Monitors: ASUS PA246Q - too glarey

[Eekthecat]

Hi all,

Finally decided on a monitor asus pa246Q. Which is pretty good value I thought. Anyways, brought it home. Plugged it in, and no good!

I find the monitor very "intense" for my eyes. However what I strange, when I brought it back to the shop I bought it from and had one of the technicians look at it, the monitor looked fabulous! No glareyness on my eyes.

Anyways, brought it back home, plugged it back into my desktop and still no luck. Have since, viewed the monitors through the 7 different settings and all of them didn't help. I've even run a spyder3 express calibration on it - with not much change.

CAN SOMEONE shed some light on what else I could do? What am I doing wrong? Its frustrating as I had hoped to get some work in.

[ashphotoart]

I think cable :

what u are using in your computer - DVI cable or VGA ?

[Tony W]

Cable as suggested could have a bearing if not several things spring to mind:

1. By "intense" do you mean too bright, too contrasty or both?

2. The fact that back in the shop monitor could suggest that you were viewing in very different conditions than at home i.e. the shop ambient light much greater than your home viewing conditions.

3. I assume you just took the monitor back to the shop and the tech plugged it into their own PC. What graphics card was the shop running and how does this differ to yours?

4. Check your graphics card software and drivers and that they are not set to some garish gameplay mode.

5. What settings are you using for calibration?

Only other thing I can think of is to 'have a play' with the monitors manual adjustments until you get a display that looks acceptable

[Eekthecat]

Hi all

Thanks for the responses.

1) I have switched between DVI and VGA - didn't make much difference

1. By "intense" do you mean too bright, too contrasty or both?
When i say too intense. I mean its very glarey on my eyes, especially when it comes to type. Ok on photos. But I can't stare at a word doc or a Indesign document for too long without it giving me a headache

2. The fact that back in the shop monitor could suggest that you were viewing in very different conditions than at home i.e. the shop ambient light much greater than your home viewing conditions.
Yes but shouldn't all monitors work in any room condition. I think the worst condition was in natural light. I really got a headache and it made me quite nauseous

3. I assume you just took the monitor back to the shop and the tech plugged it into their own PC. What graphics card was the shop running and how does this differ to yours?
I don't know what the graphics card was on his machine. But mine is a ATI Radeon 5700. I checked the refresh rate and its default setting is 60 Htz, which I can't seemed to change.

4. Check your graphics card software and drivers and that they are not set to some garish gameplay mode.
Where do I start looking for that?

5. What settings are you using for calibration?
I am using SRGB mode but I've tried it on all of the settings. And it still looks like there is just way too much saturation or brightness. Ive even turned the brightness down to 0 and it still looks terrible.

Would anyone suggest an anti glare protector screen if the shop decides my case is not worth a refund. However, i am very upset as the monitor is only days old.

[Tony W]

Originally Posted by Eekthecat

1) I have switched between DVI and VGA - didn't make much difference
DVI is probably the way to go with this monitor

1. By "intense" do you mean too bright, too contrasty or both?
When i say too intense. I mean its very glarey on my eyes, especially when it comes to type. Ok on photos. But I can't stare at a word doc or a Indesign document for too long without it giving me a headache.
By the sound of it the monitor brightness is set way too high (unless of course you have ultra sensitive eyes) and should be calibrated properly. If photo editing is ok but it is only when you have a bright white screen e.g. blank word document, have you looked if the software has any method of reducing the standard background color to say a light grey

2. The fact that back in the shop monitor could suggest that you were viewing in very different conditions than at home i.e. the shop ambient light much greater than your home viewing conditions.
Yes but shouldn't all monitors work in any room condition. I think the worst condition was in natural light. I really got a headache and it made me quite nauseous.
Yes of course monitors will work in all conditions. The point I was trying to make is that our eyes adapt to the ambient light and if this is quite low when we are then faced with high brightness i.e. monitor screen it can seem too much.

3. I assume you just took the monitor back to the shop and the tech plugged it into their own PC. What graphics card was the shop running and how does this differ to yours?
I don't know what the graphics card was on his machine. But mine is a ATI Radeon 5700. I checked the refresh rate and its default setting is 60 Htz, which I can't seemed to change.
The point I was trying to make here is that the shop system most likely differs to yours in many ways including how the card was set to feed the signal to the monitor. AFAIK most LCD monitors default to 60Hz and many there is no way to alter this. With CRT the refresh rate was very important with LCD less so. In any event the refresh rate should have little or no bearing on your 'glarey' problem unless of course you are so sensitive that you are somehow picking up on the refresh - but I think that highly unlikely

4. Check your graphics card software and drivers and that they are not set to some garish gameplay mode.
Where do I start looking for that?
I use an ATI Radeaon X1950 card and the card should have either been supplied with drivers and an application called ATI Catalyst centre. This application allows you to adjust many settings for your display. I take it you did load the drivers for your machine when the card was installed and are not just relying on the standard Windows (if that is what you use) drivers?

5. What settings are you using for calibration?
I am using SRGB mode but I've tried it on all of the settings. And it still looks like there is just way too much saturation or brightness. Ive even turned the brightness down to 0 and it still looks terrible.
Something is very wrong here if you turned brightnes down to 0. It is not clear from your post if you have turned the settings down using the monitors controls or whatever control you have with software. In either case however you should be able to really dim the screen down by any degree you want.
You did say you ran Spyder calibration without much change! Which could indicate one of several things either a. Your Spyder is not communicating with your system and setting the monitor correctly - if at all or b. Your calibration target settings are incorrect, or c. Your eyes are really sensitive
While I use Spyder 2 device I use SpectraView software to perform the calibration on an NEC 2090 monitor. The software communicates directly with the monitor and performs calibration to my required settings. With your monitor and software you may have to do some of this manually but the principles remain the same i.e. you need to tailor for your needs. While this may not be applicable to you these are the setting I am currently using and which I find quite adequate for photo editing and other general computer use and the screen is not too bright in either daylight or subdued light viewing.
White Point = D65
Gamma = 2.20
Intensity = 140cd/m2
Color Gamut = Native Full
How do your figures for the above compare?

Would anyone suggest an anti glare protector screen if the shop decides my case is not worth a refund. However, i am very upset as the monitor is only days old.
Anti glare filter is really designed to reduce the glare from ambient and specular lighting behind you and that which falls on the screen. While it may have a dimming effect overall particularly if you view at an angle I cannot see how this will do much to reduce the glare - have not used one so I could be wrong

Hoping something above will be of some help getting you on the right track assuming no fault with the monitor of course