Picture Quality

The Viotek GNV34DBE2 features an 8-bit VA panel capable of displaying 16.77 million colors. The screen uses a White-LED (W-LED) backlight unit. It's controlled by a direct current (DC), which makes it flicker-free at any given brightness level.

The screen coating on the Viotek GNV34DBE2 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 cd/m², accompanied by a static contrast ratio of 4,000:1.

To test the picture quality of the Viotek GNV34DBE2, 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 Viotek GNV34DBE2 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 a high brightness of 329.8 cd/m² with the whitepoint sitting at around 7,000 K. That results in a picture that looks attractive, but doesn't offer the best color accuracy, which can be somewhat tiring to look at for extended periods, especially in a dark room. In terms of color accuracy, the average measured ΔE was 3.32, and it climbed up to ΔE 6.17 for certain yellow tones. The default contrast ratio looked promising, with a measured value of 4,136:1—far beyond what I'd normally expect from an inexpensive VA panel. The picture generally looks very sharp; when stretched across a 34" ultrawide panel, the 3440x1440 screen resolution provides a respectable pixel density of 110 PPI. The panel also offers plenty of screen real estate, partially because it can (and should) be used with no Windows user interface scaling, so you get the entirety of the screen to work with.

The first order of business is to dive into the OSD and change some of the factory settings in an attempt to bring the best out of the Viotek GNV34DBE2 before calibration. To get the brightness and whitepoint closer to desired values (250 cd/m² and 6,500 K), I had to set the brightness to 62 (Main Menu > Brightness/Contrast > Brightness), and the color temperature (Main Menu > Color Setting > Color Temperature) to USER. This setting will let you play with individual color channels, but my particular sample of the monitor didn't respond well to any modifications of the red, green, or blue channel gain, as even a slight change from their default values resulted in significant changes to color balance. For example, if I lowered the gain of the red channel from 50 to 49, the white balance immediately flew above 6,600 K, and the picture had gotten a noticeable green hue. However, with these two changes, I was able to reduce the luminance to 249.2 cd/m², and the whitepoint was floating at around 6,450 K, which was a good starting point for calibration.


Some other changes need to be made in the OSD. The gamma (Main Menu > Color Setting > Gamma) should be changed from 2.2 to 2.0. That might sound counterintuitive, but my colorimeter clearly showed that with the default gamma value (2.2), the actual gamma measurement is 2.5, and the measured curve is completely detached from the reference, as pictured above. Because of that, you're effectively losing finer details in darker content as the monitor's output luminance is lower than it should be. After switching the OSD gamma setting to 2.0, we get a measured gamma value of 2.2 and a curve that follows the referent 2.2 gamma curve almost perfectly. This too can be seen in the picture above.

Finally, you want to switch the monitor's RGB range from limited to full, which can only be done in the quick menu—you're looking for the fourth option from the left. Why this isn't the default setting is beyond me.

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


As you can see, not only did we bring down the brightness to a more comfortable level and set the whitepoint much closer to 6,500 K, but we also managed to improve the color accuracy while maintaining a high static contrast value of 4,150:1. These are some nice gains by doing nothing other than a couple of meaningful adjustments in the OSD. The picture is now very pleasant to look at, with nice, vibrant colors, a fine tonal balance, and admirable detail retrieval in more complex scenes, both in games and movies.


As we can see by examining the CIE diagram, we get a 100% coverage of the sRGB, 84% coverage of the Adobe RBG, and 91% coverage of the DCI-P3 color space with our adjusted settings.


This is what the luminance and color uniformity of the Viotek GNV34DBE2 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, there are two somewhat problematic areas: the upper-left corner (first patch), where I've measured a color shift of up to ΔE 4.79, and the third patch, where the color uniformity deviation again has a fairly high ΔE of 4.64. While this is very hard to spot with the naked eye, it could pose a problem for users who need a monitor for professional color grading, photo editing, and similar demanding tasks—not that they would be looking to buy an inexpensive gaming monitor to begin with. The luminance uniformity generally looks very good, with no areas of the panel deviating more than 13.7% compared to its center in terms of brightness. We consider everything below 15% unnoticeable to the naked eye and as such acceptable.

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 cd/m², and by using the sRGB profile.

Here's what we get after calibrating the Viotek GNV34DBE2.



The table and screenshot say it all: After calibrating the Viotek GNV34DBE2, color accuracy went from solid to excellent, and we also managed to sort out the whitepoint, achieving even deeper blacks, and further increasing static contrast. The colors became even more vibrant and punchy in the process, which I didn't expect to be as noticeable, as the picture quality of the GNV34DBE2 was very good even before the calibration.

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 uniformity isn't ideal, but its imperfections are pretty much impossible to distinguish in real life. There's some backlight bleed around the upper edge and all four corners of the panel. The "hotspots" are easier to see in the following image, where I used a longer camera exposition to get a highly exaggerated interpretation of the backlight uniformity. Do keep in mind that the following photo in no way resembles what you'll see when using this monitor. The previous backlight photo is what can you expect in real life if using the monitor in a completely dark room.

Viewing Angles

This being a VA panel, the viewing angles are solid. There's no visible shift in colors when changing your sitting position. You'll have a lot of freedom to move your head any way you like. The 1500R panel curvature does a good job of avoiding the vignetting effect around the corners of the screen. Some vignetting can occur only if you're sitting uncomfortably close to the monitor.