Nixeus VUE 30: 30" 2560x1600 IPS Monitor Review
by Chris Heinonen on August 20, 2013 6:00 AM ESTWith the Nixeus VUE 30, I was looking for something that can drive down the prices of 30” LCD monitors while providing a display that is high quality for a general user. After using it and testing it, I feel like it has split the middle on this and made a choice that I don’t really agree with.
Having a 30” display is very nice. Even the slight increase over a 27” 1440p display is noticeable, and I just can’t get enough desktop space for getting work done. The prior 30” to come by here, the Dell U3014, was very nice but also aimed to a more discriminating user group that is willing to pay the extra money for its features. The Nixeus aims for a more general user, and the price reflects that.
What doesn’t reflect that is the use of a wide-gamut CCFL backlight. Most people don’t use AdobeRGB aware programs or content and don’t have a need for this. If the Nixeus VUE 30 had an sRGB mode that reduced the gamut I wouldn’t care, but it lacks that. Because of that it is using a feature that is aimed at a higher-end market but in a product targeting a more general user group. If there isn’t going to be that sRGB mode, I’d rather see a standard gamut CCFL or LED backlight that lets more people see their images and games without over-saturated colors.
That makes the target of the Nixeus, and a recommendation for it, less clear. If you are someone that uses the AdobeRGB gamut and wants a 30” display, then I think the Nixeus is probably a great choice. The overall bench tests are very good, and in AdobeRGB mode the gamut is also pretty accurate. Finding a comparable AdobeRGB 30” monitor is also quite expensive. Searching at Newegg finds nothing below $1,000 and the Nixeus is currently $730 at Amazon as I write this. That 30% savings is quite large and makes the Nixeus a very good buy there.
If you don’t use AdobeRGB then it’s trickier. If you want a really accurate image and use the sRGB gamut, you have to look elsewhere. If you’re planning to use the Nixeus for general office work and productivity, and some gaming, then you will probably be OK with it. The grayscale can come out very accurate in the end, and that matters more for general work than an accurate color gamut does. If you just don’t care about image quality and care about having more screen area, then the Nixeus will be fine as well.
At $730 the Nixeus is much cheaper than prior 30” panels but still carries a significant premium over a 27” display. The VUE 27 is $475 at Amazon, so those extra 160 vertical pixels, 3" diagonal, and the larger gamut are costing you over 50% more than a 27” display. Is that extra price worth it? That’s more for you to decide. I really hope the VUE 30 is the start of a downward trend in 30” displays that will mirror the one we have seen with 27” displays. I also hope we will see some that either have standard gamut backlights or an sRGB mode, to fix the one major complaint I have with the VUE 30.
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blackoctagon - Tuesday, August 20, 2013 - link
Glad to hear you're so insensitive to input lag. However, what you experience is by no means the cream of the crop. One can maintain the pleasant colours of IPS and still have good motion clarity by getting one of the overclockable 27-inch 1440p screens. Their input lag is much less, and further mitigated by the (approx.) 120Hz refresh rate. Orders of magnitude better for FPS gaming than what a 30-inch IPS screen can deliverDanNeely - Tuesday, August 20, 2013 - link
The 2408 was infamously bad. Unlike previous laggy Dell panels that only bothered some gamers the 2408 was slow enough that it annoyed a lot of people who were just working at the desktop. While continuing to insist nothing was wrong and it was working as designed; Dell/etc pulled back (and eventually started listing it on their spec sheets) and the display industry generally insisted on nothing slower than ~2 frames (32ms) which are good enough that no one other than some action gamers complain. I occasionally notice what might be the 30ms on my NEC 3090 when playing POE (an aRPG); but it's intermittent enough I'm not sure if it's actually panel lag or just me hitting the limits of my reaction time.ZeDestructor - Tuesday, August 20, 2013 - link
>overclockable 27-inch 1440p screensRPS or bit-tech (can't remember which) tested that when the Titan came out. They only achieved ~72Hz before the panel itself just started dropping frames because it couldn't keep up.
Besides, as I said up there, image processing and DP->LVDS conversion takes time. constant time, but time nonetheless. If you had a TN panel at 2560x1600@60Hz, you'd see at least 12ms of processing lag + some more for the panel itself. If you can rip out the on-board processing entirely, you're reducing the lag quite a a bit, which is exactly what game modes do: pipe the signal straight to LVDS conversion with no post-processing. On the U2410, that drops the latency from ~30ms to ~14ms.
In any case, you missed the point of my comment, where I mentioned it being in the same range as most other wide-gamut, professional-use panels and perfectly fine for single-player gaming, where you can learn to compensate for it. Hell, my LoL-playing friends used to pull off skillshots by timing it just right with a a 300ms ping time to US servers. If you think 30ms is bad...
blackoctagon - Tuesday, August 27, 2013 - link
I would like to see this "RPS or bit-tech" review if you can find it. There are plenty of 2560x1440 monitors out there that overclock SLIGHTLY, but VERY few that support refresh rates up to approx. 120Hz. Unless the reviewers looked at one of the latter monitors (which would surprise me) then I'm not surprised that they started seeing dropped frames.davsp - Tuesday, August 20, 2013 - link
Viewable Size = 20" I'm guessing typo on spec sheet. :)ingwe - Tuesday, August 20, 2013 - link
Nah, didn't you see the HUGE bezel?ZeDestructor - Tuesday, August 20, 2013 - link
> Note also that lag might be lower running at the native 2560x1600, but I can't directly compare that with most other displays as they lack support for that resolution.Please don't do that. People who buy/want these big, 30" 16:10 panels are paying the hefty premium for the full resolution, not to run something lower through the scaler. As such, I (and others, probably) would appreciate native resolution response times rather than scaled. 2560x1600 is uncommon because of the hefty price (1.5k per screen so far!), not because wqe don't want 2560x1600.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, August 20, 2013 - link
I believe Chris is using a Leo Bodnar device now (http://bit.ly/WXV7Vv), where formerly he used a CRT as a reference display sending the same content to both. To do native 2560x1600 lag tests, you'd need a device (CRT or Leo Bodnar or similar) that supports WQXGA...which doesn't exist. Chris can correct me if I'm wrong, though.saratoga3 - Tuesday, August 20, 2013 - link
Apparently that device can't do > 1080p. Unfortunately this means using the scaler, which I think is a really bad idea. Resizing a 4 MP image can easily take an entire frame worth of latency. Its entirely possible that the actual input lag at native resolution is much lower.mdrejhon - Wednesday, August 21, 2013 - link
The Blur Busters Input Lag Tester, supports 4K, 120Hz, WQXGA and any other resolutions. It will be released before the end of the year. There is also a second input lag tester (SMTT style) that I have invented as well, which is undergoing tests. Keep tuned at the Blur Busters website.