LG 32U990A early impression
I’ve had the LG for a couple of days now and wanted to share my impressions.
I will compare it against another 6k monitor, the Asus ProArt PA32QCV and the 5k Apple Studio Display XDR.
In addition to the LG, I have another 32” monitor on my desk, an older 4K Philips with a VA panel.
My main use case is text editing, coding and SDR video editing. Light gaming on the side.
I use the monitors in both Windows and MacOS. In Win, the 4K monitor is set to 150% scaling and the LG to 225% scaling.
On Windows, the improvements in text legibility of 6K over 4K are less than I expected. In Word and web browsers at my viewing distance the 4K already looks great and the 6K is a very modest improvement. In Teams, however, the 6K comes across as noticeably sharper. In WinExplorer the side folder view is again much cleaner on the 6K, but in the main window view both are excellent. The biggest difference I’ve noticed is Task Manager: on 4K it is visibly blurry whereas on the 6K it is perfectly sharp. I attribute this to inconsistent Windows rendering engines.
In MacOS the difference is far more noticeable. The 4K never looked great and the 6K is a major improvement in any app.
Surprisingly, the biggest improvement in image quality was in games. Civ7 looks way better in 6K than in 4K: aliasing pretty much becomes unnoticeable. The same in Victoria 3.
Compared to the 6K Asus, the LG has better viewing angles - but not as good as my old VA panel. The blacks are actually quite good and in a dark room not much behind the VA panel that was measured at 3500:1. However, with ambient light, the coating LG used results in a less darker black than my Philips. Speaking of the coating, I would rank it as medium coarse. The Asus was definitely better in this aspect. From my viewing distance it is OK, even on a purely white background. Obviously, the closer you sit the more distractive it becomes.
Wakeup time is very fast on the LG, whereas the Asus would take up 10s. Also, adjusting color modes is immediate on the LG, whereas it took upwards of 5s on the Asus.
I have the Mac connected via TB5 and my Windows PC via Display Port.
The default pixel response time looks better on the LG compared to the Asus. Even though the XDR is 120Hz and the LG 60Hz, motion clarity is not that much better to be honest. All of them are a far cry from an OLED.
The LG gets very bright in HDR, and is noticeably brighter than the ASUS, but highlights are a far cry from the XDR even if the overall full screen brightness does not feel that much behind.
On the Eizo monitor test, the LG looked more stable in the frequency patterns, whereas the ASUS exhibited strange temporal instability: visible flickering.
The Asus had a noticeable brightness fall off towards the left and right edges. The LG is much better in that regard. However there is some vertical banding non-uniformity: if I pan a photo of a bright sky sideways I can see it. Otherwise it is not noticeable.
Overall, I am quite satisfied with the LG, except the viewing angles which for a 32” screen should be better. It is most noticeable in the bottom right on Windows where the date and time are shown. Compared to the Philips VA it is visibly worse.