LG announced today an update to its UltraFine OLED Pro monitors, and while we usually wouldn’t get excited about what looks like a standard refresh, the new panels ship with a unique tool for photo and video editors.
LG’s new 27- and 32-inch 4K OLED Pro models (32BP95E and 27BP95E) come with a detachable self-calibration sensor that measures the amount of light being emitted from the display so the panel can automatically adjust to show more accurate colours. For the best results, a hood can be mounted to the monitor to prevent external lights from skewing the readings.
You can schedule when you want the attachment to start calibrating, then pop into LG’s Calibration Studio app to fine-tune the colours to the project you’re working on. LG didn’t specify whether the colour calibrator could match custom-made profiles or be set to different colour spaces. I’ve reached out to the company and will update this article when I learn more.
We can’t say for sure how well the detachable calibration sensor will replace more robust (and expensive) tools, but it seems like a nice feature for content creators to have on hand. LG’s monitors aren’t the only options, though. Dell’s UltraSharp 27 comes with a built-in colorimeter that pops out of the bottom bezels, and a company called Eizo has been doing this for years.
Forget about the colorimeter and these LG panels still have a distinct advantage: OLED, which consists of individual self-lit pixels that enabled things like a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, perfect black levels, and a wide colour gamut. While there are some downsides (the potential for burn-in, most notable), OLED is today’s premiere display tech.
If you want the best picture quality and have the cash, the 32BP95E has a 31.5-inch, 3840 x 2160-pixel display while the 27BP95E has a 27-inch screen with the same resolution. Both are rated to cover 99% of the DCI-P3 colour gamut and promise HDR400 support and 1-millisecond response times. We’ve asked LG about refresh rates but you can safely assume it’ll be 60Hz, making these a poor choice for gamers (to be fair, that isn’t who they are meant for).
Moving past the screen, these two monitors have a slim profile and offer adjustability for height, pivot, and tilt. Ports include a USB-C input with 90W power delivery for charging your laptop, three USB Type-A downstream ports, a USB Type-A upstream input, and dual HDMI ports.
Pricing has yet to be announced but expect to pay a pretty penny given the current 27- and 32-inch monitors cost $US3,000 ($4,172) and $US4,000 ($5,563), respectively.