The monitor has 100% brightness and 75% contrast by default. I dropped them both to 33% to achieve a 100nit white. When the contrast setting is higher than the default level, light halftones are indistinguishable from pure white. There is barely visible banding in color gradients. The monitor regulates its brightness by means of pulse-width modulation of the power of the backlight lamps at a frequency of 318Hz.
The brightness of the monitor’s backlight is quite uniform. The average deflection is 4.2% on white, with a maximum of 11.8%. On black, the average and maximum are almost the same at 4.1% and 11.9% respectively – there are three brighter spots visible.
The gamma curves are just acceptable at the default settings. They are higher than the theoretical curve in the left part of the diagram and lower than it in the right part.
Color reproduction improves when the contrast setting is set lower, but the green curve is still sagging in the right part of the diagram. The red and blue curves differ from the green one and are higher than the theoretical curve in the middle of the diagram.
The color temperature setup is depressing. White is much warmer than the other tones which vary by as much as 3000K among themselves.
The color gamut is indeed larger than standard. Green is far deeper and saturated than on monitors with an ordinary color gamut. Unfortunately, the monitor doesn’t match sRGB in reds. The blue point is shifted relative to sRGB as well, although the two usually coincide on other monitors.
Response time compensation is obvious: the response time average is a mere 2.9 milliseconds (GtG) or five times faster than with RTC-less models. The matrix is only relatively slow, up to 17.2 milliseconds, on transitions between the darkest halftones.
The RTC mechanism is not set up ideally, though. The average RTC miss is 18.2% with a maximum of 87%. That’s a poor result. Visual artifacts will be conspicuous on a large number of transitions.
The contrast ratio is not high. Modern TN-based monitors typically have a higher contrast ratio.
The SyncMaster 931CW is one of the few 19-inch widescreen monitors with a fast matrix. It also features backlight lamps that provide an extended color gamut. Unfortunately, that’s all the good about this model. The biggest of its drawbacks is the low quality of the RTC mechanism. It’s up to you to decide if the larger color gamut makes up for the monitor’s downsides.
- Nice exterior design
- Fast matrix
- Enhanced color gamut
- High level of RTC errors
- Low contrast ratio
- No color temperature modes to choose from
- Text-based applications (documents, spreadsheets, Internet)
- Movies and games (including those that require a fast matrix)