I'm 5 years in on my monitor and it has gotten a LOT of use. That said, it seems to still be faithfully holding its colors and I have no problems with printing at home or sending to a lab. That being said, I know that I will need to be shopping for a new monitor sometime in the future. In my spare time, I have been trying to educate myself and narrow down the monitors for when that time comes.
One thing up front, as much as I'd love to purchase and Eizo, that most likely is not going to happen. The price is simply too high for my price point, although I am willing to drop some coin, just not that much.
So as I research monitors I see a lot of them advertizing very high percentage up to 100 percent P3 color space coverage but you cannot find anything in the specs about aRGB color space coverage. I find that puzzling, and feel that I may have missed something over the last couple of years. I'm pretty sure that as a photographer who prints, I need a 99 or 100% aRGB color space monitor, but they appear to be dwindling out.
One of the better websites out there is BenQ which sort their monitors into use. So the photographer monitors are high aRGB monitors and then other uses such as video, CAD, etc., apparently have gone P3. And BenQ has a far greater selection of monitors that show high P3.
ASUS and Dell appear to either have eliminated aRGB monitors in favor of P3 or do not include that information in their specs.
What gives? Should I care as long as it is either high aRGB or P3?
P3 has a wider gamut in yellow and red, aRGB is wider in green and cyan more important for print. There's more opportunity to make for companies to be able to redisplay content recorded on phones hence the emphasis on P3 with support for HLG and HDR10. It gets nerdy learning about HDR400, 600, dimming zones, etc.
The Asus ProArt Display PA279CRV is spec'd at 99% of Adobe RGB, along with 99% P3, and is HDR400. Not as many dimming zones as pricier models, but for the price it'll cover a ton of content from print to HDR video.
dienliv wrote:
P3 has a wider gamut in yellow and red, aRGB is wider in green and cyan more important for print. There's more opportunity to make for companies to be able to redisplay content recorded on phones hence the emphasis on P3 with support for HLG and HDR10. It gets nerdy learning about HDR400, 600, dimming zones, etc.
The Asus ProArt Display PA279CRV is spec'd at 99% of Adobe RGB, along with 99% P3, and is HDR400. Not as many dimming zones as pricier models, but for the price it'll cover a ton of content from print to HDR video.
Yeah, Asus and BenQ are on my shortlist as you can at least find the aRGB color space on their specs. It's just puzzling to me that the aRGB color space spec doesn't appear to be important to many brands out there.
Because the Google, Apple, sociali medias, etc. only want you to make videos. They make little or no money off you when you print. I believe Eizo is still in business and they make monitors for printing in addition to the above.
Have used a P3 monitor for more than a decade to edit for print. It's been fine for what I do (landscape photography). If you are concerned, I suppose you can load up your images and check for gamut warnings to see what's out of scope for adobeRGB vs P3. Surprising, a lot of time even when colors are out of gamut, it's not been an issue printing it. And when I check on some of my own images, they'll often be out of gamut for both anyway.
If you run a calibration, the software usually generates those color diagrams and you can overlay your monitor vs different color spaces. Some software will explicitly tell you percentage of P3 or adobeRGB achieved etc. If you have a specific monitor in mind, you might be able to find a screen shot online from someone who's already done the calibration.
Monitor gamut is not really relevant to the working colorspace you choose. Using aRGB is perhaps advantageous for folks who are not able to properly profile a monitor as the monitor supposedly as it pre-loaded. It's also a good space for a larger workgroup sharing visual content, and especially content slated for web output since it gives a unified standard and buffer-room where some of it will get trimmed slightly prior to output. Finally it's smaller size is friendlier to 8-bit color.
In my case I profile my monitor regularly, and work in P3. P3 is surprisingly close to what most contemporary inkjet printers can replicate, along with it being the digital cinema video standard. (I don't do video yet, but if you do, then that's probably relevant.) so from that PoV it's pretty useful all around -- not a lot of extra color weight to be managing like Prophoto has, and most of the printer (and digital cinema) color on hand visually. But for optimal results you do need to work in 16-bit and proper workflow would also advise soft-proofing to your desired output space while editing in it.
