CROSSOVER 405K UHD - 40"/4k/PV Panel

Jaxidian · July 16, 2016, 5:39pm

I know I've sprinkled some info here so far. This post here (and future updates to it) are meant to be my cumulative set of information on this Crossover 405k monitor.

For background, I'm currently powering this with a GTX 750 via DisplayPort in Windows 10. I have this mounted on this stand (in "stand" mode and not in "mount" mode, if that makes sense based on that stand's options) alongside a 27" Acer K272HULbmiidp 1440p screen in Portrait Mode. I will probably be comparing quite a few things to that Acer.

I know everybody wants photos.

I'm getting to the point where I'm about done with photos. If you have any requests, please get them to me ASAP!

Unpacking the Crossover 405k

The monitor was packaged pretty well and arrived unharmed as best as I can tell. The first thing I did was pull the various things out to look at the ports on the monitor.

Left-to right, they are as follows:

Permanently-attached Korean Power Cable
3.5mm out audio headphone jack
USB port (for firmware updates)
DisplayPort v1.2
HDMI v2.0 1
HDMI v2.0 2
HDMI v2.0 3
VGA
3.5mm input audio jack
Fiber audio (not sure if in or out - I would hope in)

Included in the box are the following:

Monitor + packaging materials (obviously)
Two feet (one left, one right)
Power adapter (to convert the permanently-attached Korean power cable to US power)
3.5mm audio cable
Simple but adequate English Remote Control (that looks nothing like the photos in the listings but is much preferable to what's photographed in the listings on eBay)
Two AAA batteries for the remote
Phillips screw driver thingie
Screws to mount the feet (no VESA screws)
DisplayPort cable (I never attempted to use it - I assume it's worthless)
Korean manual with absolutely no English sections

So at this point, I made a couple quick and important observations:

I was bummed that it only had One and not Two DisplayPort ports as was shown in the listings online.
This panel is quite thin and lightweight
The VESA mounting holes are shallow but are metal-backed which means you don't have to worry about screws poking through and jamming into the electronics. Of course, if you buy one please verify yourself that yours is this way but I was pleased to see this.
Those feet will offer absolutely no adjustments in any way at all. If you want any adjustment capabilities, you'll have to utilize the VESA mounting capabilities.
The front and back bezel and housing is a matte white plastic (solid feeling, not cheap feeling) and the rim of the monitor has a silver aluminum band along the top/bottom/left/right. Some people will hate the white bezel on the front but it won't bother me. I couldn't tell if it was white or silver from the photos in the listing but it's definitely white on the front.
Menu buttons are on the back so the remote is very important.
About that remote - I really like that I got what I did get and not what was shown online in the listings. It's simple with only 14 buttons but very adequate. And not that you'll hold the remote for very long but it actually has a comfortable shape to it. This should be the remote that all monitors come with unless they need advanced functionality. Unfortunately, the IR receiver is in the bottom-right corner by the dim blue LED - I wish they had placed it in the center near the logo.

Initial Setup for the Crossover 405k

This is my first 4k screen and it "just worked" at 4:4:4 @ 4k - absolutely no effort was made other than changing scaling in Windows from 300% to 100%. I add the fact that this is my first 4k screen to suggest that I didn't have older tweaks/configurations done to accidentally have myself prepared (I did have 2x 1440p displays). I know some others have had issues with 4k + 1440p and I've had no such issues. As I said, it just worked and that was nice. There were no menu options to change the DisplayPort mode or anything like that.

I haven't even tried to use the included DisplayPort cable - I used a 6' cable of my own that I had much higher confidence in. I assume the included cable is junk.

I fumbled around with the on-screen menus until I finally found the language settings. The Language setting was in the fourth menu screen on the top option, as shown below (if you buy one, use this reference picture to save yourself some time and headaches). Once I got it into English, I hopped around and noticed there were no settings for "DisplayPort Modes" in order to enable DP 1.2 (there were some HDMI settings but I've only used DP so far).

