I had been wanting to pick up a new 40-43" 4k display for use as a computer monitor for a while. Looked at quite a few 4k TV models with high hopes for 4:4:4 @ 60Hz, but didn't seem to be having good luck. I had been using a pair of 27" Shimians for over 3 years now, so I decided to look into the Korean offerings for 4K models. Decided to purchase the Wasabi Mango UHD400 model from AccessoriesWholesale. 30 day returns through Ebay for any reason, and 1 year warranty offered on manufacturer's defect.
In a different thread I had promised a review on it, so here it is.
The monitor was purchased on Friday afternoon (Saturday morning in S. Korea) for $569 and free shipping. I chose AccessoriesWholesale as the shipper as he had over 24K ratings at 99.3% positive. The monitor was shipped Sunday evening local, and arrived at my doorstep Tuesday morning. Monitor arrived less than 48 hours after shipping.
The outside of the box was wrapped very nicely in two layers of bubble wrap with "fragile" stickers all over. Box was spotless after removing the bubble wrap, with no signs of damage. Upon opening the box, the monitor was also wrapped in bubble wrap, and placed tightly into six pieces of hard foam. Panel itself and bezel had plastic film on it for protection. Packing was great.
Monitor "feet" were very easy to put on, and seems to keep the monitor very sturdy. The "feet" are made out of coated hard plastic, not metal. Panel will wobble if I push it at the top, but seems in no danger of being pushed over.
The monitor includes 1 DP port, 4 HDMI ports (2 x 2.0, 2 x 1.4), and 1 VGA port. I have to order a DP cable, so I'm testing with a HDMI cable in the 2.0 port. The monitor also includes a nice remote. Most of the labels are in Korean, but as it looks like most TV remotes, it isn't hard to figure out what each button does (menu, select, volume, etc...).
Panel came up and was recognized by my Nvidia 970 at native resolution. Tried the chroma test and confirmed 4:4:4 at 60Hz. Changed from RGB to YCrCb444 as the panel looked a bit washed out on the RGB setting. As it's a VA panel, blacks are very black, and contrast is very good. No discernible light bleed noticed. Overall a very solid panel! Seller is claiming a Samsung panel in the listing.
Next up was a test for dead pixels. Upon solid color backgrounds, I found 2 stuck/dead pixels. One was at the very bottom where the taskbar is displayed. The other is at the very top. Not noticeable in the slightest. The seller did not have a pixel perfect option, but advertised that each panel would be "checked" prior to shipping. 0-3 dead/stuck pixels are considered "normal" by the seller.
I tested out the monitor's menu system. The seller was kind enough to change the language option to English for me, and it looks like the latest firmware has been installed. Freesync is available as a menu option. The brightness was set very high (75). I turned it down to 45. I played around with the menu settings to where it passed my eyeball test. That pretty much means that it now looks very similar in color to my IPS Shimian sitting next to it. I am in no means an expert at color calibration, and have not attempted to do so. Additionally, monitor was changed from the "full" setting to "1:1".
Another cool option is that the monitor has PiP (picture-in-picture) and PbP (picture-by-picture). These options are highly selectable and seems like a nice touch as it's more of a TV feature.
I"m running Windows 8.1, so scaling had to be turned back down to "small" which is 100%.
Next up was trying to load some 4k content from Youtube. Picture looked great, but suffered from stuttering. I have a 150Mb/sec connection which should be plenty to stream in 4k. I still have to look into that. Fully downloaded 2160p samples looked fantastic. I'll experiment with more samples, but from what I can tell, this panel looks amazing. I may have to invest in a Roku 4 now.
On other forum post, 10-bit color was selectable. I could only choose 8-bit however. After a bit of research it looks like that is attributed to using an HDMI cable instead of DP. I will look into it once I get an ordered DP cable from Amazon.
Next test was for banding. Monitor looked great with absolutely no banding or gradients noted.
Final thing I was able to test today is the possibility of PWM flickering. I will explain first off that I can't say that I've ever really been sensitive to monitor flickering, so I don't know that I'm the best judge here. I used the test located at: Inversion (pixel-walk) - Lagom LCD test. At 45 brightness, I only see moderate flickering in box 3. No flickering in any of the other boxes. If I choose the next option down at the bottom and generate the grey background, I do see flickering. It dissipates completely (to me at least) when the brightness is turned down to 0, and gets heavy flickering when the brightness is set to 100. Based on these tests I can't say that this monitor is flicker-free as advertised by the seller, but it definitely does not bother me. It may bother you if you are more sensitive.
Lag/delay was listed as 5ms GTG in the listing, but I have not had a chance to test anything out. Other people have said that this panel will not overclock over 60Hz, and will NOT do 1080p at 120Hz.
Pros:
In a different thread I had promised a review on it, so here it is.
