Pros & Cons
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- 32-inch 4K UHD screen
- QD-OLED technology offers deep blacks and bright colors
- Sky-high contrast ratio and good color coverage
- Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) technology with 240Hz maximum
- Stand supports pivot, height, and tilt adjustment
- Supports three HDR flavors, with peak HDR brightness nearing 1,000 nits
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- Out-of-the-box color accuracy (dE) may require slight tuning
- Underwhelming built-in speakers
- No DisplayPort input
Asus ProArt Display OLED PA32UCDM Specs
| Adaptive Sync | NA |
| Aspect Ratio | 16:9 |
| Dimensions (HWD) | 23.7 by 28.2 by 9 inches |
| Height-Adjustable Stand? | |
| Landscape/Portrait Pivot | |
| Native Resolution | 3840 by 2160 |
| Panel Size (Corner-to-Corner) | 31.5 |
| Pixel Refresh Rate | 240 |
| Rated Contrast Ratio | 1,500,000:1 |
| Rated Screen Luminance | 250 |
| Screen Technology | QD-OLED |
| Tilting Stand? | |
| USB Ports (Excluding Upstream) | 2 |
| VESA DisplayHDR Level | DisplayHDR 400 |
| Video Inputs | HDMI |
| Video Inputs | Thunderbolt 4 (2) |
| Video Inputs | USB-C |
| Warranty (Parts/Labor) | 3 |
| Weight | 19.8 |
The Asus ProArt Display OLED PA32UCDM ($1,899) is a beast of a creator-centric monitor, with its 32-inch UHD QD-OLED display providing vivid colors, superb contrast, and exceptional HDR rendering. It should appeal to photographers, videographers, and other creative pros who use Windows PCs or Macs. A 240Hz refresh rate should also put it in good stead with game designers—not to mention, artists who like to get in a bit of fragging in their free time. It doesn't unseat the BenQ PD3225U, which retains our Editors' Choice award as a 4K monitor for creative pros, but it comes close.
Design: Magnificent QD-OLED Panel, Ergonomically Friendly Stand
The silver-framed ProArt PA32UCDM measures 23.7 by 28.2 by 9 inches (HWD) and weighs just under 20 pounds. Minimal bezels make the most of the compact physical size in order to maximize screen area. The rectangular base is small, but the stand feels sturdy. Two shafts, in between which cables can be routed, connect the monitor's base to the back of its cabinet.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Ergonomic features include tilt, pivot, and height (but not swivel) adjustment. This is the largest screen size I have seen that supports pivot adjustment. To move the panel from landscape to portrait mode, you need to pull the monitor's chassis up to its maximum height (the stand offers 5.1 inches of vertical mobility) and tilt the top of the screen away from you (up to 20 degrees). You should then have just enough clearance to swing the screen into portrait mode.
The PA32UCDM’s 31.5-inch (measured diagonally) screen has 4K UHD resolution (3,840 by 2,160 pixels). A screen of this size and resolution has a pixel density of 140 pixels per inch (ppi), making it good for photo editing. The screen uses Samsung’s QD-OLED technology. The QD stands for Quantum Dot; the dots are microscopic molecules that emit light of specific wavelengths (colors) when illuminated. When compared with regular OLED panels, QD-OLEDs are said to achieve better color accuracy, brightness, and HDR performance.
The ProArt supports multiple HDR modes, including Dolby Vision, an HDR format that adds a layer of dynamic metadata on top of the core HDR signal. The additional metadata essentially provide instructions on how the screen should display HDR content. The monitor also supports HLG, an HDR standard designed to add HDR compatibility to broadcast TV signals, and HDR10, which ensures compatibility with existing streaming video services and a growing list of HDR-enabled games. The PA32UCDM is VESA DisplayHDR 400 True Black certified.
Connectivity: Thunderbolt 4, Plus Only a Little More
As for I/O connectors, the PA32UCDM has dual Thunderbolt 4 ports; one of them is upstream and can provide up to 96 watts to power or charge a laptop it's connected to, while the downstream one permits daisy-chaining a second monitor to the system. There's also an HDMI 2.1 port and a small hub consisting of one USB-C and one USB-A downstream port. Ports are downward-facing in back.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)This port selection is meager compared with that of the BenQ PD3225U, which has a similar pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports but adds a second HDMI port plus a DisplayPort 1.4 connector, a USB-B and a USB-C port (both upstream), three downstream USB-A ports, and an audio-out jack. The PA32UCDM lacks an audio-out jack but has a pair of built-in 3-watt upward-facing speakers, which produce decent volume but mediocre sound quality.
That said, the Apple Studio Display has an even more limited range of connectors: a Thunderbolt 3 upstream port that can provide up to 96 watts of power delivery to its host, plus three downstream USB-C ports for connecting peripherals or charging small devices. That's all. (For more, read our in-depth comparison of the Studio Display and the PA32UCDM.)