At this point, I decided to go ahead and mount the screen to my mount I liked above. It was a little awkward keeping the stand balanced during the mounting process (I had a 27" monitor stretched out to one side with nothing on the other side), and my VESA screws were too long, but I managed to get everything successfully mounted using washers as spacers and the balance is good now that both screens (27" portrait + 40" landscape) are on there. As I mentioned before, the VESA screw holes are metal but they holes are also metal-backed to prevent the screw from going too far into the back of the monitor, thus preventing you from screwing it into the electronics inside. I know other monitors have suffered from that problem before and it's good to see them solve that problem.

Colors on the Crossover 405k

Firstly, this is a BGR panel and I have verified this via photographing the subpixels myself (in my photo, you can tell I have not yet fixed cleartype fonts to handle the BGR since the anti-aliasing is backwards on the slants of the A in the photo below). I have also verified 4:4:4 chroma and nVidia Control Panel reports it sending 8-bits out (I cannot get 10-bit to work nor do I know if it's even supported).

Color Calibration

Now I'm partially color-blind so my color opinions are likely not terribly useful and I initially thought the colors looked pretty mediocre to bad. I have spent a couple hours trying to calibrate the colors on this screen (as mentioned in other posts in this thread) and tl;dr version is that they're quite good now, in my opinion.

There are some confusing things that are going on with colors for my panel, so take note if you receive yours and have problems or are disappointed. If/when you calibrate your screen, the FIRST setting you should set is the Zoom Mode. Pick either Wide or Point to Point because a set of color settings on one is VERY DIFFERENT than the exact same values on the other. Both seem to display at native resolution for me when I drive it at 4k, and either can be calibrated, but if I set them both with the exact same values, the screen looks good on one and like crap on the other. So pick one and stick with it. I went with Point to Point just because it made me feel better about a firmware update possibly causing Zoom to actually do some scaling in the future.

So my primary tool for trying to calibrate the colors on this screen was to manually do it via the instructions in this guide. I was never able to get it perfect but I was able to get it close'ish and the end result was that the colors looked very muted to me (of course, this was next to my Acer which is essentially an IPS and has very vibrant colors). After I was done, I decided to tweak the colors a bit more without the guide and completely based on the "it looks good to me" factor, so I probably have some colors over-saturated. After doing all of this, I was pretty happy with the color calibration - it was worlds better over what I started with and now the colors look pretty good to me, although not quite as good as on my Acer.

Brightness and PWM with the Crossover 405k

So one thing that has stood out to me is that the screen is nowhere near as bright as I expected. I think it will always stay at 100% brightness unless something changes with a firmware update at some point. This Crossover 405k at 100% is comparable to my Acer K272HULbmiidp at 40% brightness (it does get very bright). However, this Crossover 405k at 0% brightness is comparable to the Acer at 20% brightness - there isn't much range there.

Now all of that said, I have been unable to detect any PWM at 0% or 100% brightness on this screen. I want to do some more sophisticated tests with a camera but with my primative tests, I think this screen is good on the PWM front.

Input Lag on the Crossover 405k

I do not have sophisticated tools to test the input lag so the absolute best that I can do is compare it to the Acer K272HULbmiidp. I duplicated my display across both monitors and loaded up a timer and pulled out the DSLR with a very fast shutter speed. The Acer is connected via DVI and the Crossover is connected via DisplayPort (unfortunately, my video card only has 1 of each connection type so I cannot use the same connection type for both at this time). The end result was that 80% of my photos had the two monitors showing the exact same number. Of the other 20%, some of them showed the Crossover a tad slower and some were a tad faster (an example of each is included, I didn't bother with photos of them being identical). So I have to conclude that the input lag of this Crossover 405k is very comparable to the Acer. That said, I hope somebody else can provide more sophisticated testing to remove any margin of error in my testing.

Sadly, I have no sophisticated testing equipment nor do I have a CRT to compare to, so this is the best I'll be able to do.

Image Retention on the Crossover 405k

I have now been able to have three full days of work on this monitor and I have not yet seen any image retention. I think it's a good panel on this front. My typical day is primarily Browser Tabs (I use all Chrome, IE, Edge, and Firefox) as well as Visual Studio windows (very static content with high-contrast bars and whatnot), sometimes with things not changing for a full hour at a time while I'm working within a/some windows. Now time will tell if this will change over a longer period of time but so far, so good.

