with people off to the side or looking down, hoping to
see the same colors, saturation, and illumination as the
person directly in front of the screen. The connectivity
includes HDMI, USB 3.0, a Display Port, and 4 USB 3.0
downstream ports.
I calibrated the screen with a Spyder5Elite using
Datacolor’s latest software. My standard target set-
tings are a temperature of 6500° K, gamma 2.2, and
brightness of 120 candelas. These settings are based
on printing to a luster type paper. It’s common during
calibration for the software to stop processing and ask
the user to adjust the displays’ settings to help achieve
the selected target settings (a typical example is adjust-
ing brightness). Usually, the brightness measurement is
in candelas; however, Acer uses nits, which is fine, as 1
nit = 1 candela.
The CP7271K display’s menu can be unclear on other
relevant terms, though. For example, values for tempera-
ture are listed as warm, normal, and cool—rather impre-
cise, especially for precision-minded professionals. Accord-
ing to an Acer representative, “warm” equals 6500° K,
“normal” 7500° K, and “cool” 9300° K.
Another issue I had is that, instead of clearly listing
Gamma 2.2 and Adobe RGB 1998 in the menu, they’re
referred to as ”default.” How would the user know that?
For clarity, I think it would be easier to replace the term
“default” with an exact meaning, thus leaving no doubt in
the end-user’s mind.
Lastly, Acer says the CP7271K Display has a built-in LUT
(look-up table) that, theoretically, will give the user a more
precise calibration than using the LUT built into your com-
puter’s graphic card. Essentially, it’s what the calibration
software writes and where measured colors/values are
stored and then looked up to give the end user the color
value they want. In my experience, when a LUT is built into
a display, the user accesses it via the manufacturer’s pro-
prietary calibration software; however, Acer didn’t include
any software, and I was told that the CP7271K’s built-in
LUT isn’t available to the end user, leaving me confused
and unclear as to its use.
Once the display was calibrated, I printed a standard
test target, and the resulting print matched the screen for
color, B&W tonal values with good midtone separation
and, thanks to its UHD resolution, beautifully smooth
gradients. Particularly of note were the detail in both
shadows and highlights with no blocking up. I measured
the illumination and color temperature across the screen,
and it’s uniform edge to edge.
The Acer CP7271K is an expensive display, capable of
delivering precision colors and image detail, and it’s a
shame to stumble because of using vague nomenclature
in a world of precision settings. n› › REVIEWS> KELBY ONE.COM
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