To answer the obvious question, "Why bother editing in P3 if your monitor can't display all of it?" The answer is soft-proofing to your output space can and does emulate it via the perceptual rendering intent. Is the difference extreme? Not usually, but it is visible--at least subtly--in comparative prints and probably similarly in digital cinema output as well. It will NOT generally be visible in anything destined for sRGB however. If aRGB ever truly becomes a web standard AND/OR if you never print, then aRGB is probably the better choice for editing. If you only post to web currently, then sRGB is really all you need and aRGB gives you adequate extra room.
JimKied wrote:
... It's just puzzling to me that the aRGB color space spec doesn't appear to be important to many brands out there.
The industry has shifted a lot to P3 for a variety of reasons:
iPhones and iPads use Display P3, and I believe Android phones do as well
It alos aligns with DCI-P3 used in cinema and video, but with a D65 white point.
There are way more people who would be confused about using Adobe RGB when all their other devices are Display P3.
So, an industry shift.
If you still want to know the percent Adobe RGB this site often provides them even though the manufacturer does not: https://www.rtings.com/monitor/
For just gamut puposes, you really need to know that full gamut of the display which comes from its native ICC profile.
Here is a 2D gamut of Adobe RGB and Display P3. As mentioned in prior posts, the gamut is similar in size just emphasizing colors a bit different.
Here is the gamut of the native BenQ 321 which covers both aRGB and Display P3 pretty well. So the native gamut is larger than either aRGB or Display P3
Note that the Percent coverage of a monitor of a given color space is based on these 2D graphs. However, that is incomplete as it leaves out color coverage over luminosity.
The image below shows in 3D the BenQ native gamut (quite wide) in wireframe, and in solid color is the gamut for Epson Premium Glossy Paper printed on a Epson P900 printer (10 colors). Mosly as expected the gamut is totally on the inside of the BenQ321 monitor as well as aRGB and Display P3 yet for all those gamuts, there are still colors in the glossy paper with the P900 printer that are outside all of those gamuts in the blue and green regions for certain luminosities.
I provide this image to let you know that you can only take the Percent coverage so far as those numbers are a limited representation of the gamut space. So the 2D gives a good feel (along iwth the percent numbers) yet they don't tell the whole story:
If you want an easy solution, get a BenQ as the gamut is quite good over both aRGB and Display P3 and still lower cost than the top of the line monitors.
If you want to save some money you could go with one of your other options and I bet you will be really happy with that as well. Just keep in mind there is more than gamut to consider for a monitor such as:
The more important specs people overlook
If a monitor only advertises %P3, check these instead:
✅ True 10-bit (or 8-bit + FRC)
Much more important for gradients than raw gamut size.
✅ Hardware LUT calibration
Internal 14- or 16-bit LUT beats software-only profiling every time.
✅ Uniformity compensation
Reduces edge color/brightness drift — critical for photo work.
✅ Stable brightness at low nits
Can it hold 80–120 cd/m² without color shifts?
----------------------
Again, you should not be too concerned with aRGB vs Display P3 as in general, they are both wider gamut than what you can print.
Whatever you decide, enjoy your, new monitor
John Wheeler
Color space preference is a standard question on my client consultation checklist. That said, all my clients over the past several months got P3. I have never had a client ask me for aRGB, but also none of my clients intended to do color critical printing with my stuff.
I would say it's probably wise to get a monitor that displays 99% or whatever of P3. If your clients are like mine, I'd expect a lot of them to go for P3 or sRGB. If someone does ask you for aRGB, I imagine you could use the gamut warning tool to screen for potential problems and get away with not having a aRGB monitor. I have successfully done this as an experiment (on my vacation photos, not a paying customer).
