Bright idea
PC MONITOR | £388 from Ballicom www.snipca.com/49407
A lot of monitors try to be all things to all people, with high refresh rates for gamers, HDR for movie buffs and great colour accuracy for photographers. This isn’t the case with the Iiyama ProLite XUB3293UHSN-B5, which is laser-focused on those who just want to carry out general computer work on their PC, but want a reasonably sized screen with a decent 4K resolution.
With slim bezels on three sides of its 32in screen, the monitor looks slick and modern. It’s nicely put together, perched on a robust stand with a full range of adjustments, including the ability to pivot into portrait mode.
If anything it probably looks a little too business-like for our tastes, but that’s unlikely to be a deal-breaker for most.
The screen uses IPS technology, so can’t match the contrast levels of an OLED panel. With a maximum quoted brightness level of 350cd/m2 and no dimming control, this can’t provide the intense blacks you’ll find on an OLED display.
However, this maximum brightness is plenty for all but the very sunniest outdoor conditions and its colours pop out. Its resolution of 3840x2160 pixels gives everything a crisp feel, with plenty of detail and very little pixelation, even if you get quite close. It also offers plenty of space for your work, which is ideal for those who like to open multiple windows and documents at the same time, or need the space to accommodate lots of apps and toolbars. In other words, multi-taskers will love it.
The refresh rate, though, is limited to 60Hz, and the response time is quoted at four milliseconds. This might sound pedestrian by today’s fastest standards, but it’s easily enough for general Windows work. What’s more, the sensible factory settings straight out of the box mean you won’t need to make any serious adjustments to the screen when you plug it in.
It fared well in our colour tests, but lags behind more expensive models. The colour looks good to the naked eye and can reproduce 99 per cent of the colours in the sRGB standard, but falls a bit short in the DCI-P3 standard. That’s fine for general Windows work, but wouldn’t be ideal for anyone looking to do accurate image- or video-editing work, where colour accuracy is more impo
