NEC EA294WMi Review

All calibration measurements are done using SpectraCal’s CalMAN 5.1.2 software with a custom workflow. Measurements are done using a C6 colorimeter that is first profiled against an i1Pro spectrometer to ensure accurate results. There are two sets of targets we use. Pre-calibration and our first calibration aim for 200 cd/m^2 with an sRGB gamut and a gamma of 2.2. This is a common real-world setting for a display. The final target changes the light level target to 80 cd/m^2 and the gamma curve to the tougher sRGB standard.

The EA294WMi features a number of preset modes. On my sample they all ran a bit warm with the 6500K setting measuring closer to 6100K. Using the 7000K preset gave me a color temperature that was closer to the 6503K ideal value. It still runs a bit warm, at 6413K, but that is very close to 6503K for not being calibrated.

If you look at the charts you’ll see that the color temperature, while having the correct value, is excessively green. There is a large push that grows worse as the intensity increases. This is why just looking at the raw temperature value is really pointless, as you can get to 6503K without having an ideal balance of red, green and blue. Looking at the individual RGB breakdown can show you the actual accuracy of the color temperature.

The gamma is good overall and tracks close to the 2.2 target value. It has a little bit of a rise at the top and bottom, but the deviation is fairly small overall. As you see in the Grayscale dE2000 values, the incorrect RGB balance shows up as very visible errors with an average dE2000 that approaches 6.0.

Color accuracy is a bit better than the grayscale. The saturations dE2000 average is 3.6 and the color checker average dE2000 is 4.1. However the more saturated reds are over-saturated which leads to skin tones having a slightly sunburnt look. Blue is a bit under-saturated and cyan has an incorrect tint. These overall numbers are good but issues are still visible on screen.

Post-calibration the 200 cd/m^2 target improves a lot. The gamma tracks perfectly and so does the RGB balance. Our average grayscale dE2000 is an invisible 0.69 after calibration. Colors improve with the tint of cyan being correct now. The EA294WMi lacks the internal LUT of NEC's professional monitors but the performance still improves. The main remaining flaw comes from yellow being over-saturated which pushes it and some orange shades above the visible error limit of 3.0 dE2000. Both the color dE2000 averages are very good in the end.

When we target 80 cd/m^2 and the sRGB gamma curve our results are virtually identical. For these tests I bumped up the number of points that CalMAN samples to the maximum possible and will do this on future reviews as well. We see that the RGB response is very level across all measured values and the gamma tracks almost perfectly. The CIE chart for saturations is harder to make out as there are too many targets, but we see that the color error gets higher as the saturation percentage increases. Yellow and Green are the worse offenders here, as we expected from the CIE charts, while the other colors are all close to 2.0 or below.

Overall the post-calibration performance is impressive. The pre-calibration numbers are not great due to the poor white balance and so for ideal viewing you will want to calibrate it. Other displays offer a better out-of-box experience than the NEC.