The monitor was purchased on Friday afternoon (Saturday morning in S. Korea) for $569 and free shipping. I chose AccessoriesWholesale as the shipper as he had over 24K ratings at 99.3% positive. The monitor was shipped Sunday evening local, and arrived at my doorstep Tuesday morning. Monitor arrived less than 48 hours after shipping.
The outside of the box was wrapped very nicely in two layers of bubble wrap with "fragile" stickers all over. Box was spotless after removing the bubble wrap, with no signs of damage. Upon opening the box, the monitor was also wrapped in bubble wrap, and placed tightly into six pieces of hard foam. Panel itself and bezel had plastic film on it for protection. Packing was great.
Monitor "feet" were very easy to put on, and seems to keep the monitor very sturdy. The "feet" are made out of coated hard plastic, not metal. Panel will wobble if I push it at the top, but seems in no danger of being pushed over.
The monitor includes 1 DP port, 4 HDMI ports (2 x 2.0, 2 x 1.4), and 1 VGA port. I have to order a DP cable, so I'm testing with a HDMI cable in the 2.0 port. The monitor also includes a nice remote. Most of the labels are in Korean, but as it looks like most TV remotes, it isn't hard to figure out what each button does (menu, select, volume, etc...).
Panel came up and was recognized by my Nvidia 970 at native resolution. Tried the chroma test and confirmed 4:4:4 at 60Hz. Changed from RGB to YCrCb444 as the panel looked a bit washed out on the RGB setting. As it's a VA panel, blacks are very black, and contrast is very good. No discernible light bleed noticed. Overall a very solid panel! Seller is claiming a Samsung panel in the listing.
Next up was a test for dead pixels. Upon solid color backgrounds, I found 2 stuck/dead pixels. One was at the very bottom where the taskbar is displayed. The other is at the very top. Not noticeable in the slightest. The seller did not have a pixel perfect option, but advertised that each panel would be "checked" prior to shipping. 0-3 dead/stuck pixels are considered "normal" by the seller.
I tested out the monitor's menu system. The seller was kind enough to change the language option to English for me, and it looks like the latest firmware has been installed. Freesync is available as a menu option. The brightness was set very high (75). I turned it down to 45. I played around with the menu settings to where it passed my eyeball test. That pretty much means that it now looks very similar in color to my IPS Shimian sitting next to it. I am in no means an expert at color calibration, and have not attempted to do so. Additionally, monitor was changed from the "full" setting to "1:1".
Another cool option is that the monitor has PiP (picture-in-picture) and PbP (picture-by-picture). These options are highly selectable and seems like a nice touch as it's more of a TV feature.
I"m running Windows 8.1, so scaling had to be turned back down to "small" which is 100%.
Next up was trying to load some 4k content from Youtube. Picture looked great, but suffered from stuttering. I have a 150Mb/sec connection which should be plenty to stream in 4k. I still have to look into that. Fully downloaded 2160p samples looked fantastic. I'll experiment with more samples, but from what I can tell, this panel looks amazing. I may have to invest in a Roku 4 now.
On other forum post, 10-bit color was selectable. I could only choose 8-bit however. After a bit of research it looks like that is attributed to using an HDMI cable instead of DP. I will look into it once I get an ordered DP cable from Amazon.
Next test was for banding. Monitor looked great with absolutely no banding or gradients noted.
Final thing I was able to test today is the possibility of PWM flickering. I will explain first off that I can't say that I've ever really been sensitive to monitor flickering, so I don't know that I'm the best judge here. I used the test located at: Inversion (pixel-walk) - Lagom LCD test. At 45 brightness, I only see moderate flickering in box 3. No flickering in any of the other boxes. If I choose the next option down at the bottom and generate the grey background, I do see flickering. It dissipates completely (to me at least) when the brightness is turned down to 0, and gets heavy flickering when the brightness is set to 100. Based on these tests I can't say that this monitor is flicker-free as advertised by the seller, but it definitely does not bother me. It may bother you if you are more sensitive.
Lag/delay was listed as 5ms GTG in the listing, but I have not had a chance to test anything out. Other people have said that this panel will not overclock over 60Hz, and will NOT do 1080p at 120Hz.
Pros:
- No backlight bleeding
- Contrast is very sharp, blacks are very black
- No color banding
- 4:4:4 at 60Hz
- VGA port (at least for me...I still have old consoles to hook up)
- PiP and PbP
- Freesync included in the firmware
- Lots of menu options, remote is easy to use
- Price
- 2 stuck/dead pixels (very minor)
- If the monitor has problems, shipping back to Korea could be problematic (May purchase a squaretrade warranty for $54).
- Does not appear to be flicker free.
- Not overclockable, and will not do 1080p at 120Hz.