Pixel Perfect, It Is Not

So I purchased a Pixel Perfect listing, which is advertised as having 0-1 dead pixels. Their definition of "dead pixels" is very clear to point out that this only means white on black and not black on white which it describes as "stuck pixels". However, there's no mention of ANY allowance of "Stuck Pixels" in the listing so I have to assume these are defective and not allowed. Additionally, and sadly, it seems that a large majority of the right-most column of pixels are gone (photo is rotated 90 degrees so better show up in this post (there seems to be a hair under the screen in this photo as well).

Now I went through all of that to say that even though I bought the Pixel Perfect option, I have quite a few of these "stuck pixels". I'm not quite sure exactly how many I have but at this point I think it's 2-15. Some seem pretty obviously a black pixel but some others are suspect and are either groups of subpixels but not the entire pixel or are something (dust?) under the screen's surface that doesn't map exactly to an entire pixel. Attached are a few photos of some of these partial-subpixel defects. (And yes, I made sure it wasn't just loose dust on the outside. Or dried snot.)

Based on all of these non-pixel defects, I have to conclude that there is simply dust under the screen and this is a reflection of both the quality control and the cleanliness of the factory that puts these together.

Freesync on the Crossover 405k

I don't see it in any menu. I may have missed something and I'll confirm this. Also, I have not yet looked to see if there are any firmware updates. Not sure where to find them, even. I'll revisit this section but my hopes aren't high.

HDCP on the Crossover 405k

The monitor is advertised as being HDCP 2.2 compliant. I can't speak much on this topic but I can state that the nVidia Control Panel is claiming, when connected directly with a DisplayPort cable, this monitor is HDCP compliant but that it detects a repeater is present and that some applications may not work.

I can guess but I'm not entirely sure what the ramifications are of this. However, I did want to point out this observation as this may be important for somebody. If somebody can guide me on how to get better information here or if it's necessary, I'd be happy to be walked through how to report more on this. Sadly, I don't yet have an HDMI 2.0 graphics card to test that interface and I suspect attempting to use my Club3d DP -> HDMI 2.0 adapter isn't the purest of tests either.

General Opinions of the Crossover 405k

So this section is purely subjective and I'll just give you my simple opinions of the monitor. It's easy to get hung up on the timings, measurements, specs, and everything else but sometimes you just need a good, simple opinion. So here you go.

Firstly, I'm really disappointed that this only has 1 DisplayPort port on it. The info in the listings didn't specify the number and photos showed two ports but apparently that photo was of a different product. In my opinion, it's absolutely insane that 4k monitors would come with 3 HDMI ports and only 1 DisplayPort. Really, unless you're going Thunderbolt 3, DisplayPort absolutely is the port to standardize on for high-end displays. Sure, have 1-2 HDMI 2.0 ports on there for sure, but no fewer than 2 DisplayPorts should be there. And don't advertise they are there when they're not. Okay, sorry for that rant but I had to get that out there in the air. I feel better - thanks for the free therapy.

Next, the monitor overall feels like a quality monitor and other than the goofy (but fun) logo on the front, nothing screams "cheap" with the monitor. Sure, accessories that come with it might scream cheap but not the monitor itself. It's nice and sturdy, and the structural engineering of the monitor is good. You might be able to start to nitpick with the imperfect seam between the white bezel and silver aluminum band on the outside or the OSD menu buttons being on the back of the monitor, but I'm absolutely fine with those compromises and would LOVE if that was the worst thing going on with the monitor.

That's not to say there is a lot of bad going on here but this isn't the dream monitor everybody wants. The BGR subpixel setup makes this a major problem for Apple users although it's no big deal for Windows and Linux users. The permanently-attached power cord is a terrible engineering decision in my opinion - they really should just use the standard PC power cable that works so well with so many other monitors and computing equipment (that way the entire cable can be replaced instead of using an adapter that offers no grounding in countries where such a thing is important).

