Despite a few kinks, colors are king on this 32” 4K monitor.

The Asus ProArt Display PA329CV. (Source: Asus.)

This is a sentence you’ve never heard anyone utter: “Two monitors was getting too much for me. I dialed it back to one.” Likewise: “I thought I enjoyed having three displays, but they made it too easy to multitask.”

The lesson: Be careful when you upgrade your display setup, because once you get a taste for more monitor, you can’t go back.

I should’ve heeded that lesson when Asus offered to send me a review unit of their new 32” monitor, the Asus ProArt Display PA329CV. I foolishly accepted, sparing not a single thought for the day I’d be forced to return it and revert to my paltry 24-incher. Stephen King, take note for your next short story.

But while it’s here, before these good times screech to a halt, I might as well tell you about it.

The Asus ProArt Display PA329CV

Asus’s ProArt line comprises a range of products, from laptops and desktops to projectors and peripherals and, naturally, displays. Though the brand’s name caters to the media and entertainment crowd, Asus also markets the products to engineers, architects, and designers. It’s the company’s high-end hardware for hard-working professionals (the kind of user who would consider spending $10,000 for a laptop).

There are no fewer than 20 models of ProArt Displays, so I’ll be forced to use the clunky identifier PA329CV throughout this review. It’s a 32” 4K UHD (3840 x 2160) LED display replete with heavy-duty mounting hardware, offering both a desk stand and C-clamp in the box for users to choose from. The display is highly adjustable, with 130mm of height travel, ±30 degrees of side-to-side swivel, 23 to -5 degrees of up-and-down tilt, and 90 degrees of pivot to switch between portrait and landscape orientations.

Adjusting the Asus ProArt Display PA329CV. (Source: Asus.)

In addition, the PA329CV includes an array of input ports: 2 HDMI, 1 DisplayPort, 1 USB-C, a headphone jack, and a total of 4 USB-A ports (2 along the bottom with the other ports, and 2 along the left edge). The USB-A ports can serve as a hub for your computer if the PA329CV is connected via the USB-C port. The display also includes integrated speakers.

One of the main features Asus emphasizes about the ProArt Display PA329CV is its color. It boasts 100% sRGB and Rec. 709 coverage with a Calman Verified color accuracy of ΔE < 2. The lower that delta value, the more accurate the colors, with anything lower than two generally considered to be undetectable by human eyes. So keen is Asus on the color performance of the display that they include a laminated calibration report in the box:

While Asus doesn’t sell the PA329CV directly through its website, Amazon currently lists the display at $799.99.

Testing the Asus ProArt Display PA329CV

The Asus ProArt Display PA329CV has a variety of customizable settings accessed via a panel of buttons on the bottom right. Users can adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, hue, color temperature, gamma, black level, and a variety of other variables. In case you don’t want to fiddle around with those parameters, there are also a number of preset modes that should satisfy most users: Standard, sRGB, Rec. 701, DCI-P3, HDR, DICOM, Scenery Mode, Reading Mode, and Rapid Rendering Mode.

We put several of these presets to the test with our Spyder5ELITE colorimeter. There were three presets we didn’t test: sRGB, because this mode does not allow manual brightness adjustment (necessary for the tests); HDR, because this mode was greyed out and we could not select it; and Rapid Rendering Mode, because it turns the display into a seizure-machine of noticeable flickering.

Here’s a summary of our findings for the other six presets:

The best overall result was Standard Mode, which is the default for the Asus ProArt Display PA329CV out of the box. It was nearly identical to the Scenery Mode preset. The Rec. 709 Mode results were a bit strange, as the sRGB coverage should be 100%, but every other preset hit this target.

Here’s the full report for Standard Mode:

So how does the testing compare to the Calman Verified datasheet that came with the monitor? Close enough, I’d say. The best measured Delta E value of 0.52 is within spitting distance of the reported 0.35, and I’d be impressed if any human out there could tell the difference. The measured gamma value of 2.2 (for Standard, Scenery, and Reading mode) verified the reported 2.16 (though our colorimeter is clearly not as precise as the one used at the Asus factory).

The only significant deviation was in the color temperature. The data sheet shows a fairly flat white point of 6500K, whereas our tests gave a higher white point of 7200K. We tried adjusting the white point—the PA329CV offers a choice of 9300K, 6500K, 5500K, and 5000K—but we consistently measured higher values than what was expected. The difference increased with color temperature.

Measured white point for different settings on the PA329CV in Standard Mode at 100% brightness.

The Asus ProArt Display PA329CV Experience

I’ll start with what I like about the Asus ProArt Display PA329CV: the hardware is solid, and I’ve fallen in love with having a 32″ monitor on which to watch Netflix and play flash games (and do a bit of work, I suppose). The display is easy to adjust and stable in any configuration, and to the naked eye it looks sharp and vibrant. Color temperature discrepancies aside, it looks good and performs as promised.

And now the bad: it has a few issues. The biggest one, for me, was that the USB-C connection didn’t work at all. The PA329CV helpfully includes USB-C, HDMI, and DisplayPort cables right in the box, but my instinct to start with USB-C was dashed when the monitor simply refused to accept the input. I switched to HDMI and had no problems. Normally it wouldn’t matter much, but without that USB-C cable the PA329CV doesn’t work as a USB hub. I’m not the only one who had trouble with the USB-C connection—a few Amazon reviewers point out the exact same problem.

Another issue I noticed quite often was a scroll stutter, where the refresh rate couldn’t seem to keep up with the webpages I was scrolling through. It was odd, as the display’s 60Hz refresh rate should not have that problem (I’ve never encountered it on my other 60Hz display). Perhaps I was just more prone to notice it on the bigger display, but it was intermittent enough that it seemed a monitor issue rather than a retinal one.

Screen-bleed was another problem, with the southwest corner of the display noticeably bright when a uniform black was called for. Even now, as I type this in a dark-mode version of Microsoft Word, I can see a bright splotch to the left of the display that shouldn’t be there. It’s a minor quibble, but for an $800 monitor, you expect better.

Which brings me to the price. At $800, the Asus ProArt Display PA329CV is neither the cheapest nor the most expensive of the ProArt Display lineup. For a 32-inch 4K display, it’s not a terrible deal. But you can find better. You can buy 32” 4K monitors for under half the price of the PA329CV, though I can’t vouch for the quality of any of the less expensive alternatives. It’s just worth noting that there are other options for less cash, and they may serve just as well as the PA329CV depending on your requirements.

Conclusion

(Source: Asus.)

If it sounds like I’m being harsh on the Asus ProArt Display PA329CV, let me temper it: I wish I didn’t have to send it back. I really like the size and build quality of the display, and I would happily keep it as part of my workstation setup. But given that it’s got a few issues—screen bleed, non-functional USB-C, and color temperature deltas, primarily—I would look into alternatives before I shelled out 800 bucks for one of my own. But it’s entirely possible I would end up right back at the ProArt line.