October 7, 2024
HDR monitors tend to cost $1,000 or more, so Xiaomi‘s launch of a 1000-nit HDR monitor for only $330 immediately raises questions. Is this the best value ever offered for an HDR monitor? Is it a piece of junk? Good enough for photographers?
I bought the Xiaomi Mini LED Gaming Monitor G Pro 27i (model P27QBA-RGPGL) and it’s well, pretty interesting. If you’re looking for a low cost way to get into HDR photography, it’s definitely worth a look. It offers a great opportunity to get into HDR on a budget, but with some caveats covered below.
This monitor features:
- A very attractive $330 price point
- 1000 nits mini-LED with 1152 dimming zones (DisplayHDR 1000 certified)
- 99% DCI-P3
- 180Hz refresh rate
- 27″ size with 2K QHD resolution (2560×1440)
- included stand supports a wide range of adjustments
Learn more about these terms and how to shop for an HDR monitor here.
HDR specs like these are simply unheard of at this price point. If you only got 1-2 years of service out of it, it would probably pay for itself as price and availability of HDR monitors continues to improve.
How’s the image quality?
The key headline here is the DisplayHDR 1000 certification. The high peak brightness and numerous dimming zones offers a very compelling HDR experience. Actual peak brightness somewhat exceeds the 1000 nits spec. You should be able to achieve 3 – 3.5 stops of HDR headroom in ambient lighting conditions typical for photography work. This is highly capable for a wide range of HDR work.
Equally important is the ability to control black levels to ensure high dynamic range. Haloing is inherent to any mini-LED and this monitor performs quite well. It’s also a bit complicated. It is simultaneously better and worse than the Pro Display XDR (that it can keep up at all with a monitor costing nearly 20x more is incredible). The mixed performance is due to sensitivity around viewing angle. When you look directly at the monitor, haloing is very minimal. However, it is much more pronounced when you view from an angle. So when you are sitting normally in front of the monitor, the Xiaomi offers better blacks than the XDR in the center of the display but clearly inferior blacks near the edges (unless you move your head). It’s not going to win any awards in a star field test. As you get into midtones against HDR highlights, a test pattern such as a +3 stop red over a mid grey will clearly look better on the XDR than the Xiaomi. But when I test real photos (such a sunset behind a building or with detail around a window), I see no isse. There is also some increased variability around the zones, which can manifest as a cursor which appears to flicker a bit if you move it across a black screen. In the rare case where you might want a more accurate look at very dark shadows, you could always move your head to look straight on. Overall, the local dimming is sufficient or very good for almost all practical photography. It exceeds my expectations for this price point and should be very suitable for anyone who doesn’t make a living from photography.
The monitor’s control for local dimming (advanced / local dimming) is unusual. It’s more like a brightness control than something which impacts halos. When set to low, peak brightness measured ~1150 nits. When set to medium (default) or high, it measured ~1310 nits. I would leave it at the default medium value and adjust brightness from display settings in Windows or MacOS (Sequoia has a new slider for 3rd-party monitors). The low setting seems to help somewhat with the highlight rolloff mentioned below, so you could try playing with a combination of the monitor’s dimming controls and the operating system brightness slider if you’re comfortable with these controls.
The monitor spec says it should support 180Hz refresh rates, but I am seeing a maximum of 144Hz on both my Mac and PC. I have never tried using either with a higher refresh rate and I suspect the computers themselves may be the limit here. In either case. photographers need only 60Hz for a decent experience zooming and panning images, and 120Hz is ideal (primarily for smoother text while scrolling). So 144Hz is more than enough, and I’m not convinced that a higher refresh rate would be all that meaningful at 2K resolution anyhow.
What about downsides? This is a budget oriented monitor which offers 2K resolution at 27″. That’s a great option which will meet the needs of many photographers, but it isn’t 4K at 32″. I find it’s more impactful for reading text (compared to my 6k Pro Display XDR, letters clearly are a bit jagged). I used a 2K monitor happily for many years, but I certainly appreciate what I have now.
Highlight details appear slightly clipped / compressed. It would be easy to work around this in editing if it bothers you by thinking of it as slightly less headroom. It’s pretty hard to find examples where this affects the viewing experience in a browser. If you look at the bright right side of the arch in this image, there is some loss of detail. You’d have to be pretty picky to notice / care for the majority of images.
