 A portion of this video is sponsored by Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Watch to the end to learn more. There are two types of displays, those for consuming content and those for creating it. And while they have a lot in common, there are some key ways that they differ, with the main one being color gamut. You're probably already aware that a wider color gamut means your display can recreate a broader range of colors, but what exactly are sRGB, Adobe RGB, DCI-P3, and why have creative types been spending tens of thousands of dollars on monitors that have more of them? Could this be the game changer that stops all that, turning those expensive beasts into dinosaurs? And can we game on it, even if we're not really supposed to? Yes. Yes, of course we will. If you guessed that the RGB stands for red, green, blue, you're right. Standard RGB, or sRGB, was created back in 1996 by HP and Microsoft, and it's basically our default color space, used for monitors, printers, and just about anything you look at online. But sRGB, being 25 years old at this point, wasn't the most forward-looking standard, and we've come a long way. Think of the color spectrum like a rainbow, and sRGB kind of like a small sampling of those available colors. Speaking of colors, our Northern Lights DeskPad, finally back in stock, pickers up today at LTDStore.com. Well, that's where the newer big boy color spaces come in, adding more and more of the human visible spectrum. So a monitor with full coverage of the DCI-P3 color space, for example, can display a color gamut about 25% wider than sRGB. But that's also where the problems come in, because when a piece of content is created, or mastered, in one color space, and then consumed on a device that doesn't properly support it, you can end up with oversaturated or unnatural-looking colors. Now, the obvious solution would be to just have content creators use calibrated versions of the same cheapo monitors that we use at home. But that introduces a whole host of other problems. Like, how could they adjust a color that their camera captured, but their display cannot represent? How can they ensure that their masterpiece will look right on a higher fidelity screen, like in the cinema? That's why colorists demand superior displays, which, for film work, can easily reach $30,000 or $40,000. Now, obviously, for smaller content creators, or even small studios, that kind of cost is out of reach. And that is where the 32EP950 comes in from LG. It features a 4K OLED panel for blacks that are completely devoid of light. Remember, the individual pixels can be turned off. And it boasts 99% coverage of both the DCI-P3 and Adobe RGB color spaces. Unlike some of the larger OLED displays out there, it's only 31.5 inches. We'll get back to that missing half inch later. And it runs at a refresh rate of 60Hz, which isn't the best, but remember, it's not for consuming content, it's for creating it. But I still want a game on what is on paper, the best display I've ever looked at. This is my first time seeing this game on such a wide-gamut monitor, but I don't notice a difference. And I shouldn't, because if we're in SDR, we're only making use of sRGB anyway. And many consumer, in fact, most consumer monitors these days are able to achieve pretty close to 100% coverage of sRGB. Let's switch over to HDR, though. Probably want to crank our luminance, given that this is an OLED monitor. And here it is. We can verify if we're in the right color space. Yep, so we're in BT2100 HDR. And theoretically, this is the widest color gamut I've ever seen on a monitor. Honestly speaking, this is such a kind of muted scene that I kind of want to try a different part of the game. Oh, wow, this looks pretty. Man, this is still a good looking game, even after it's been a few years now. With that said, it's gorgeous, but to my eye, it's not, you know, that one. Can we try this side by side with just a consumer-grade IPS panel that's also been calibrated? You thought of that? We have one, of course we do. Now, to be clear, this is still a monitor that costs $2,000 brand new, but I mean, I can't. Boy. OK, OK, this is higher contrast for sure. Even though the one on the right is rated for a peak brightness of a thousand nits, I'm definitely retaining more detail in the dark portions of the scene. I'm gonna switch it again. No, there's still lots of detail in the dark portions, and this is very nice. As a sanity check, we restarted the game with the LG monitor completely disconnected, just in case there was some kind of tone mapping problem switching from one to the next. And yep, it still looks great. But even if we can't tell the difference between this and like a $2,000 monitor, why don't we go full consumer, like $600 monitor, like high-end consumer? Maybe then we will see it. One thing to consider before we do this is that monitors at this price point don't generally support HDR or at least don't really support it properly. So I'm just gonna double check that both of our displays are in sRGB, because that's the color space you'd be in for SDR. I'm gonna use the little nipple navigation that personally I am quite partial to. I like this convenient quick color space changer. It's nice. Need to make sure that you're in sRGB mode as well. Okay, that is a difference. Honestly speaking, I don't know that I like the OLED picture better. I was about to say the same thing. Um, ploof, is this what's supposed to happen? You're supposed to get more correct colors, right? People tend to like brighter images and more saturated images. And I would agree that like the left probably looks closer to like, if this was real life, that's what it would probably look like. A lot of people actually prefer over saturation. Will the game output Adobe RGB? Do any games support Adobe RGB? I don't think so, no. Okay. It'll try its best to sort of tone map to it. Right. It's not going to be perfect. Most games are still made with sRGB in mind, because people don't have expensive monitors or TVs. Okay, well one of the problems is that we've got the brightness way down on this. And to the human eye, higher brightness does tend to look better, at least to a point. So let's go ahead and fix that up. Get them kind of similar. Actually, that looks, yeah, it looks very close. It's an OLED already. The last thing you want to do is set it to 25% brightness. Okay. This looks a lot closer. Now we don't have quite the same kind of green cast. And I would say that it's pretty clear that this is the better looking in sRGB mode. The difference is really not as much as you might want though. Obviously, this, you know, moss or whatever this is, is more vibrant, in spite of the fact that they're both in the same color space. And if we wanted to try out a different color space like Adobe RGB, we'd probably see more pop to it. Yes, we do. But that's just tone mapping. That's not because the content is actually supposed to look like that. With this one, you can obviously tune your saturation or whatever, but you can't actually change the color space that it is representing. It's just sRGB. Just