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)You navigate the PA32UCDM's on-screen display (OSD) using the mini-joystick controller located in back of the monitor at bottom center. I found it very easy to surf the OSD and make selections in this way.
The PA32UCDM doesn't have quite the seamless Mac interactivity as the Studio Display, but is still easy to use with Apple computers. It doesn't natively have some Mac-specific color modes like Display P3 or M-Book, but it offers universal modes like the three we test in—sRGB, DCI-P3, and Adobe RGB—plus BT.2020, DICOM, and Rec.709. You can also download ICC color profiles, including one for Display P3, from the Asus support page. Asus also offers a downloadable ProArt calibration utility, which lets you save color profiles directly to the monitor.
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Performance Testing: High Marks for Contrast, Color Coverage, and HDR Brightness
I tested the PA32UCDM's brightness, contrast ratio, and color-gamut coverage using our standard test gear: a Klein K-10A colorimeter, a Murideo SIX-G 8K test-pattern generator, and Portrait Displays' Calman for Business calibration software.
Asus lists the PA32UCDM's average luminance at 250 nits (candelas per meter squared); it tallied 351 nits when I tested it in standard (SDR) mode, the same reading I got in HDR mode. Asus claims a peak HDR brightness of 1,000 nits, and it tested just short of that (962 nits), about 100 nits brighter than its peak SDR brightness.
When I first tested the ProArt's luminance, with the monitor's brightness set to 100%, I got a much lower reading—less than 200 nits—in all of the color modes I tried. Remembering a similar situation with another monitor, I checked the PA32UCDM's OSD settings and saw that the Uniform Brightness setting was enabled. When I turned it off, I got the higher luminance readings noted above. However, Asus makes a case for keeping this setting turned on in some situations, such as switching between or changing the size of windows with vastly different contrast levels. The company notes that the setting keeps brightness levels consistent with up to 250 nits for more accurate colors and more comfortable hours-long viewing sessions.
As for contrast ratio, Asus rates the PA32UCDM at 1,500,000:1. Because contrast ratio represents the difference between a display's brightest white and darkest black, and an OLED screen can simply turn blocks of pixels off—creating a true black—theoretically OLED monitors should have an infinite contrast ratio. In testing, the reading I got was a "mere" 717 billion to one. Suffice it to say that the PA32UCDM does great in rendering detail in both bright and dark areas.
Asus rates the PA32UCDM's color coverage at 100% for the sRGB space and 99% for DCI-P3. In my testing, it covered the full sRGB space (actually, 151% by area), 97.3% of DCI-P3 (see the chromaticity chart below), and 95.7% of Adobe RGB.
(Credit: Portrait Displays)Our final benchmark for creator-centric monitors is Delta E (dE), a measure of color accuracy, namely the difference between the hue of a displayed color and the color input that the monitor received. The dE figure that appears in monitor specs is the average of a large number of individual color readings from across the spectrum; the lower the value, the more accurate the color. An average dE of below 2 indicates color accurate enough that a casual observer may be unable to distinguish any variation between the color on screen and the intended (source) color.
Asus claims a (dE) of less than 1 for the PA32UCDM. It turned in a dE of 2 in my out-of-the-box (without calibration) testing, which is our standard procedure. This is similar to the results we got when testing the Asus ProArt PA32DC: an out-of-the-box dE of 1.9. That monitor has a built-in colorimeter, and using it, we lowered the dE to 1.5. The PA32UCDM has no such tool; the aforementioned Asus calibration utility is compatible with calibrators from Klein, Datacolor, and X-Rite. If absolute-precision color matching is mandatory for what you do, you'll want to make sure you have the proper equipment at hand to tune the PA32UCDM.
Experiential Testing: In a League of Its Own
These metrics are all well and good, but how does the ProArt do in the real world? Along with our usual qualitative analysis—viewing select video clips and images from our photo test suite—I looked at a portion of my personal photo archive, and to say I was impressed would be an understatement. The particular images of mine that I looked at vary widely in quality, and with the PA32UCDM I could easily discern some subtle blemishes such as noise and soft focus that may have eluded me on a lesser screen, and conversely I was able to separate out about a dozen images that were either near-perfect as-is or that I could easily tweak to improve.
In my video testing (with SDR video clips), the PA32UCDM's colors looked bright and rich, and showed an impressive range of detail. The clips I played were smooth and easy to watch, and I did not notice any flaws or anomalies.
Refresh Rate and Input Lag: All This and Gaming, Too
As a rule, I don't run gaming-specific tests on creator-centric monitors, but the PA32UCDM—with its 240Hz refresh rate and Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) technology—is a special case. To measure the monitor’s input lag, we employed the Leo Bodnar 4K Input Lag Tester. At its full 4K resolution at 60Hz, we recorded a passable 14.3 milliseconds (ms) of input lag. Switching to 1080p at 240Hz, we tallied a very good 6.2ms of lag. This puts the PA32UCDM in good stead as a display for game designers, as well as for graphic artists who like to get in a few rounds of gaming in their spare time.