Another recommendation for the Asus ProArt. It is moderately priced, actually very low priced considering the performance. The gamut is decent and the colors superb with factory calibration equal or better than you can attain with a typical calibration device.
EB-1 wrote:
Because the Google, Apple, sociali medias, etc. only want you to make videos. They make little or no money off you when you print. I believe Eizo is still in business and they make monitors for printing in addition to the above.
EBH
As an aside, Eizo is also the major name for scientific and medical imaging monitors. I was involved in research at a major pediatric hospital, and all of the radiology and pathology monitors, and there were many, were EIZO. NEC played in this space too, at one time, but no longer.
sbay wrote:
Have used a P3 monitor for more than a decade to edit for print. It's been fine for what I do (landscape photography). If you are concerned, I suppose you can load up your images and check for gamut warnings to see what's out of scope for adobeRGB vs P3. Surprising, a lot of time even when colors are out of gamut, it's not been an issue printing it. And when I check on some of my own images, they'll often be out of gamut for both anyway.
If you run a calibration, the software usually generates those color diagrams and you can overlay your monitor vs different color spaces. Some software will explicitly tell you percentage of P3 or adobeRGB achieved etc. If you have a specific monitor in mind, you might be able to find a screen shot online from someone who's already done the calibration.
John Wheeler wrote:
The industry has shifted a lot to P3 for a variety of reasons:
iPhones and iPads use Display P3, and I believe Android phones do as well
It alos aligns with DCI-P3 used in cinema and video, but with a D65 white point.
There are way more people who would be confused about using Adobe RGB when all their other devices are Display P3.
So, an industry shift.
If you still want to know the percent Adobe RGB this site often provides them even though the manufacturer does not: https://www.rtings.com/monitor/
For just gamut puposes, you really need to know that full gamut of the display which comes from its native ICC profile.
Here is a 2D gamut of Adobe RGB and Display P3. As mentioned in prior posts, the gamut is similar in size just emphasizing colors a bit different.
Here is the gamut of the native BenQ 321 which covers both aRGB and Display P3 pretty well. So the native gamut is larger than either aRGB or Display P3
Note that the Percent coverage of a monitor of a given color space is based on these 2D graphs. However, that is incomplete as it leaves out color coverage over luminosity.
The image below shows in 3D the BenQ native gamut (quite wide) in wireframe, and in solid color is the gamut for Epson Premium Glossy Paper printed on a Epson P900 printer (10 colors). Mosly as expected the gamut is totally on the inside of the BenQ321 monitor as well as aRGB and Display P3 yet for all those gamuts, there are still colors in the glossy paper with the P900 printer that are outside all of those gamuts in the blue and green regions for certain luminosities.
I provide this image to let you know that you can only take the Percent coverage so far as those numbers are a limited representation of the gamut space. So the 2D gives a good feel (along iwth the percent numbers) yet they don't tell the whole story:
If you want an easy solution, get a BenQ as the gamut is quite good over both aRGB and Display P3 and still lower cost than the top of the line monitors.
If you want to save some money you could go with one of your other options and I bet you will be really happy with that as well. Just keep in mind there is more than gamut to consider for a monitor such as:
The more important specs people overlook
If a monitor only advertises %P3, check these instead:
✅ True 10-bit (or 8-bit + FRC)
Much more important for gradients than raw gamut size.
✅ Hardware LUT calibration
Internal 14- or 16-bit LUT beats software-only profiling every time.
✅ Uniformity compensation
Reduces edge color/brightness drift — critical for photo work.
✅ Stable brightness at low nits
Can it hold 80–120 cd/m² without color shifts?
----------------------
Again, you should not be too concerned with aRGB vs Display P3 as in general, they are both wider gamut than what you can print.
Whatever you decide, enjoy your, new monitor
John Wheeler...Show more →
Thanks so much for the comprehensive answer. Very helpful. And brought up a lot of other things to consider. Much appreciated.
