Benchmarks: Display
Some of the biggest advancements in modern laptops revolve around the capabilities of the display panel. To provide a more meaningful overview of panel characteristics, we're deploying Datacolor's Spyder 4 Elite professional monitor analyser to return a quantitative assessment of display quality.
Asus promised a wide colour gamut and we're off to a decent start, with the UX305CA managing 96 per cent of the sRGB space and 76 per cent of the Adobe RGB.
Being able to display a wide gamut of colours is helpful, yet the colours themselves still need to deliver in terms of accuracy. In the above chart, the Delta-E figure corresponds to how close the displayed colours match up with real life and the lower the overall result, the better. A score of 2.26 can be considered just below average, so while the UX305CA offers a high PPI and excellent viewing angles, don't expect truly precise colour reproduction.
Our test results show that the display can deliver up to 341 nit brightness. Ample for indoor and outdoor visibility, with the latter being aided further by the panel's matte finish. Yet it's a case of some good, some not so good, as decent brightness is offset by a passable black level of 1.02 (lower is better) and an ordinary 330:1 contrast ratio.
Professionals seeking precision and accuracy will need to look elsewhere, but for mainstream users, the wide viewing angles, high resolution, ample brightness and anti-reflective coating are enough to make this panel a well-rounded option in the sub-£600 segment.