ASUS ProArt Display PA279CRV  Monitor Review

The ASUS PA279CRV has a simple look that's familiar with ASUS ProArt monitors. It has a black plastic body, including matte plastic on the back, and there's silver throughout, particularly with the stand. It fits into any office environment well.

The build quality is great. The plastic materials feel good and don't flex easily. The stand holds the screen well as it's stable, and adjusting it feels good. There's one minor downside with the lines to align the stand on the base, as you can see here. When you align the markings, the screen isn't straight with the front edge of the base, which can be annoying.

The ergonomics are incredible. You can easily adjust the screen to your liking or swivel it a lot in either direction to show the screen to someone next to you. The stand also has a cutout for cable management.

The controls include a power button, five buttons to control the on-screen menu, and a joystick. They're very easy to use and feel responsive. If you want a display that lets you adjust settings from a connected remote control, take a look at the BenQ PD3225U.

• DisplayPort cable
• HDMI cable
• USB-C cable
• Power cord
• User document, including calibration report

The ASUS PA279CRV has a disappointing contrast ratio. Blacks look gray next to bright highlights in dark rooms, and the local dimming feature is ineffective at improving the contrast.

The local dimming feature consists of eight edge-lit dimming zones, and it performs terribly. As the zones are big, any bright object on a dark background causes an entire zone to turn on, resulting in distracting blooming; this is especially noticeable with subtitles. The zones are also slow to turn on and off with objects moving across the screen. It causes the black levels to rise, meaning blacks look gray in the dark. The uniformity is good when there are small objects across the entire screen, like a starfield or any other content that requires all zones to be done, but that means the feature isn't actively doing anything. All of the Dynamic Dimming settings perform similarly, but overall, it's better just not to use this feature.

The SDR brightness is great. It easily gets bright enough to fight glare and maintains its brightness consistently across different content, which is great.

These results are from after calibration in the 'User 1' Preset Mode with the Brightness at its max and Dynamic Dimming disabled. Interestingly, it's a bit dimmer in some content with Dynamic Dimming on 'Fast,' and the Automatic Brightness Limiter is a bit more aggressive with it on, so disabling it results in the best performance.

If you're looking for a monitor with even better SDR brightness, check out the ASUS ProArt Display PA27JCV.

The HDR brightness is okay. It gets fairly bright but fails to make small highlights pop against the rest of the image. The PQ EOTF also has raised blacks, but then it tracks the target curve well before a sharp cut-off at the peak brightness, meaning it lets highlights get the brightest they can. These results are in the 'PQ Clip' HDR Mode with Dynamic Dimming on 'Fast' and Brightness at its max.

The gray uniformity is good. While the edges of the screen are darker than the rest, there's minimal dirty screen effect in the center, which is great if you're working on content with large areas of uniform colors.

The black uniformity is mediocre. Without local dimming, blacks look blue, and there's backlight bleed throughout. Enabling the local dimming improves the uniformity, but there's more blooming around bright objects.

The ASUS PA279CRV has remarkable accuracy. It comes factory-calibrated, and the 'sRGB' Preset Mode locks colors well to the sRGB color space. There are minimal inaccuracies, and gamma and the color temperature are great. Using the sRGB mode locks a few settings, including Brightness, as this mode is meant to be used at a low brightness. However, you can use another picture mode that has more customizable settings, including the brightness, but it less accurate, as you can see here in 'User 1.'

It also has other picture modes targeted for various color spaces, including DICOM used in medical imaging. You can see the results of them below, but keep in mind that the white balance and color inaccuracies are in comparison to the sRGB color space, so it's expected that these results seem inaccurate. You can also see all the default settings for each mode here.

The accuracy after calibration is outstanding. While the factory calibration already results in remarkable accuracy, calibrating it gives you access to settings that are locked out in the sRGB mode, including Brightness.

The SDR color gamut is fantastic. It has perfect coverage of the common sRGB color space, but it oversaturates colors in the Adobe RGB color space, mainly used in professional publishing. These results are with Dynamic Dimming off, and while the color gamut is slightly better with it on, there isn't a significant difference. The overall picture quality in SDR is worse with local dimming enabled.

