ASUS ProArt Display 6K PA32QCV  Monitor Review

The ASUS PA32QCV has a simple, office-oriented design. It's mainly dark gray with some silver accents throughout.

The build quality is good. It's made of well-made plastic that feels solid, and there aren't any obvious issues with its construction. However, it's not the most premium as the plastic housing flexes a bit.

The ergonomics are fantastic. You can adjust it in a number of ways, which helps if you need to share the screen with someone next to you. The adjustments feel fluid and easy to maneuver, and there's a marker at the base of the stand to help you make the screen even to the front edge of the stand. The stand has a cutout for basic cable management.

The base of the stand doesn't take up a ton of space, and it holds the screen well. There's some wobble when it's on an unstable desk, but it quickly stabilizes itself. As the stand is tilted, the thickness from the screen to the back of the stand changes depending on the height you have the screen set to. The measurement in the review is with the screen at the lowest height adjustment, and the thickness at the max height adjustment is 6.5" (16.5 cm).

There are five buttons and a joystick to control the on-screen display, as well as a power button. The OSD is easy to use, but changing the picture mode or some picture settings causes the screen to go black for a few seconds, which can be annoying if you like to often change settings.

• USB-C cable
• HDMI cable
• Power cable
• Microfiber cloth
• User guides, including calibration report

The ASUS PA32QCV has an alright contrast ratio. Blacks look gray next to bright highlights, and its local dimming feature fails to improve the black levels significantly.

Settings

• Dynamic Dynamic: On
• Speed: Level 1
• Ratio: Level 5
• Black Level - Backlight: Deep Level

The 16-zone, edge-lit local dimming feature is poor. It's effective at reducing IPS glow, which is distracting when you don't use local dimming and view the screen from the sides. It improves the black levels when zones are turned off, but it also results in some black crush and loss of details. Any small, bright object causes an entire column to light up, resulting in noticeable haloing from the top to the bottom edge of the screen, but most content keeps all the zones on. Besides that, objects transition between zones well without any visible flicker or choppiness.

You can enable local dimming with the Dynamic Dimming setting, and from there, you can adjust Speed, which changes how fast the algorithm turns zones on and off, and Ratio, which controls how aggressive the dimming is. All the settings perform similarly, but there's some flicker with Ratio set to 'Level 5' and Speed set to 'Level 3,' which is why we used 'Level 1' for testing. You can see the local dimming video with other combinations of settings:

• Ratio: 'Level 5' | Speed: 'Level 3'
• Ratio: 'Level 5' | Speed: 'Level 1'
• Ratio: 'Level 1' | Speed: 'Level 3'

When you enable Dynamic Dimming, you can adjust the Backlight setting, which is within the Black Level setting. Setting it to 'Normal Level' has little to no impact as the dimming zones don't turn off, so you need to set it to 'Deep Level' for proper local dimming performance.

Settings

• Preset Mode: Native (after calibration)
• Brightness: 400 (max)
• Dynamic Dimming: Off
• Black Level - Backlight: Deep Level

The ASUS ProArt Display PA32QCV has excellent SDR brightness. It gets bright enough to fight glare in well-lit rooms, and it maintains consistent brightness between different content.

Using local dimming results in a dimmer image than with it off, but it still gets bright, as you can see below: 

• Real Scene: 610 cd/m²
• Peak 2% Window: 612 cd/m²
• Peak 10% Window: 617 cd/m²
• Peak 25% Window: 624 cd/m²
• Peak 50% Window: 625 cd/m²
• Peak 100% Window: 624 cd/m²
• Sustained 2% Window: 610 cd/m²
• Sustained 10% Window: 613 cd/m²
• Sustained 25% Window: 620 cd/m²
• Sustained 50% Window: 621 cd/m²
• Sustained 100% Window: 619 cd/m²

Settings

• HDR: PQ Clip
• Brightness: 400 (max)
• Dynamic Dimming: Off
• Power Level: Normal Level

The HDR brightness is good. It gets bright enough to fight glare in well-lit rooms, but small highlights don't pop against the rest of the image. Luckily, it has very accurate PQ EOTF tracking, and besides raised blacks in dark scenes, it displays content as intended. It also has a sharp cut-off at its peak brightness, so it doesn't perform any tone mapping.

