Picture Quality

The Gigabyte M32U features a 10-bit SS IPS panel capable of displaying 1.07 billion colors. This isn't a true 10-bit panel though, but an 8-bit panel that uses Frame Rate Control (FRC), a method of temporal dithering, to create a perception of a 10-bit panel with 1,024 individual shades of RGB color. Unless you're a creative professional with an established end-to-end 10-bit color workflow, you shouldn't lose any sleep over the 8-bit+FRC nature of Gigabyte M32U's panel. The screen uses a White-LED (W-LED) backlight unit. It's controlled by direct current (DC), which makes it flicker-free at any given brightness level.

The screen coating on the Gigabyte M32U is light anti-glare (AG). The screen is quite resistant to reflecting its surroundings even when used in a room with a lot of natural or artificial light, and the picture isn't perceived as grainy or dirty from a normal sitting distance, which can be the case with heavier AG coatings. The maximum specified brightness of the panel is 350 nits, accompanied by a static contrast ratio of 1,000:1—a common value for an IPS screen.

To test the picture quality of the Gigabyte M32U, I've used a combination of the X-Rite i1Display Pro and Datacolor Spyder5ELITE+ colorimeters, and DisplayCAL, a powerful software solution for display calibration and profiling, which is completely free to use assuming you own a supported colorimeter.

Picture Quality at Factory Settings

The picture quality of the Gigabyte M32U at its factory defaults was tested right after plugging it in and allowing it to warm up for about an hour. At the factory settings, I've measured brightness of 230.96 cd/m², with the color temperature sitting at 6,296 K. The measured gamma was 2.25, and the static contrast ratio 952:1, which is a good result for an IPS panel. The overall picture quality was very solid, although the colors were a bit too warm, and the image was just a tad too dark for my taste, at least when it came to using the monitor in a well-lit environment.

Image sharpness is excellent owing to the high pixel density (~140 PPI) offered by the combination of a 31.5-inch panel and 4K native resolution. Windows automatically set display scaling to 150%, but I consider the M32U perfectly usable at 125% scaling as well, from a normal sitting distance. Dropping the display scaling from 150% to 125% effectively gives you more screen real estate, which is particularly beneficial for multitasking.

Before doing any further measurements, it's best to dive into the OSD and adjust a couple of settings to get the color temperature and image brightness closer to what I'd consider ideal (6,500 K and 250 cd/m²). On my sample of the Gigabyte M32U this was achieved by adjusting the brightness to 72 (Picture > Standard > Brightness), setting the color temperature to User Define (Picture > Standard > Color Temperature > User Define), and changing the channel gain to 90 for Red, 92 for Green, and 100 for Blue. This resulted in a measured picture brightness of 250.05 cd/m² and color temperature of 6,504 K. Measured static contrast was slightly reduced to 930:1, which was still high enough to provide a good-looking picture for everyday usage and multimedia alike.


The OSD lets you change the gamma on a scale from 1.8 to 2.6, in 0.2 increments, but it's best to leave it at its default value of 2.2. As you can see in the image above, that results in the most accurate measured gamma curve, which closely follows the reference curve.

Let's compare the results before and after adjusting the settings of the monitor. Let me remind you that we still didn't calibrate the monitor; all changes to its picture quality were done through the OSD.


With the aforementioned basic changes in the OSD, we've managed to adjust the brightness and color temperature to a much more comfortable level. The gamma and color accuracy also improved in the process, although the maximum ΔE of 6.15, which I've measured on a light shade of blue, definitely needs to be addressed by calibrating the Gigabyte M32U. Despite this inaccuracy, overall uncalibrated picture quality of the Gigabyte M32U is very good, or even excellent if you don't plan to use it for color-critical tasks.


As we can see by examining the CIE diagram, we get a 119% coverage of the sRGB and an 87% coverage of the DCI-P3 color space with our adjusted settings.


This is what the luminance and color uniformity of the Gigabyte M32U look like when measured at 25 different patches across the panel. Please click on the image to see it in high resolution and examine the data in greater detail. As you can see, backlight uniformity is very good, with the highest measured deviation of -9.04% around the top edge of the panel. Anything below -15% is next to impossible to spot with the naked eye. Color uniformity is nice as well, especially on the bottom half of the panel, where it constantly stays below ΔE 3. Contrast deviation is great across the board.

Picture Quality after Calibration

I calibrated the display by using the X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter and DisplayCAL software solution. Initial profiling and calibration were done with the luminance target set to 250 nits and by using the sRGB profile.

Here's what we get after calibrating the Gigabyte M32U.



After calibrating the Gigabyte M32U, the color accuracy went from solid to excellent, as expected. The highest measured deviation went from ΔE 6.15 to ΔE 2.79, and the average ΔE dropped down to 1.09. When properly calibrated, the Gigabyte M32U can be used for even more demanding tasks, such as photo and video editing.

The Gigabyte M32U comes with a VESA DisplayHDR 400 badge, meaning it can achieve a peak luminance of 400 cd/m². This of course isn't nearly enough to offer you a proper HDR experience. Add to that a lack of a real local dimming technology and this quite obviously isn't the monitor you're going to buy if you're after high-quality HDR performance.

Backlight Uniformity

To give you an idea of the backlight uniformity, I set the brightness of the monitor to 250 nits before taking a photo of the panel in a completely dark room. I did my best to find a combination of the ISO value and shutter speed that would capture the screen in a way that has it look as close to what my eyes were seeing in real life.



Backlight uniformity isn't perfect, but the imperfections depicted above are pretty much impossible to distinguish in real life. There's some backlight bleed in the upper corners and around the bottom edge of the panel.

Viewing Angles

This being an IPS panel, the viewing angles are great. There's no visible shift in colors when you change your sitting position. You'll have a lot of freedom to move your head any way you like. I didn't notice any noteworthy vignetting happening around the edges of the screen when viewed from a normal sitting distance.