Question Question about real world difference between the i1Display Pro vs the Plus, and need some help translating Asus's response to adding support for Plus.

[Darkmatterx]

Hi, I have a PA329C monitor from Asus, and I need a new calibrator.

The Plus unfortunately, isn't supported on the PA329C, even though Asus added support for it on their ultra high end monitors.

My main problems with all of this is that the Pro Plus is more future proof, but I'm more interested in the Plus's supposedly (just saying supposedly because I'm basing it on their marketing for their "subtractive" tech for darker blacks) being better able to take accurate readings for very dark blacks. Right now, that's not an issue, but if/when they ever figure out OLED burn in, I could have a problem with the regular Pro, but I don't know that for sure.

The other issue is that, while I normally use DisplayCal to calibrate my display, Asus's hardware solution does offer some things that I would rather not lose. The main one is their software/hardware option to improve display uniformity. The other is that, even though Asus's calibration software isn't nearly as good as DisplayCal, I wondered if doing an Asus hardware calibration (and monitor uniformity) first, and then doing a profiling with DisplayCal would give me the best results?

That would mean getting the Pro, much older tech, than the Pro Plus, and I have no idea how the older Pro will handle dark blacks down the road.

I did ask Asus about adding support for the Pro Plus for the PA329C and I would love someone to explain the 2 answers I got from them.

The first response I got was;

I’ve had discussion about this with our Asus internal teams and most likely at this time we will not.

I believe it may be due to the fact that some of the 3rd party’s vendor SW APIs and source code are NDA confidential to only some of their certain tooling HW models.

After that email I replied with;

Hi,

I noticed in this FAQ it mentions you having a Calibration 2.0 software and it says in the list of calibrators that it supports both the i1DisplayPro and the Pro Plus.

https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1043733/

I also see that this isn't offered for the PA329C.

Sorry, maybe I misunderstood your last email, but it sounded like you were referring to the HW of the Pro Plus, but according to this FAQ, you already support it with the 2.0 software that you haven't made available to PA329C owners.

And the final response form Asus was;

Sorry about that,

Let me elaborate, that it is only for PA329C and not being able to fully optimize with the XRite HW vendor i1 Display Pro Plus HW/SW on this Asus monitor model in sync with our Asus calibration SW.

I will bring it up again to our internal teams and if there is hopefully any good news I can let you know but this is what I have for you now that I’ve brought up with our internal teams before.

I know what HW, SW, and API mean. I'm talking more about the other things that were said.

To me, and maybe I'm totally wrong here, but it sounds like it's more of a money/licensing thing that Asus doesn't want to pay for, for the PA329C then anything else, but they don't want to come out and tell me that.

Thanks all who have read all of this!

DM