Using the local dimming feature improves the PQ EOTF tracking as it improves black levels in dark scenes. However, it's not as bright overall as having local dimming off. Changing the Speed and Ratio settings with local dimming have no impact on the brightness and PQ EOTF.

You can see the results with Dynamic Dimming enabled with the different Backlight settings:

The gray uniformity is good. The screen is uniform in the center, but the edges are darker. This vignetting isn't as obvious with darker grays, though.

The black uniformity is disappointing. Without local dimming, there's backlight bleed and clouding throughout. Using local dimming reduces the clouding, and even reduces the effect of IPS glow, but there's still backlight bleed, particularly towards the bottom edge.

The ASUS PA32QCV has excellent accuracy before calibration. Using the 'sRGB' Preset Mode locks colors well to the sRGB color space, but there are still white balance issues, and the color temperature is on the cold side, resulting in a blue tint. Even gamma tracking is a bit off, as dark scenes are too dark.

Using the 'sRGB' Preset Mode locks many picture settings, including Brightness, and the screen is dim with it. If you want a brighter screen or more access to other settings, you have to use another mode that has oversaturated colors.

The accuracy after calibration is fantastic. The main advantage of calibrating it, besides fixing any issues from before calibration, is that you can adjust the brightness how you like.

This monitor has a number of settings to help you fine-tune your calibration, including two-point white balance. You can adjust the RGB gain and offset sliders from 0-400, with increments of 1, which helps you finely calibrate display. It also has different Preset Modes for various color spaces that you may work with, like BT.2020, DICOM for medical imaging, and an 'M Model-P3' mode that's suggested to use with Apple displays.

The ASUS PA32QCV has an incredible SDR color gamut. It has perfect coverage of the sRGB color space, and it covers most of the Adobe RGB color space, but it oversaturates red, magenta, and yellow, while undersaturating cyan and green.

These results are from after calibration in the 'Native' Preset Mode. The 'Adobe RGB' Preset Mode does a better job at clamping colors to the Adobe RGB color space, but it doesn't improve the actual gamut coverage.

The HDR color gamut is fantastic. It displays a wide range of colors in the DCI-P3 and Rec. 2020 color spaces, but there are some inaccuracies, like with the white point being off in each color space.

The HDR color volume is very good. While it has wide gamut coverage, it struggles properly displaying the brightest and darker colors.

The viewing angle is great. The image remains consistent as you view it to the side. However, red shifts quickly, which is disappointing if you're a content creator and need to share the screen with a client.

The text clarity is fantastic. Despite its increased resolution, its 32-inch size means it has the same pixel density as a 5k, 27-inch monitor. While text looks sharp for the most part, the aggressive matte coating introduces haze to the image, so images are less clear than on a glossy screen, like the Apple Studio Display, which has the same pixel density. While text looks sharper than on 4k, 32-inch screens, like the Dell U3225QE, the coating limits how significant an increase in clarity it provides, unless you sit really close to the screen.

The coating results in a rainbow-like effect, which you can see in this photo. Keep in mind that this photo is meant to emphasize the issue, and it's not as distracting in person. How much this bothers you changes from person to person.

The photos in the review are in Windows 10 with a default scaling of 200%, and you can also see them in Windows 11 with ClearType on and with ClearType off.

On macOS, the unscaled 6k resolution makes text look extremely small. The default resolution is 3008x1692, and you can see what text looks like with font size 11 and font size 13.

The ASUS PA32QCV has superb direct reflection handling. Its LuxPixel anti-glare matte coating absorbs light really well, so there are minimal reflections coming off the screen. Any remaining light is spread out across the display.

The black levels rise in bright rooms. As the monitor already has a low contrast ratio, blacks look gray in any environment.

