Picture Quality

The INNOCN 40C1R features a 10-bit IPS ADS panel capable of displaying 1.07 billion colors. The panel is in fact 8-bit, but 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 this monitor. IPS Advanced Super Dimension Switch (ASD) is a variant of an IPS panel. It is based on the same in-plane switching concept and theoretically has all the benefits of a "regular" IPS panel, such as excellent color reproduction and wide viewing angles, but promises even better brightness, pixel response time, contrast, and screen rigidity (pressure resistance). The latter is impossible for me to test without destroying the panel in the process, so let's take that claim at face value. The increased screen brightness, contrast, and pixel responsiveness are achieved by using a transparent, highly conductive indium tin oxide material to form a transistor layer, although similar characteristics can be achieved by using replacement materials, such as aluminium-zinc oxide, graphene, and similar. I'm unable to determine what exact materials were used in the case of the INNOCN 40C1R, but we already saw that its panel offers above-average brightness. Below we'll figure out if the same is true when it comes to its contrast ratio.

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 INNOCN 40C1R is light anti-glare (AG). The screen is very 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 500 cd/m², accompanied by a static contrast ratio of 1,200:1.

To test the picture quality of the INNOCN 40C1R, I've used a combination of the X-Rite i1Display Pro, 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 INNOCN 40C1R 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 measured brightness of 233.24 cd/m², with a very high color temperature of 7,430 K. The measured static contrast ratio sitting at 1,257:1 did indeed exceed what's usually expected from an IPS panel.


The measured gamma had an average value of 2.56, which is quite far from ideal (2.2). The gamma curve looked bad, with the actual gamma overshooting the nominal value by a large margin at every given brightness level. In other words, the picture was always darker than required by the input signal. Perhaps this is a sneaky way for INNOCN to ensure the colors are perceived as deeper and punchier. Either way, this is something we'll look to fix through the OSD and hardware calibration.


Of course, with such a gamma offset, it comes as no surprise that out-of-the-box color accuracy is poor. I measured an average ΔE of 3.64, with the maximum ΔE climbing as high as 5.68. Subjectively, the picture looked much better than the numbers would imply, especially in the color punchiness department, but with an obvious loss of shadow detail, which is a direct consequence of the aforementioned gamma issues.

As for image sharpness, 3440x1440 pixels stretched over a 40-inch ultrawide panel result in a pixel density of 93.23 PPI. That's slightly higher than what you would get from a 24-inch Full HD or 32-inch 1440p panel, and noticeably lower than a 27-inch 1440p or any 4K monitor. The picture is also not as sharp as on a more common 34-inch ultrawide monitor of the same resolution (110 PPI), although you do get around 18% more screen real estate thanks to the 6-inch diagonal increase. Overall, I had no sharpness-related complaints while working with documents or editing photos and videos. Sure, if you're spoiled by the surgical sharpness of your 4K monitor, the INNOCN 40C1R won't strike you as particularly crisp, but it can't be called soft either.

Finally, as I mentioned earlier in the review, the ultrawide panel of the INNOCN 40C1R is completely flat. This is perhaps the most controversial aspect of the panel and one I really struggled to get used to. Thankfully, after around a month of using it as my daily driver, I was finally able to look past its flatness. Please refer to the Design & Ergonomics page of this review for more thoughts on this aspect of the 40C1R.


The fastest way to greatly improve the color accuracy and gamma of the INNOCN 40C1R is to switch it to sRGB mode, which is done by selecting the sRGB Mode option from the Professional menu in the OSD. sRGB Mode is calibrated decently, with 1.16 average ΔE, 2.04 maximum ΔE, and an average gamma of 2.23, with only some minor deviation at lower input signal brightness values (below 20%). The issue with sRGB Mode is that it locks you out of adjusting the white balance, which wouldn't be a problem if the white color temperature weren't too high; 7.038 K, to be exact.

Another option is to take things into your own hands and opt for the best manual gamma and color temperature settings. I wasn't able to come close to the color accuracy of sRGB Mode without calibrating the monitor, but was able to improve upon the factory defaults. First of all, it is necessary to stop by the Professional > Gamma submenu and select 2.0 as the preferred gamma value. After that, go to the C.T settings menu (it's safe to assume C.T stands for Color Temperature), set User C.T1 to On, and fine-tune the color channels. My colorimeter showed the best results after only a minor tweak; I had to lower the blue channel (B) to 49 while leaving the red (R) and green (G) channels at 50. After that, you can set the brightness to your liking. If you're aiming for 250 cd/m², which is usually my preferred target, you can leave the brightness at its default value (60). Let's take a look at what happened after those tweaks were conducted.



As you can see, every picture quality aspect improved. The gamma still isn't ideal as it now deviates in the other direction (quite substantially at high brightness levels), but it is still improved over the factory settings. As per usual, a proper gamma correction can only be done after conducting a hardware calibration of the monitor, which we'll get to in a second.


As we can see by examining the CIE diagram, we get a 99.7% coverage of the sRGB and an 89% coverage of the DCI-P3 color space with our adjusted settings. The gamut volume equals 125.7% for sRGB and 89.1% for DCI-P3 color spaces.


This is what the luminance and color uniformity of the INNOCN 40C1R 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. Backlight uniformity is excellent, with the average brightness deviation staying under 5% across the panel. Such a small difference is completely invisible to the naked eye. Color uniformity is solid, with some inconsistencies only on the left edge of the panel, where the average ΔE falls just below 3 (anything above 3 would be considered unacceptable). Contrast consistency is great; like the brightness, it never deviates by more than 5% compared to the center of the screen, and that's only on the far left edge of the panel. On every other part of the massive 40-inch screen, it stays within 3% of the referent value.

The INNOCN 40C1R 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 the lack of a local dimming backlight technology and inherently limited static contrast ratio of any IPS-type panel, and this obviously isn't the monitor you're going to buy if after a high-quality HDR experience.

Picture Quality After Calibration

I calibrated the display by using the X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter and the DisplayCAL software solution. Initial profiling and calibration were done with the luminance target set to 250 cd/m², which presents a happy medium for a comfortable combined daytime and nighttime usage. The calibration was conducted with the adjusted settings listed above.

Here's what we get after calibrating the INNOCN 40C1R.



A proper hardware calibration brings the best out of the built-in 40-inch IPS ADS panel and fixes all of its deficiencies. Average color accuracy ΔE dropped to 0.39, and the maximum measured ΔE is 1.34, which is good enough for even more demanding tasks, such as photo and video editing. The white point is sitting comfortably at 6,516 K, and the static contrast ratio remained above average for an IPS-type panel, coming in at 1,341:1.


Calibrating the INNOCN 40C1R also completely fixed the gamma-related issues. As you can see by examining the graph, measured gamma response is now almost perfectly aligned with the referent curve, meaning the actual brightness of the picture is completely in line with the requirements of the input signal.

Backlight Uniformity

To give you an idea of the backlight's uniformity, I set the brightness of the monitor to 250 cd/m² 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 bleed is minimal and completely unnoticeable when using the INNOCN 40C1R. That's quite a feat for a 40-inch edge-lit ultrawide panel.

Viewing Angles

The viewing angles of the IPS panel built into the INNOCN 40C1R are great. There's no visible shift in colors when you change your sitting position. However, due to the massive size of the panel, some slight vignetting can be spotted in its corners from a normal sitting distance (around 80 centimeters). I didn't find it distracting, but it's definitely there.