ASUS releases their ProArt PA27AC DisplayHDR 400 monitor

ASUS has officially released their new ProArt PA27AC monitor, delivering a 27-inch 1440p IPS panel with support for 100% of the sRGB colour space with an 8-bit panel. 

This display comes pre-calibrated from the factory, making it suitable for professional use, though ASUS has integrated their ProArt Calibration technology to allow users to quickly calibrate their screen and save their colour profiles on the display itself to allow it to be used with multiple devices recalibration. 

The PA27AC meets VESA’s requirements for DisplayHDR 400, a new HDR standard that acts as the minimum requirements for HDR, specifying a peak luminance of 400 nits, 8-bit image quality and standard dynamic contrast dimming. Sadly this is a far cry from what a full HDR 10 panel would support, which specifies a maximum brightness of 1,000 nits, a 10-bit panel with 125% sRGB or 90% DCI-P3 colour support and local dimming to offer enhanced contrast. 

DisplayHDR 400 does offer an improvement over standard displays, though the advantages will not be as noticeable over a proper HDR 10 /DisplayHDR 1000 screen. Whether it be peak brightness of colour gamut support DisplayHDR 400 is a significant downgrade over DisplayHDR 600 or 1000, making this display hard to recommend if users are specifically looking for good “HDR support”. 

The ASUS PA27AC support AMD FreeSync out of the box, with a dynamic refresh rate window of 48-60Hz, which is extremely limited. Input-wise the PA27AC supports DisplayPort, USB Type-C/Thunderbolt 3 (1 in and 1 out), HDMI 2.0 and HDMI 1.4. The display also supports a QuickFit feature to show the dimensions of an A4 page, a B5 page, and a ruler to allow users to scale documents or images to their real-world sizes.