The ASUS PA279CRV has a fantastic HDR color gamut. It displays a wide range of colors and has good tone mapping in the DCI-P3 and Rec. 2020 color spaces, but some saturated colors are off. Unlike in SDR, these results are with Dynamic Dimming on 'Fast.'

The color volume is very good. While it displays most colors well, it struggles to make them look very dark or very bright.

The horizontal viewing angle is decent. It's fine if you need to share the screen with a coworker or client next to you, but the image gets darker at really wide angles.

The text clarity is fantastic, thanks to its high pixel density. Enabling Windows ClearType (top photo) helps improve the text clarity with bolder lines. These photos are in Windows 10, and you can also see it in Windows 11 with ClearType on and with ClearType off.

The direct reflection handling is okay. Despite its matte coating that spreads some light out, it also has some mirror-like reflections.

The black levels don't rise much in bright rooms, but because of its low contrast ratio, blacks still look gray.

There are distracting reflections on this monitor, and it reflects a lot of light back. 

The gradient handling is outstanding, and you won't notice any issues with banding in scenes with shades of similar colors, like a sunset.

Although the ASUS ProArt Display PA279CRV isn't advertised to support any VRR, it still works within a limited refresh rate range. The setting for it in the OSD is called MediaSync.

The motion handling isn't bad with VRR enabled. However, there's still blur and smearing with fast-moving objects.

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 and smearing. The overdrive settings perform similarly, but '60' is the recommended setting because '80' and '100' have too much inverse ghosting.

This monitor doesn't support a 120Hz signal.

This monitor doesn't support a 120Hz signal.

The CAD at 60Hz is disappointing. There's noticeable blur and smearing. The overdrive settings perform similarly, but '60' is the recommended setting because '80' and '100' have too much inverse ghosting.

The ASUS PA279CRV doesn't have an optional backlight strobing feature to reduce persistence blur.

This monitor doesn't have any noticeable VRR flicker with changing frame rates, which is fantastic.

The backlight remains flicker-free at all brightness levels, which helps reduce eye strain if you're sensitive to flicker. The lines in the graphs are just noise and aren't the same as flicker.

This monitor has low enough input lag that you won't notice any delay while working or editing content.

This monitor can't take full advantage of the PS5, but it still works with 4k signals up to 60Hz and even supports VRR.

Besides not supporting 120Hz signals, there aren't any compatibility issues with the Xbox Series X|S. However, because the Xbox doesn't support HDR with 1080p or 1440p signals, this isn't a limitation of the monitor.

The manufacturer advertises the monitor to support daisy chaining with its DisplayPort output, but we couldn't get it to work. We tried using different PCs, monitors, and cables, and even though we could pass audio to a second monitor, we couldn't display an image from it. This may be an issue with our unit alone, but we don't know. If you have this monitor, let us know in the Comments if daisy chaining works for you or not.

The USB-C port on the back supports DisplayPort Alt Mode, so you can quickly connect a laptop to display an image from it. You can use the USB-C port underneath the left side to connect a mouse or keyboard, but you need to connect your computer to the other USB-C port for it to work properly. Otherwise, the USB-C underneath the monitor's side is just for charging as it's limited to 15W of power.

The ASUS ProArt Display PA279CRV works well with macOS. You can't enable HDR or VRR over USB-C, but HDR works over HDMI, and other than that, everything works as expected. If you're working on a MacBook via USB-C, you can close the lid and continue working on the screen if you have a mouse and keyboard connected to the monitor. Windows also return to their original position when waking the laptop or reopening the lid. The default resolution also changes depending on which connection you use, but you can just switch to 4k.

The ASUS PA279CRV has a few extra settings to improve your workflow, including Picture-by-Picture and Picture-in-Picture modes, but those don't work with HDR. It also has a Blue Light Filter option to help reduce eye strain. Lastly, it has QuickFit Plus options to display virtual overlays to help while editing content, but it doesn't work with HDR either. It has five different overlays:

• Safe Area: Makes it easier to edit content in one area of the screen.
• Center Marker: Displays a crosshair in the center of the screen, similar to gaming monitors.
• Mirror Mode: Flips the image horizontally.
• Customization: Lets you adjust the image size on the screen.
• Ruler: Displays a ruler on the edges, and you can switch between metric and imperial.