This is also a gaming-oriented monitor. Many products aimed at gamers have rather terrible color accuracy and I was fairly pleased with the results. Neutrals such as the Photoshop UI are visibly shifted red, and warm highlight colors in photographs tend to be somewhat over-saturated. My tests in CalMAN corroberate this (though I’m not sharing detail as I don’t have a spectrometer to properly profile the C6 for this monitor). Gray EOTF tracking is generally a bit dark and shifts notably when the monitor’s local dimming is set to low (as a result, you might lose ~0.5 stops of headroom after boosting brightness in the operating system to compensate and achieve a comfortable level for productivity work). The uncalibrated color is not going do well in numeric tests, but is close enough that a large number of photographers won’t care. If you don’t tend to get deep into calibration, you’ll probably be very happy with the HDR color. That’s important, as there is no standard for ICC profiling HDR at this time and this monitor does not have hardware controls for calibration. At the same time, you can always switch to SDR mode and calibrate that for your print work if needed. Just be aware that HDR will not work while that profile is active, and switching profiles on MacOS is a little cumbersome (you might want to look into using BetterDisplay, which has an option to change color profiles when HDR mode is toggled).
Overall, this isn’t a monitor on par with Apple XDR displays or ASUS (which offers calibration in the hardware), but the fact that I would even use displays which cost 8-18x more than this Xiaomi is a testament to the value it offers. The image quality is surprisingly good and has exceeded my (low) expectations.
How’s the overall product quality?
The monitor and stand both physically feel like a quality product. The on screen menus are easy to navigate. There’s nothing to configure, though I recommend going to System / Backstrip Lighting and turning it off if you don’t like the glow from the back of the monitor.
Inputs are limited to two HDMI 2.0, two DisplayPort 1.4, and a 3.5 mm audio jack. There is no USB / Thunderbolt support, so you won’t have power for a laptop nor the ability to use the monitor as a docking station. And this would imply there’s no way for a user to upgrade firmware (so don’t expect improvements for things like the highlight rolloff I noted above).
I was unable to get audio to work over HDMI nor the 3.5mm jack, but I spent minimal time trying. I assume it is not impressive, as most monitors sound awful.
But I did experience challenges with HDMI. Neither my MacBook Pro nor PC recognized the display as supporting HDR when using an HDMI cable I have successfully used with several other monitors. When I switched to my FIBBR fiber-optic HDMI cable, things went smoothly (I’m a big fan of that cable, but just be aware that it is directional and the side marked “1” must be plugged into the computer to work properly). Refresh rate did not matter (144Hz was fine when HDR was working and dropping to lower settings did not help). Perhaps the HDMI ports on this unit are right at the quality threshold where a better cable is needed. It’s entirely possible my unit performs better or worse than others. As they say, your mileage may vary. DisplayPort (using the included cable) worked flawlessly for me.
I contacted support and found options are a bit mixed. There is no phone support in the US and the Facebook support page uses a bot which was completely unhelpful. However, their email support ([email protected]) was a somewhat more positive experience. I received a very thoughtful reply in less than 24 hours on a weekend. However, things went downhill from there. The support team provided information which seemed inaccurate. They did not seem to understand the difference between technical specs like HDR10 (i.e. information you can use to troubleshoot) and Display HDR 1000 certification (i.e. tests which just prove marketing claims). After repeating the same information three times (I thought I was routed to a bot), they ultimately said the only information the support team has is on their website. I wouldn’t expect any vendor other than Apple probably offers great service for understanding and setting up HDR at this point, you should look for that kind of technical support elsewhere (I’ve tried to share a lot of that setup and troubleshooting information on my HDR page / e-book).
I cannot comment on the long-term quality of this product or how other units might vary. My sense is that you should assume a risk of slightly higher risk of quality issue given this price point, my HDMI experience, and some reports online of quality issues (that said, all monitors run into dead or stuck pixels and people with a bad experience are vastly more likely to report issues than those who have a good experience). I have not seen any such issues and Walmart shows an average 4.7 out of 5 with nearly 1000 ratings submitted. My sense is that this will likely be a popular product that offers a great experience at a unique price point, but I’ve only had one unit for a short period of time.
Should you buy it?
This a product I can recommend for those seeking to get into HDR at a low price point, with the caveat that you may need to try other cables or be ready to return the unit if you have problems. HDR support is excellent, image quality and HDR color should meet most photographer’s expectations, and SDR color accuracy can be improved with profiling if needed (but needs to be toggled off to see HDR, as with any profiling today). It’s also exciting to see budget entries arriving in the HDR space, as this should help make it more accessible to a larger audience.
The only real alternative for quality HDR at minimal cost would be your M1+ Apple MacBook Pro (which has an amazing HDR display but is a 14-16″ display) or to use your TV as a monitor or pick up a used OLED TV. There are many TVs which offer great HDR (especially in darker rooms) and can be calibrated. If you’re willing to spend a bit more and manage the minor downsides of using a 42″ TV as a monitor, the LG C4 OLED is an excellent option.
If you’re willing to spend a good bit more, the ASUS PA32UCX offers 4K resolution and hardware-based calibration. And if you have a ~$2600 budget, I highly recommend the ASUS PS32UCXR.
For more reviews and details on how to evaluate options, see my recommended HDR monitors.
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