figure out, but she clicks on like that, and then she's got a little lock right there. Boom. I wish Peter was actually here to try his new monitor. These guys, they kicked all the editors out because they were like, "Oh, they'll be in the way of the production." And I was like, "Okay, yes, but like also who's going to tell us if they're any good if the editors aren't here? Don't worry. It came from a good place. It came from a good place." Oh, okay. Here we go. Oh my god. 616 by 3384 pixels. If you'd shown this to teenage me, he would have actually crapped himself. Cable management is built into the stand. And for that matter, so is this one, this one, this one, and even this one. There you go. Well, okay. Not like that. There. Yeah, it only goes it only goes 87 degrees because ASUS just wanted to bother every OCD person who bought this display. No, no, no, no. There you go. I'm liking this anti-glare coating. It's really good. Yeah. Sponsored video or not? That's uh that's pretty sick. In compliance with energy related regulations, the max brightness blah blah blah is fixed. Would you like to remain in energy saving mode? Uh no. No. I'd like to be in give me that brightness mode. All right. Now's a good time to take a quick look at our on-screen display. As you'd expect from a professional display, we've got a plethora of color spaces and user modes. And a really cool one that's supported on all of the new ProArt models is the new M model P3 that is designed for color consistency between Apple devices and ProArt displays. And ASUS also wanted us to point out that or you could just not cuz you can scan this QR code and you can get their display widget center. This allows you to adjust a ton of settings through software on both Windows and Mac OS that would normally be buried in an on-screen display. So that way, no matter what kind of computer you're using, you don't have to feel like you're leaving any features on the table. Not going to lie, this looks kind of awesome. Like the reduced glare is incredible and it's so sharp. Oh, buddy. She's she's a heavy boy. Like the new Studio Display XDR and like our old UCXs, this bad boy is miniLEDD with full array local dimming. But unlike those, it's got a whopping 4,32 dimming zones. That is almost double the Studio Display XDR and about four times what we had on these. It's also using what ASUS calls their nextG miniLEDD light profile in order to help reduce haloing. Now, this display does not have industry-leading peak brightness. It's only around 1,200 nits, but it's got some extras like a built-in colorimeter and support for like every color space in user mode under the sun. Also, it is limited to just 60 Hz, but that seems like a fair trade-off for 20 75 PPI versus the 218 of its little brother. And also guys, if we're being real, we're going to need a faster display port connection before we could even go above 8K 60 Hz for color critical work. You don't want to be using display stream compression for that. Wow, is this thing ever thick and heavy. Dual HDMIs this time. Display port. Thunderbolt 4 once again with up to 96 watts of charging. This monitor is too much for just one man. A wild poof appears and that's his contribution. This video is brought to you by ASUS H and the letter H. All right. HDMI, display port, power, USBA to type- C, and we get a Thunderbolt cable as well along with just like its little brother, a calibration. Good lord. I think this one comes delta E. Less than one. Uh yeah. Yeah. sRGB color accuracy on average 68. That's That's nuts. I don't know if I'm going to bother installing the shroud. It's felt. Yeah, it has like velvet for light control. Okay, that's pretty cool. Okay. Yeah, we're putting it on. Okay. And a one. Oh, dude. The base is so heavy. You can tell it's weighted just to like deal with the sheer girth of what's sitting on top of it. Girl, are you so thick? There we go. Anti-glare has come so freaking far, dude. Like, look at that. What is happening right now? Peter wants to see me monitor. You're on a video call with him. Is it? Hi, Peter. This is You please tell me you're not editing like this though. Like you're just remoted into the system, not through the webcam. Right. And this looks incredible. I wish ASU sent 12 of these. Would it have cost, you know, like $9,000 a monitor? Yeah, I can understand why they didn't. I can understand. For 10 of them. I can understand why they didn't, but they're pretty sick. Okay. I like that the shroud screws in now rather than using just like little plastic push pins. Yeah, this is really nice. Just feels primo, you know. There's not really a ton of space in here. Why don't we take this out there to give it a shot? Sure. We need a 5090. Where are we going to get a 5090 at this hour? I don't know. Time to go on a quest. Oh god. Um, nope. Nope. Hey, huzzah. the systems that Red Bull had us build for uh those uh athletes they sponsor. I don't think we should take it out of those. Oh, but bring the monitor over here. Bring the monitor here. We're G to G. Okay, let's do it. Damn. How many FPS are you getting? Don't worry about that, brother. It does look incredibly sharp. Like, I'm looking at the text on the Grand Imperial Mall and uh Gosh, that's good. Dude, this is nuts. Holy the buildings, too. Look at these trees. What's aliasing? Like to be clear, I would never buy a 5090 to game at 60 Hz. Not today. But if I was going to game at 60 Hz. It says 80, but you know how sometimes it says 80 fps, but there's so much tearing and there's so much inconsistency in the frame times that it doesn't feel like 80 fps. Yeah, that's where we're at right now. Well, that's 8K. God. Yeah, the buildings look realistic. Like that's that's one of the first times I've looked at Cyberpunk and thought, "Wow, this looks like actually almost photorealistic just in the base game." To be clear, I still don't think 8K is ever going to happen for consumer. Maybe 20 years. 20 years maybe. But like why? Wow. Because we're sitting here thinking, "Wow, that looks amazing. That's why." All right, fair enough. But this wasn't made for consumers, you know. This is all about the features that professionals need. I mean, even things like it supports DICOM, which was a pretty cool thing that really impressed us about the Studio Display XDR. Well, here it is on both this and on its little brothers. Speaking of the little brothers, why don't we go see how Connor likes his upgrade? Coming back to the displays we're actually deploying. Ready to turn it on and have a look? Sure. I mean, yes. I'm so excited. He's just upset he doesn't have his shelf anymore. We talked about that before the camera turned on. Wow. It's Premiere. It's great. Thanks, Connor. I was going to say actually with the other monitor, um, we have light set up in this room right now, but this was blinding before coming from this bulb light. Right now, I it doesn't face me at all. It's great. Now, tell me something. The way that you would scale your interface normally, are you going to get much out of 6K? I mean, to me, it looks like you have some really small text on your screen. Do you notice any difference or was 4K already a lot? I don't see any impact right now, but I think you said earlier with screenshots, we really want high-res and like be to be able to punch in on words so we don't lose quality. That is the big thing for me. Really? Okay. I mean, you should know you always comment on LMG review. Okay, that's fair. This obviously is a JPEG, so it's not going to scale very well. When you're reviewing our videos and it was like this, would you complain about that? Like, that's legible, right? His seal of approval right now. And if everything that we've looked at so far is a little too rich for your blood, ASUS does have a third model they sent over that's more for people who are starting out, the PA 27JCV. It's only 5K and only 27 in, but we get a ton of the same features that we just went over, like the built-in KVM, the Apple color space compatibility, and access to a ton of different color modes while maintaining a solid 218 PPI for as low as 7 or $800 depending on where you find it. So, thanks again to ASUS for sponsoring this video and this editing den upgrade. If any of you guys are interested in checking out any of the ProArt monitors that we talked about, we're going to have them all linked in the video description. Now, please stop recording because I've got an 8K monitor to steal. Did you add that to it after script review? No, I put that in before and you just never noticed. Nice. I mean, that is the plan. If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe check out the time that we uh originally upgraded to the PA32 UCX. They really are great monitors. We just didn't end up going the HDR route.