The verdict is still out on the colors (and I'll likely be unable to answer it myself) but I suspect this is not a monitor for people to use who need perfect color representation for whatever reason (graphics designers, etc.). However, despite my lack of excitement over the colors on this (mind you, by a color-blind dude), I am impressed at the lack of image distortion. I expect that to be a pretty serious problem with a non-IPS panel but it really isn't a problem for me. My nose is ~26 inches from the screen and there really isn't any image distortion. But even if I move my nose to be 12 inches away, still no major image distortion. They did something right here! There is a bit of a shadow box (not sure if that's the proper term but it's the term I'm using) around the very edges but this is the darker backlighting that seems nearly all ~40" monitors have from the reviews I've seen - this is unrelated to viewing angles and image distortion.

And the last big problem with this is that I think input lag is too high for the serious gamers out there. Comparing this to the Acer shows that it's on par with that display which is generally considered too slow for serious gamers but just fine for most gamers. I can say this though - I've gamed on two of those Acer monitors for a couple years now and have been just fine with the input lag there. I'm not a twitch gamer so it's never been a problem.

I still need to look into some other things and I'll do so and update this post with what I find. Things on my TODO list still (and I look forward to your requests for other things to add) to provide more feedback on:

Motion Blur
Color/backlight consistency
Color banding
Photos, photos, photos (I hope to get these added on Sunday, including the menus)
Digging into the menu to see if things are adjustable (input lag, colors, brightness, etc.) beyond what I've been able to find so far. The menu is unlike any other menu I've seen on a monitor, so my ignorance could be a factor that I'd like to remove.

In the end, I expect I will be happy with this monitor but it is far from the perfect monitor that we were all looking for.

ployez · July 16, 2016, 11:21pm

Jaxidian, thanks so much for this very detailed review. It's really important to get info like this out as soon as possible. It looks like this is the first in depth review of this panel out there on any site from what I can tell.

That's a bummer about the subpixel layout. I messaged 'excellentcastle' on ebay, who assured me that according to the manufacturer it was an RGB layout. Just goes to show that we can't trust these guys.... need to do our own research. I assume you also tried the subpixel layout test that's linked elsewhere in the forum to confirm?

Looks like I'll still be waiting to see what comes down the pipeline. One day my dream monitor and I will be united :-)

Jaxidian · July 16, 2016, 11:46pm

I tried. And frankly, I couldn't tell a damned thing from that test. These pixels are simply too small. But the DSLR photo I took left nothing to interpretation - the order was DEFINITELY BGRBGRBGRBGR and not RGBRGBRGBRGB. So I guess it could be a GRB or RBG subpixel layout. ;-) Definitely not RGB though.

mb67 · July 17, 2016, 12:03am

Nice! :-)

My thoughts on the subject are that the 'perfect monitor' doesn't exist, and won't exist. Nothing's ever perfect.

However, that 30" Dell 4K 120 Hz monitor comes close. The thing that makes it not perfect is the $5,000 price tag. :-P

Jaxidian · July 17, 2016, 1:01am

Yeah, compromises have to happen somewhere whether in features, quality, money, or something. This screen will definitely be a huge productivity boost for me and I will be happy with this. So far, I think my biggest compromise is that it's not IPS (i.e. image distortion, colors, and whatnot), but even finding IPS with no burn-in is becoming MUCH harder (and expensiver) to come by these days. That UHD430 was a good option until it vanished and then jumped up another $200-300 in price.

I think we just have to accept that we will regularly be disappointed no matter what. Hopefully a good set of common compromises begin to be addressed when we start seeing DisplayPort 1.4 displays coming out, although really it's just going to be the same old thing again once we start looking at 48" 5k displays. ;-)

Jaxidian · July 17, 2016, 1:23am

I just updated the review with some more information. Mostly some administrative editing but I did add a new section with some general opinions towards the end. This may answer a few more questions you have until I get some more time to formalize a review of things like image distortion and some other things.

Cimpus · July 17, 2016, 9:12am

Insane review! Great work, thanks a lot for putting such a detailed review so early.

Jaxidian · July 17, 2016, 1:20pm

More updates to the review. Some initial photos have been added. Those photos are mostly quick cell phone pics of the more important things (I absolutely promise you that you'll see no glamour photos of the monitor coming from me - sorry but I just don't care that much!). I still need to pull my DSLR photos off of the memory card and bring in some secondary pics (things like menus, etc.).

