LG UltraGear 32GN600-B - LED-Monitor - QHD - 80 cm (32")

Product Information

The results of this response time behavior though is that above about 120Hz, the G2G response times start to get a bit too slow to keep up with the frame rate demands and you start to see some additional smearing added to the moving images, especially in darker shades. At 120Hz, 83% of the measured transitions were within the refresh rate window, i.e. they were fast enough to keep up with 120 frames per second being sent to the screen. This was a good result. However, at 165Hz only 43% of the transitions were within this window (165 frames per second now) which leads to a bit of added smearing in practice. While HDR10 handling is advertised for this LG 32GN600-B, the reality is that monitors deliver SDR at the cd/m2 or nits the panel is rated for, and then boost to get the added brightness for HDR, usually by 100 nits or more. LG on the other hand, lowers overall brightness and shows full white just a bit above original brightness. This shows LG’s incompetence with HDR implementation in this monitor, so don’t buy this if one of the primary reasons is watching HDR. Furthermore, the model up from this, the LG 32GP850-B you’d figure with its Nano IPS panel would deliver a much improved HDR experience, except the panel hits 430 cd/m2 across the board, and a competing VA panel, can hit 450, delivering a far more competent HDR experience and brightness, and matching this model’s price.

This is kinda like getting to drive a sports car, you’re all excited about trying it out, you open the door and have to sit on a milk crate and that’s your experience. We re-calibrated on PS4 three times, getting the same result each time. Usually with HDR, there’s that “ooooh” when it looks good, but HDR has really poor color volume here from the incomplete DCI-P3 and Rec. 2020 color gamuts. So, don’t buy this for HDR. Gamut coverage – we provide measurements of the screens colour gamut relative to various reference spaces including sRGB, DCI-P3, Adobe RGB and Rec.2020. Coverage is shown in absolute numbers as well as relative, which helps identify where the coverage extends beyond a given reference space. A CIE-1976 chromaticity diagram (which provides improved accuracy compared with older CIE-1931 methods) is included which provides a visual representation of the monitors colour gamut as compared with sRGB, and if appropriate also relative to a wide gamut reference space such as DCI-P3. At the maximum refresh rate of the screen we will also include our familiar more detailed response time measurements, which includes a wider range of transition measurements as well as some analysis of things like the refresh rate compliance. This identifies how many of the measured pixel transitions were fast enough to keep up with the frame rate of the screen. Ideally you’d want pixel response times to be consistently and reliably shorter than this refresh rate cycle, otherwise if they are slower it can lead to additional smearing and blurring on moving content. Out of the box setup was good overall. The gamma was a tad low at 2.16 average but not by anything significant. We had a very good average colour temperature across all grey shades of 6494k (0% deviance) and also an excellent white point of 6508k basically spot on with our target. There were some moderate errors in the greyscale with 2.9 average measured, but overall considering this is a fairly budget gaming screen we were impressed by the setup.And for camera usage, the LG 32GN600-B does accept 4K at 24 frames, popping up a dialog to tell you about the resolution mismatch which we really appreciate. This is great for reviewing footage in an emergency, we tested this with a Lumix G9. So the LG 32GN600-B is a great gaming monitor. It has good color accuracy and the picture quality is also good, and with low input lag and 165 hertz refresh, it’s suitable for professional gamers, even though you may get some blurriness or artifacts in transitions to and from dark scenes. We tried it a bit with PS4 Pro at 4K and that looked good, and it should work equally well with newer Xbox and PS5. For office work the pixel pitch and font size is identical to a 24” 1080p resolution display which is comfortable and easy to use, without being to large that it loses clarity. It might not look quite as sharp as a 27” 1440p display, but it’s perfectly usable and many people may even prefer it. Movies and HDR

We measured an 94.5% sRGB coverage which was pretty good, although we were a little disappointed to see it couldn’t quite cover the full space in this day and age. There is a bit of under-coverage in blue shades but it’s not major. There is also a small amount of over-coverage in green shades but again only minor, giving rise to that 97.8% relative coverage figure. The result of all this is that we had a good colour accuracy out of the box as well with an average dE of only 1.7 which was very good. There was some higher deviation in places, especially in the primary RGB shades where we had those minor differences in colour gamut under- and over-coverage mentioned before. All in all though this was a solid default setup with good gamma, colour temp, white point and colour accuracy for sRGB / SDR content. Calibration This 31.5 inch 165 hertz edge lit VA panel has a matte non-reflective surface with a 1 millisecond response time, 5 gray to gray, HDR10 handling (ha!) and 10 bit color, which is likely 8-bit plus FRC as LG would likely advertise this as a native 10 bit panel if it was. Contrast is over 3200 to 1 versus the listed 3000 to 1, and the max power draw is 63 watts. This is a bit of a shame as it means you can’t really make the most of the full 165Hz refresh rate. Although for games consoles those will be maxed out at 120Hz anyway, and many systems might struggle to output >120Hz at the 1440p resolution as well. It’s just a better experience and overall motion clarity at up to 120Hz we found with the panel not really being fast enough to push beyond that. ‘ Fast’ Response Time Mode The market is seeing a real push in this space for 32” 1440p displays and they are winning us over we have to say. The text and font size are still perfectly comfortable to use and sharp even at this larger screen size for general and office uses, and certainly no issue for gaming and multimedia.

Tech

The 32GN600 is aimed at gaming and so we put it through its paces with our usual range of tests. First of all, we wanted to establish which was the optimal overdrive mode (‘Response Time’ setting in the OSD). Pursuit camera photos capturing perceived motion clarity in the Faster and Fast response time modes at 165Hz refresh rate dE colour accuracy – a wide range of colours are tested and the colour accuracy dE measured. We compare these produced colours to the sRGB reference space, and if applicable when measuring a wide gamut screen we also provide the accuracy relative to a specific wide gamut reference such as DCI-P3. An average dE and maximum dE is provided along with an overall screen rating. The lower the dE the better with differences of <1 being imperceptible (marked by the green area on the graph), and differences between 1 and 3 being small (yellow areas). Anything over dE 3 needs correcting and causes more obvious differences in appearance relative to what should be shown Let’s get into the LG 32GN600-B’s menus, up and down control brightness, left and right control volume for the headphone out, not for the non-existent speakers. Straight press gives you Power Off, Input, Menu and Game Mode, which gives you access to 4 out of the 7 profiles, kind of weird. Input gives an easy toggle…and Power Off works immediately for a 2-step power off. Note that we turned ‘Smart Energy Saving’ mode off in the OSD before these tests so that brightness and measurements were not impacted. Everything else was at factory defaults to evaluate the out of the box performance.