I've been using a HP 24x which is a TN panel I bought at the fairly affordable price of 22,880 yen years ago. However I've been researching to buy a new one for the past year or so for several reasons. The first was that I wanted an upgrade to 1440p for the increased detail in media as well as a more screen real estate which I felt was limiting during things like coding. The second was better colors since TN panels supposedly have mediocre color accuracy and a low contrast ratio compared to other types of panels. The reason I got it at the time was mainly for the 144hz at that particular price point.

The things I was looking for in a new monitor was an IPS panel, 1440p, better than average (1000:1) contrast, better color accuracy and if possible a higher refresh rate. I went through a lot of indecision but finally landed on the EX-LDQ271JAB made by I-O Data. For most of my research I was looking at international companies like HP or Dell but in the end I decided to take a leap with a Japanese brand. I've been using this for around a month now so here's my review but keep in mind my perspective is going to be based off a transition from a 20,000 yen TN panel.

A brief list of the specs from the official product page are as follows.

• 1440p
• 27 inches
• 180z
• Quantum dot
• Mini LED
• 99% sRGB, 99% DCI-P3, 98% Adobe RGB coverage
• G-sync
• AHVA panel
• 10 bit
• 1ms gtg

The Build

Right out of the box I realize this thing is much larger in my field of view and needed to be placed a bit further back on the desk. The width of the panel is also a bit thicker but it's not something I realize when using it. Setting up the monitor with the included stand is very simple and requires no additional tools. The panel has two HDMI and one DP slot so unfortunately you can't use two DP inputs when using a dual PC setup. It also has no remote or software controls so all settings are tweaked through the rudimentary buttons on the bottom right. I like that the bezels on the panel are very thin on three sides but there's around half a centimeter from the edge before the actual pixels are shown. Finally it has no embedded speakers but who uses them.

Colors

On to the colors, the panel has 5 modes (Standard, Game, DCI-P3, RPG, sRGB) but these are actually more like presets and any value within them can be tweaked individually. Each mode retains its settings for brightness and contrast so I guess that's useful if you swap between profiles for different types of work. I personally just stick to Standard and adjust the values as I want them.

Let's talk about Quantum dot. Quantum dot is basically a layer in the monitor that gives it a wider gamut (range) of colors which is what the 99& DCI-P3 coverage is indicating. Thing is, the vast majority of content on the web like videos use sRGB which don't take advantage of this color range anyways, DCI-P3 is mainly used for HDR content. A quirk (or bug) with a wider gamut display is that the colors look over saturated and inaccurate when looking at sRGB content. Some people actually like this. Sure it's not technically accurate but the saturated colors look really vibrant. I personally don't like the over saturated look so I use the sRGB clamp which limits the colors range to produce better accuracy.

The question is, does the LDQ271JAB paired with the sRGB clamp look significantly different or better than my old monitor? I have to say not really, I'm whelmed. This isn't a statement on the newer monitor but rather a realization that the colors on the TN panel weren't bad at all. I had this expectation that the gap would be much bigger and that there'd somehow be an amazing wow factor when watching videos in the newer screen but in reality they are rather comparable. Comparing the newer monitor with accurate colors to the old one I calibrated by eye made me realize that I actually prefer a slightly warmer tint to my media, which further goes to show how good a monitor looks to a person is disconnected to how accurate its color mapping is.

HDR with Mini LED

You know how earlier I mentioned a wider gamut is utilized in HDR content. Well mini LED is what enables IPS monitors to reach a 'viable' level of HDR in terms of peak brightness and contrast. A quick recap: IPS panels have one backlight so even areas that should be black are lit up to be dark grey. OLED is a somewhat expensive technology that fixes this by lighting up each pixel individually so that a pixel that is off shows true black (theoretically giving infinite contrast). If a monitor doesn't have enough peak brightness and contrast, it can't show HDR content in a way that significantly differs from SDR. The EX-LDQ271JAB splits the monitor into 576 zones of mini LED backlights (using local dimming to adjust each) which improves contrast and achieves a DisplayHDR 1000 certification (basically pretty good). Based off some online anecdotes OLED is still the superior choice for contrast and image quality but supposedly mini LED has it's own unique advantages in the form of better text clarity and a brighter screen making it more suited if you also do ordinary work in a well lit room (I don't have first hand experience to confirm this).

The quantum dot and mini LED combination means the HDR implementation looks pretty good. I tried out Silent Hill 2 and Days Gone and the local dimming results in very nice contrast which makes SDR looks washed out in comparison. This was basically the jump in visual quality I was looking for but whether HDR is even available in the first places hinges greatly the number of games that support it. Going forward I'll definitely be using HDR in any games that support it because its a straight upgrade over ordinary colors. I've attached a comparison image of an HDR video, both images were taken in a dark room but the iPhone camera makes the SDR look worse than it actually is.

One thing to note is that when using HDR mode, Windows uses its own sRGB clamp on SDR content which conflicts with the monitor's clamp, making everything washed out. This simply means you to switch the gamut to native when viewing HDR. I wish this was somehow automatic because this extra step makes swapping a bit tedious. Additionally make sure to calibrate the HDR itself with the Windows HDR Calibration tool.

Callibrating the Monitor

I tried out Rting's guide and Lagom's monitor test pages to calibrate the monitor but after tweaking various values for quite some time, I can honestly say the default sRGB clamp produces colors that I quite like. For brightness and contrast I settled on 90 and 50. When using the sRGB clamp, the monitor locks the RGB values amongst other settings like color temperature. I find this acceptable since I like the default look but if you want to customize these it's possible to do so with a program called ControlMyMonitor which as the name implies, allows monitor adjustment through software.

There seems to be a weird bug where changing the gamut resets the brightness and mutes the vibrancy of the monitor by a subtle amount. This can be remedied by changing the mode to anything else and back to native but it's kinda annoying and I can't seem to find a permanent fix.

Input Lag

I don't have any extral devices to measure this so I'm going to have to direct you to a site that claims 3 milliseconds of input lag at 180Hz. I'm fairly sensitive to input lag and anecdotally I agree that it's impercetible.

Extra Info

• Some monitors use pulse width modulation which rapidly flickers the LED to simulate lower brightness levels which may cause eye strain/headaches during long use. This monitor uses direct current, a flickerless design at any brightness.
• Viewing angles are consistent, there's only a slightly perceptible change in contrast compared to my TN panel which varies greatly.
• Grey uniformity and IPS glow is imperceptible as well though this may be because I usually view bright content in well lit room.
• The surface finish is matte but strangely more reflective compared to my TN panel. I can see my outline in dark areas and the reflection of my finger if I put it up close to the screen. This may have been a design choice to pair with the wider gamut but I would've preferred getting rid of the reflection.
• Some features I don't really use. Color enhancer: just artificially saturates colors. Resolution Upscaling: makes lines too sharp and jagged. Blue light reduction: tints the screen yellow for no real scientific benefit.

Conclusion

At the price point of ¥54,800 this monitor has accurate colors, a very good HDR implementation and a high refresh rate all at 1440p resolution. There are some minor setbacks like a bug in the color settings and it not having speakers but all the features that matter for a monitor score above and beyond straight out of the box. However if you plan to look at SDR content with a sRGB clamp, the colors of the IPS panel isn't that much of a significant upgrade from the TN panel.

PS: An unexpected but welcome perk was that my old monitor oriented in vertical mode shows vertical streams at an insane, near 1-to-1 size.