Chrispynutt · July 18, 2016, 9:37am

That optical, might be an output. If so it would be good to know if it has DD 5.1 and DTS passthrough. If so very handy. You can essentially switch your surround sound via the monitor. Or if you have a DAC/AMP for your headphones.

Kev_jump · July 18, 2016, 11:46am

Hi, I'm interested to know the comparison of this monitor vs the AMH A409U?

Which is less glossy? (Most important question) and which has the better panel for sRGB or for colours/black levels?

Any pictures of the monitor would be awesome thanks so much!

p/s: Can't find ANY review on this monitor anywhere including youtube

WAIT A MINUTE? This monitor has 100% sRGB?? According to this page:

Jaxidian · July 19, 2016, 12:20am

I don't see that in the link you provided.

gmoney · July 19, 2016, 4:26am

Based on you describing the really low brightness even at 100%, I'm pretty confident this is using the same panel as the UHD400 because I experienced the same thing with that. Do you notice any black crush when using test imagines online for contrast?

The big difference here (which is unfortunate) is that this 405k is using what looks like the same controller board as the A409U ver.2 with the TV like menu interface instead of the older "Mstar". Having no Freesync and being priced $100 more is strange and sort of a deal breaker for AMD users.

I'm not really sure what this brings to the table over an AMH A409U that's been available for a year.

Jaxidian · July 20, 2016, 1:02am

So I finally got an all day usage with the monitor after working from my home office all day today and I have a few more observations. These aren't yet in the review - I'll add them later. But here they are real quick:

No noticeable burn-in from keeping Visual Studio (very static and high-contrast content) open all day.
Significant motion blur. I noticed this from playing Agar.io for a few minutes. No big deal for productivity purposes but would suck for movie and gaming purposes. For those reasons, I'm okay with this.
There's something up with colors that I haven't yet figured out. Black's are a terrible blue, except when they're not and they're a near perfect black. At all times when I'm using it, it's not good. But when the PC turns the monitor off, before the monitor goes off it shows a "No Connection" (or whatever) message on a black background that looks beautiful. So I think I've got something jacked up with colors settings. I need to spend more time with those.
Color and light uniformity is pretty good with just a couple splotches near the top that are about half an inch tall and 2 inches long where it's a bit darker at all times. And the shadow box on the very outside.

I'll try to get to the questions asked ASAP but may not be tonight. Sorry but work has been a royal pain with a whole team that I'm working with halting productivity because they want to fight over dumb stuff, so I'm busy doing everybody's jobs.

UPDATE: I found me my beautiful blacks!!!

So there is a menu setting called "Picture Mode: PC" which apparently I didn't look much into (even though it's the first fricken menu item! durrrr!). Inside of there are some options: "Contrast", "RGB", "Sharpness", "Tint" and "Color" with numbers as their settings. I'm not entirely sure what some of these are for ("RGB" = 65 and "Color" = 60 don't really make much sense to me). But whatever, I started changing them. And dropping "RGB" down to 55 made a HUGE difference! My blacks are actually a beautiful black now and no longer navy blue. And tweaking these settings are making my colors look MUCH better.

I obviously really need to spend some more time in these menus. They're not the most obvious. I'll make an effort to get all of the menus and options posted here in the next few days.

UPDATE 2: Disabling Scaling kills colors, but it's kinda okay.

So there's a menu item labeled "Zoom Mode" with options of Normal, Wide, and Point to Point. Obviously, we would all think Point to Point is the correct answer. However, if you enable that then color contrast goes all to hell (I'm using this page to both see that blacks aren't blue and to see my colors) and the left bars of most of the colors become black even though no other color/contrast/etc. settings are changed. In order to get those black boxes visible you have to crank the RGB setting back up to 65 and it turns your blacks into blue. However, if you leave the Zoom Mode setting as "Wide" then I think it it's still showing by the pixel but now colors are much more reasonable (meaning my blacks stay black and the left bars of all of those colors come back). I don't know why Wide vs Point-to-Point would change colors but it's a HUGE difference.

Obviously still got more to learn here as I tweak my colors to get this screen looking better. Colors are definitely continuing to improve now that I'm spending a couple hours at this. :-)

UPDATE 3: And I'm dumb.

