Asus PA248Q review

Asus's PA248Q is an IPS monitor aimed at professionals. Asus claims the screen "guarantees industry-leading colour accuracy" and "delivers 100% sRGB colour accuracy".

To test this, we started by calibrating the screen with our Spyder4Express screen calibrator. After calibration, the screen's colour was noticeably warmer, and the Spyder4Express software claimed the screen's colour gamut was within 93% of the sRGB standard.

The display has a matte finish, so doesn't suffer from overhead reflections like a reflective-surface monitor. This does mean that colours are more accurate than punchy and vibrant; this is a screen more for photo editing than gaming or watching films. We had no real complaints about image quality; colours are accurate and consistent across the display and we couldn't discern any bleed-through from the backlight. The panel does have a slight grainy texture, which we were aware of at first but soon got used to. Horizontal viewing angles are wide, but the screen's colours become darker fairly quickly when you view it from higher up.

The monitor's menus are simple and make it easy to adjust settings - you navigate and select the various options with a joystick, which is far easier than the up and down buttons you have to use to change the options on most displays. Selecting one of the User modes frees up all the screen's picture tweak options, such as Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Hue, Colour Temperature and Gamma, and going into the Advanced menu even lets you adjust Hue by RGB and CMY.

The PA248Q has some useful extra features. The screen tilts and rotates on its stand, and the screen height adjusts between 45 and 135mm, so it's simple to find the right viewing angle. This is the only screen we've ever seen with a built-in powered USB3 hub, so it's perfect for attaching fast external storage. There are DVI, VGA, HDMI and DisplayPort inputs, and the monitor can display a picture-in-picture view from a second display input, either in a window or with the display from both inputs side by side on one screen. The picture-in-picture display is always on top of whatever is on the main display, which is useful if you don’t want what you're referring to, such as a reference picture, to keep disappearing behind your active application.