adjust it to look worse. As hard as it is to tell the difference, it's absolutely beautiful. Probably the best looking monitor I've ever seen. And if it wasn't stuck at 60 Hertz, I mean, I can see how high end gamers would be tempted. Before you ask, by the way, we did try overclocking it. No doubt. Overclocking it, no dice, not even 61 Hertz. After speaking with a senior engineer at LG, we learned that a higher refresh rate panel is on the horizon, and they're working on variable refresh rate support. But you've got to understand that the method they use to drive a panel with individual self-illuminated pixels, it's not the same as LG's other gaming displays, and getting this stuff tuned takes time. Color accuracy was the highest priority, and everything else went by the wayside. And if Disney Pixar's take is anything to go by, it looks like LG nailed it. They have actually endorsed this display, which is very uncommon for Disney, who tries to stay neutral when it comes to just about everything. It's not as good as a $30,000 mastering monitor, particularly when it comes to brightness, which we'll talk more about later, but it is good enough to get most of the way there. So the idea is to have most of the team using the 32 EP950 for their day-to-day work, then have one or maybe two people with expensive mastering monitors to double check it and make corrections as they see fit. And this is actually the setup that they used for the film, Luca. It's also a much more portable solution to work from home compared to such professional beasts, which has become more and more common in the last couple of years. It is very light at just 5.3 kilograms, or just under 12 pounds, and it is really thin compared to some of the other professional displays that we've looked at in the past. By comparison, the 1600-nit ASUS PA32UCG takes up a ton of desk space, and it requires a more robust arm if you want to clamp it to your desk. The 32 EP950 is equipped with two DisplayPort 1.4 connections, HDMI 2.0, which I guess makes sense, since it can't do 4K 120Hz anyway, a USB hub to easily connect peripherals with further cables, USB-C with 90 watts of power delivery if you wanted to connect and charge your laptop with a single cable, and of course, a good old-fashioned headphone jack. As for the downsides, I'd say glare is an issue, even with the anti-glare coating that they've put on, so you'll want to make sure that your home office has some blinds for those sunny days. And as great as OLED looks, there's always going to be a bit of fear regarding burn-in, especially when you consider that many professional tools have static on-screen elements that will be there for probably 90% of the display's lifetime. Okay, well, that's where that half inch of screen space that's missing comes in. Check this out. This second inner bezel here that goes all the way around the screen, it's kind of distracting once you notice it, but it does serve a purpose. It actually gives the screen 50 pixels on all sides to shift the image around, helping to reduce the chance of burn-in. Take this with a grain of salt, but anecdotally, our engineering contact at LG hasn't seen any of these displays suffering from burn-in, and he told us that as long as you're not blasting a single spot of white or a super bright light for very extended periods of time, it should be fine for years to come. Now, when testing ours with CalMAN's Color Checker software, we got an average delta E out of the box of 1.5 in sRGB and Adobe RGB mode. That's not perfect, but it's pretty darn good out of the box, and anyone willing to shell out for this kind of display is going to want to calibrate it themselves before they get to work anyway. It unfortunately doesn't come with a colorimeter like some other expensive displays, so you'll just have to consider that it's going to cost you another $200 or $300 on top of the price tag, though you'll only need one colorimeter if you're planning on buying a handful of these for your studio. Speaking of the price, our two other issues with this are price and HDR support. The 32 EP950 is VESA certified HDR True Black 400. What that means is that while it gets plenty dark, because you can turn the pixels off, it suffers from the same pitfalls as other O-lens, meaning that it can't get that bright, and it's only really suitable for an optimal HDR viewing experience in a fairly light controlled environment. It just can't achieve the same kind of crazy high-nits peak brightness that we've seen on recent monitors, like the Odyssey Neo G9 and the ProArt PA32UCG from ASUS. With that being said, there's only one higher rating currently for True Black HDR, 500, so you're probably not missing out on much. And as for the price, there's two ways of looking at that. On the one hand, $4,000 is a crap ton of money, and I wish it was cheaper, because I mean, who wouldn't want just perfectly calibrated colors all the time on everything? But on the other hand, at $1,000 less than a top-tier ProArt, it's a bargain if you were shopping in that price range, and you can even save a G by dropping down to the smaller 27-inch version. And for the Apple crowd, the direct comparison would be something like the Apple Pro Display XDR, which costs $1,000 more and doesn't come in a smaller, cheaper alternative model. It also doesn't have 99% coverage of Adobe RGB, but what it does have is the ability to work seamlessly with macOS. By contrast, the 32 EP950 works with Apple products, but getting it to look just right involves changing ICC profiles and an EDID override. The engineer we talked to actually wrote a 16-page document with instructions on getting it to work. So if you do go the Apple route, you won't get quite the same it-just-works experience, but the good news is you can pay yourself handsomely to fiddle around. With the money that you save on monitor stands. And this portion of the video is sponsored by Adobe. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is the cloud-based service that gives you everything you need to create, edit, organize, store, and share photos across any device. We use Lightroom to edit all of our photos on LTTstore.com to make sure that our merch and our models look their best. Lightroom offers easy-to-use editing tools, from presets to detailed adjustments to make your photos stand out, and you can start your project on mobile, web, or desktop and have your edits automatically applied no matter where you are. Their new super-resolution feature uses artificial intelligence to increase the resolution of your photos with astonishingly accurate results, and you don't have to take my word for it. Try out Adobe Photoshop Lightroom today at the link down below. Thanks again to Adobe for sponsoring this portion of the video. Thanks for watching, guys. If you liked this video, make sure to check out a review of the god-king of monitors, the PA32UCG. It's everything that's great about this, except it also does 120Hz for that extra thousand dollars. Although, it's full array local dimming, so you get a little bit of halos. Okay, there's no perfect monitor yet. Yet.