I'm still learning about colors - it's been nice being oblivious to color stuff and letting things "just work". So in my nVidia Control Panel, I'm looking at things and apparently my video card wasn't outputting ideal colors. I still have some more learning to do but Output Color Format was set to "RGB" with "Output dynamic range" set to "Limited". Changing it to "Full" makes the above things I commented on with blacks and colors fall back into place with default settings.

I'm going to shut up now for the colors until I understand this stuff better. Feel free to help me in this other thread! ;-)

Jaxidian · July 20, 2016, 2:14am

If you can't tell from my babbling, I'm not yet done with calibrating this thing. However, the black crush is great with some of the configurations I've had and terrible with some others. So it looks like it's a manageable thing. We'll see where I end up once I'm done with all of the calibrations. But this at least has the potential to be good in that are as long as it doesn't cause something else to suffer.

Also, now that some of my other settings are being fixed, the brightness has improved tremendously! I'm not sure what the magic sauce was but I now have a much brighter screen now. Still not crazy bright like my Acer but bright enough that I want it lower than 100% brightness even though my office is always very well lit (I'm not gaming in a dark basement or anything).

mb67 · July 20, 2016, 2:23am

Very nice updates! :-)

I'm still learning my menus as well, and they're not as in-depth as your menu system is.

Jaxidian · July 23, 2016, 6:00pm

I have made one more update. At this point, I think the review is either final or very near final. These last edits provided:

Additional photos (BGR, timings, pixels)
Criticisms on image quality - primarily pixels and dust under the screen (it got much worse)
Updates on colors (it got much better!)

On an aside note, I am in communication with the eBay seller who admitted that the listings were in error by showing that it has two DisplayPort ports and is asking for photos with regard to the pixels. I've got a lot more photos I'm going to provide him but the seemed redundant for this review.

Before I call this review complete, is there anything else you guys would like me to add (photos, info, or otherwise)?

P.S. I'm going to create a new post for photos of the menus.

Jaxidian · July 27, 2016, 3:05am

Just as an update, I'm about to send my 405k back for a refund because of the pixels (additionally backed by the argument of only 1 DP port although it's really because of the bad pixels). I still need to snap some pics of all of the menus before I pack it up.

My final opinion of the monitor is that it's a fine monitor for productivity purposes with good (to me) colors no PWM (I took a 240fps high speed video at 0 brightness and saw no flicker), and no burn-in, but don't get it for gaming because of the bad motion blur and mediocre input lag. I mean, it's fine for casual gaming unless there motion blur gets to you, but real gamers will be disappointed.

mb67 · July 27, 2016, 4:15am

:-( Sorry to hear that.

So far, I'm really happy with my IPS UHD430. Colors are good, no dead pixels, input lag seems low (I'm not what you call a real gamer) and no ghosting.

That isn't to say that I haven't had issues, because I have, but they've been really minor:

I can't find an HDMI cable longer than six feet that will work with my GTX 980Ti. The only HDMI cable to work is the one supplied with the monitor but it's too short for my needs. Thank goodness for the Display Port which hasn't failed me at all no matter what cable I use.

I have three systems connected to the monitor and my two lesser systems will very rarely need to be powered off and powered back on for them to display. This has happened once so far to my work-provided laptop (I hardly ever use the thing anyway) and once to my server (I honestly don't need it connected to a monitor, but since it's there I went for it anyway). My main system (DP connection) has been rock solid with the UHD430.

So far that's been it, but I'm tired right now and I might be forgetting something. Oh, it's almost too big for my desk. I might have to wall mount it and move the desk back a little to get the proper viewing distance.

Jaxidian · July 27, 2016, 11:25am

I wish they were still available at a decent price and I'd get one in a heartbeat at this point. :-(

Jaxidian · August 5, 2016, 3:22am

My 405k is being shipped back tomorrow. Seller gave me no problems with shipping it back (even offered a $100 partial refund for me to keep it). ExcellentCastle was my seller and I'd do business with them again assuming no problems happen with the rest of the return process.

BTW, I still need to upload a video I too of all of the menu screens.