There are minimal reflections coming off this monitor's screen, making it a great choice to use in a well-lit room. While it spreads light out across the screen, glare isn't distracting.

The gradient handling is remarkable. There's no banding between shades of similar colors.

You can use VRR by enabling the MediaSync setting, and the ASUS PA32QCV supports all common VRR formats. However, the VRR range is limited as anything under 42Hz starts to tear.

The ASUS ProArt Display 6k PA32QCV has unremarkable motion handling across its VRR range. There's noticeable blur with fast-moving objects, which is to be expected from a 60Hz monitor geared towards content creation.

You can't change the Trace Free settings with VRR enabled. There's some difference when you change the setting first and then enable VRR, but the differences between the settings aren't as big as when VRR idisabled.

The refresh rate compliance is bad. Its response time isn't fast enough to make full-color transitions before the monitor draws the next frame.

The CAD at the max refresh rate of 60Hz is disappointing. There's noticeable blur behind fast-moving objects, and the '60' Trace Free has some inverse ghosting. If that bothers you, '40' is the better option, but it has a bit more blur.

The ASUS PA32QCV doesn't support a 120Hz signal.

This monitor doesn't support a 120Hz signal.

The CAD at 60Hz is disappointing. There's noticeable blur behind fast-moving objects, and the '60' Trace Free has some inverse ghosting. If that bothers you, '40' is the better option, but it has a bit more blur.

The ASUS ProArt Display 6k PA32QCV doesn't have a black frame insertion feature to reduce persistence blur.

The ASUS PA32QCV doesn't have visible VRR flicker with changing frame rates.

The backlight uses pulse width modulation (PWM) at a frequency of 20,000Hz, which shouldn't be noticeable for most people, but still can be problematic if you're sensitive to flicker.

The ASUS PA32QCV has low input lag for a responsive feel.

The monitor only supports 1440p with an Xbox Series X|S if you enable the console's HDMI override setting, which disables VRR. As the Xbox only supports HDR with 4k signals, this isn't a limitation of the monitor.

Two of the four USB-C ports support Thunderbolt, and they're both at the back of the monitor. One has 90W of power delivery and is meant to connect to your laptop. The other is Thunderbolt out to daisy-chain a second monitor, and we confirmed that it works. If you aren't going to use it for daisy chaining, it acts as a downstream port with 15W of power delivery. The USB-C port located beneath the bottom bezel is downstream only and also provides 15W of power. The other USB-C port in the back is upstream only and doesn't support power delivery, so you need to use this for the KVM switch to work properly.

Tested with: M2 MacBook Pro (Sequoia 15.6.1)

This monitor works well with macOS. The default scaling is 3008x1692, and the native 6k resolution results in very small text. Using VRR and HDR at the same time locks the brightness to the max, and HDR looks accurate to a MacBook screen. The three HDR picture modes, along with the 'M Model-P3' mode, all perform alike and are good choices to use if you have a MacBook.

If you have a MacBook and close the lid, you can continue using the monitor if you have the laptop connected over USB-C or HDMI with it plugged into power. If it's connected over HDMI without a charging cable, the laptop goes to sleep. When reopening the lid or waking it up from sleep, it takes about 10 seconds for windows to return to their original positions on the monitor.

We couldn't adjust the monitor's brightness with a keyboard, including trying to adjust it with an Apple Magic Keyboard.

The ASUS ProArt Display 6k PA32QCV has a few features, including a KVM switch that automatically changes the inputs when you switch sources, which takes about five seconds to complete. The Picture-in-Picture/Picture-by-Picture mode is useful if you have two sources, but you can't use Dynamic Dimming or MediaSync with it.

The monitor also has two 2W speakers, which don't sound good. It has other features, including:

• Blue Light Filter: Aims to reduce the blue light that the monitor emits.
• QuickFit Plus: Includes overlays to help you align content, including Safe Area, Center Marker, Ruler, and Mirror Mode.
• Light Sync: Adjusts picture settings based on the ambient lighting conditions. This includes settings for the Backlight Brightness, Ambient Brightness, and Ambient Color Temperature.