Test – Millennium MD34 PRO

Introduction

With the evolution of screen formats, widescreens have become a premium choice for many people who want to do everything on their PC and don’t necessarily want to have 2 screens. Millenium Equipment had the MD49 in their range and are now releasing the MD34 PRO with all the specs that go well for gamers: 144hz, 3440×1440, 1ms and full led backlighting. The 34 widescreen market already has some contenders, let’s see if the new Millenium screen with a price of 449 € will hold its own. What exactly do you get for your money? Millenium Equipment uses a SAMSUNG VA slab, R1500 curvature, UWQHD resolution of 3440×1440, brightness of 350 to 400 nits – crucial for HDR400 certification – and sRGB color coverage that easily exceeds 100%. We are also at 144 Hz at the box output without overclocking. What is a bit annoying is the market trend to display the screen response time in MPRT, all of them do it, but it is misleading. So we have an MPRT response time of 1 ms and 4 ms grey to grey, a very good contrast ratio of 3000:1, viewing angles of 178° and an anti-reflective coating. Finally, the sober and uncluttered look of the monitor is a pleasure in the face of competition that is constantly outbidding for futuristic designs. The edges are extra-thin, with 7 mm you are already in bezel less. The stand is also of high quality, with a cable gland, a solid fixing system, tilt, height and swivel adjustment. It can also be mounted on an arm, the screen has a VESA 75 mounting system and the screws and bolts are included. The presentation is clean – note the light halo on the back of the screen is switchable via the menu – navigation is managed by four touch buttons that are easy to reach, nothing revolutionary The game is of course on the agenda, we were impressed by what we saw. The MD34 PRO offers AMD FreeSync adaptive synchronization in the 48 to 144 Hz range. The panel is also certified G-Sync compatible. Guaranteeing tearing-free action no matter if you have a Nvidia or AMD graphics card. The screen has an overdrive which by default is well calibrated to minimize ghosting while keeping the image as smooth as possible. It’s hard to find a perfect gaming monitor, but the MD34 PRO offers very pleasing results and we found that the display we tested had little loss of backlighting. Now let’s see how it goes in the benchmarks.  Test methodology

Since a monitor test should be as non-subjective as possible, we therefore opt for digital analyses. We use Datacolor’s SpyderX Elite probe to assess display quality. And we use a custom probe to test the input lag at the maximum screen refresh rate. These results add an extra utility to our tests, allowing us to compare more precisely the following characteristics :

• Color gamut compared to sRGB, AdobeRGB and DCI-P3 standards.
• Color accuracy measured in Delta-E
• Color uniformity with measurements taken in 9 areas of the screen
• Luminance uniformity with measurements taken in 9 areas of the screen
• Brightness levels and contrast ratio
• Input lag

Color range & accuracy

Color range / Gamut

The gamut is the set of colors that a device can display. A high refresh rate and adaptive synchronization are nice features to have, but gamut and colour should not be sacrificed either. Fortunately, the MD34 PRO seems to have found a very good slab. The sRGB coverage is 100%, AdobeRGB 84%, DCI-P3 90%, a very good score for a VA tile. Note that any score above 90% P3 is excellent.

Color accuracy

Factory color accuracy (without calibration) is another important feature. We want a Delta-E as low as possible. A Delta-E of less than 2 is considered good. The score of the Millennium MD34 PRO is 1.02 which ensures very accurate colors.

Colour uniformity /Luminance

Uniformity varies for slabs of the same production, so one should always take its values as a trend. We generally want a color variance of less than five on a 24/27 inch screen. Obviously the larger the screen the more difficult this becomes. Millenium again scores excellent, well above average.

Luminance uniformity

Again, one generally expects luminance uniformity with a maximum score around 10%, but the larger the screen the more difficult the task. This is not the case for the MD34 PRO, which displays 18% on the upper center. Brightness levels and contrast ratios

The luminance of 400nits becomes a requirement with the HDR400 standard, we found 365.8 with the default settings of the display. VA tiles are known for their deep blacks and high contrast. There is a contrast of 2000:1 and an average black level of 0.14 which are good scores. As a guideline, an HDR400 screen should be below 0.4. If you wish, the display also has an HDR feature which will further increase the contrast to achieve a 3000:1 ratio Attention, the screen tested was in pre-production, there was a problem of inversion of the settings on the brightness. Input lag

The measurement of the input lag is very different from that of the refresh rate. Input lag is the time it takes for the video signal to travel from the input to the video port (HDMI/DisplayPort) to the display of the image on the screen. Few manufacturers communicate on this value, which is nevertheless crucial for the player. A refresh rate of 1ms is useless if the input lag is high. Another important piece of information is that not all pixels are displayed at the same time, the refresh rate is from top to bottom. So you will find a much better response time at the top of the screen when it is low. The MD34 PRO achieves a remarkable score with 1.1ms at the top of the screen, 4ms in the middle and 8.4ms at the bottom. For comparison, many gaming screens exceed 10ms in the center of the screen and a TV will easily double that. Conclusion

At a price of €449, the 34-inch VA display combines a UWQHD resolution of 3440 x 1440 with a refresh rate of up to 144Hz and a response time of 4ms (grey to grey). Compatible with FreeSync and G-Sync, vibrant colors with excellent ready-to-use accuracy, as well as the color coverage and brightness required to easily achieve HDR400 certification. All this is presented in a sleek chassis. Millenium MD34 PRO

We liked :

• Its design
• Performance to match
• Excellent colors
• The cable gland
• Interesting rates
• A good alternative to the 49″ Ultra wide

We would have liked :

• Better luminance uniformity
• A less basic menu

Favourite for this excellent screen. With a format that will appeal to multitasking users. We especially liked the colors and default settings that make an image look right.