Award: SEK 11,999 at CDON
We are most familiar with Alogic as a manufacturer of chargers, adapters, cables, and docking stations. The fact that they are now releasing a monitor comes as a total surprise. And they do it with their sights set high. The Clarity 27″, as it is called, is a 4k screen that is said to be aimed at both businesses and home offices, with full mobility, appealing design, and a hefty price tag of SEK 11,999.
That’s a lot of money for a 27 inch 4k monitor, the ones that cost more are the very best pro monitors for professionals like photographers and designers. And it doesn’t look like they’re the ones Alogic is turning to. They don’t specify what color palette standards the screen matches or how accurately it displays colors.
Here, most manufacturers boast things like rec.2020 or dci-p3 gamut, Pantone validation or otherwise guaranteed low Delta E values for color deviations, and pre-calibration direct from the factory for their best displays. We don’t get anything like that here. We’re told it’s an ips panel, quite expected in this price range, and that it has 10.8 billion colors.
That means it has ten-bit color management, but it’s not clear if that’s thanks to a true ten-bit display panel or if it’s eight-bit and frc technology to interpolate more colors. Now, it doesn’t make much of a difference if you’re not a demanding design professional. And if we were, we wouldn’t have ventured on such an unproven supplier, unless they are clearer with the details.
Plenty of color and dynamics
In the screen’s settings menu, we can indeed switch between three modes, Standard, srgb and Adobe, where standard (which we assume is the natural range of the panel) and Adobe show high color intensity and look almost identical. But how well srgb and Adobe really match the respective standards we leave unsaid. There are small deviations when we show the same test photos in the screen and in our connected test computer, an MSI Creator laptop with a high-class screen, pre-calibrated to Delta E value below 2. But small deviations can be enough for the picky person.
Instead, it is as a luxurious office monitor with a media angle that the Clarity 27″ is at its very best. Alogic also calls it precisely a “business grade monitor”. It is bright, 350 cd/m2 in standard mode, but also certified for HDR600, which means it should be able to reach point brightness up to 600 cd/m2 when it shows hdr material. If we play hdr movies, we get an image with convincing liveliness.
And it has both good contrast for being an ips screen, and well-approved evenness in brightness across the entire screen surface, it’s a little darker right out in the corners, but that’s pretty much all larger screens. The only thing we can visually see to complain about is a bit of banding and unevenness in toning. It seems to be limited to yellow colors, but it makes it noticeable in grayscales as well.
Eye catching in the right way
The first impression when we unpack the screen is otherwise very positive. The screen is exceptionally easy to assemble and the chassis, in aluminum gray plastic, looks really nice, with a large black image area from the front and an equally striking back, with eye-catching patterned grilles at the top and bottom for heat dissipation and speakers respectively.
There is a noticeable plastic feeling in the surfaces when we have to turn and twist it, but for the most part it should just stand there, not be poked at, and then it gives an elegant and luxurious impression. All adjustment mechanics, turning, tilting, raising and so on are of the highest class, both compliant and stable. Despite the fact that the base is relatively small and the arm that holds up the screen is narrow, it stands firmly and sways only minimally. Alogic gets an extra plus in the edge for clear fixed pivot positions horizontally and at a 90 degree angle. In many screens, we have to struggle to get it to hang straight, as if we were measuring a painting on a wall.
It’s really nice with a completely glossy front, but it also has its drawbacks. It is easy to put disturbing fingerprints on the edges of it when, for example, we adjust the height or to press a connection on the back. If you want to keep it looking as good as it deserves, you should have a cleaning cloth handy.
Many image inputs, few usb outputs
Glossy surface also means reflections. The screen has no noticeable reflection attenuation in the surface, so you can count on seeing your own reflection on and off if the screen image is dark. It’s a matter of taste, some prefer it over a matte screen, which can dampen contrast.
You get plenty of picture inputs, all of which sit in a row on the back. Both dual hdmi 3.0 ports, a large display port and display port via usb c. You also get a headphone jack and a two port usb 3.0 hub. The usb c port has complete multifunction, i.e. screen input, data communication and power supply to a laptop, up to 90 watts. This allows you to connect it to a laptop and get complete docking.
Therefore, it is a shame that Alogic, which also makes feature-rich docking stations, does not give us more USB ports on the screen. That and maybe an ethernet port would have made it more complete. A couple of USB ports more accessible on the side of the screen would also have been appreciated.
A lot to set up, if you can handle it
With many image inputs and high resolution, it’s a great display to run split-screen or picture-in-picture mode on, and it also supports multiple such setups. Settings for that and everything else are accessed via a classic settings menu, which is controlled by four buttons in a row at the bottom of the screen. You can choose image profiles, adjust most important parameters such as brightness, sharpness, gamma and contrast, and fine-tune colors per channel. Then you also get the opportunity to activate a bunch of power-saving measures and blue light filters.
Unless you tear your hair out and give up.
The navigation is frustratingly unintuitive, we constantly navigate incorrectly, and also constantly reach for the button that turns off the screen instead of the one that only moves us up one level in the menu tree. Why screen manufacturers persist with these types of annoying button-based menus is a mystery. Alogic is far from the only culprit.
Finally, we’d like to give Alogic a little plus on the edge for one thing, namely the sound. Even in top models from many of the major manufacturers, there are the best 2-watt speakers with paper-thin sound. There are exceptions, such as Apple’s Studio Pro, but it is, in return, insanely expensive and very much aimed at Mac users. In the Clarity 27″, we get 2 x 5 watts and a clearly better sound in the sound we play than in most other screens.
Is it good? Well, that would be an exaggeration, it is still far from what a better laptop or a pair of computer speakers for the desktop delivers. But if you just need a clear voice for a video meeting or a short YouTube clip, it does the job. Do you want a sound experience that matches the visual experience in a movie or a game? Then get external sound.
Specifications
Product name: Alogic Clarity 27” 27F34KCPD
Tested: June 2022
Manufacturer: Alogic
Size: 27 inches
Mobility: Height, lateral, tilt, pivot
Resolution: 3840 x 2160 pixels
Panel type: Ips
Brightness: 350 cd/m2
Contrast: 1,000:1 static
HDR: Display HDR600
Color depth: 10 bit color management
Update frequency: 60 Hz
Response Time (GtG): 4 ms
Image inputs: 2 hdmi 2.0, display port 1.4, usb c
Miscellaneous: Hub 2 pcs usb 3.0 (usb c or usb b input), 90w usb pd, speaker 2×5 W, headphones
Size: 62.4 x 22 x 41.2-56.5 cm
Award: SEK 11,999 at CDON