In-Depth With The ASUS PA32UCDM QD-OLED – Is It For Pros?

Can this much-hyped prosumer display deliver in professional grading environments?

With a few months of grading experience on the ASUS PA32UCMD QD-OLED, I take an in-depth look at this interesting monitor’s strengths, weaknesses, and quirks when it comes to professional color work. We’ll look at its technology, capabilities, price, and comparison to other offerings in the industry for both SDR and HDR grading to identify where this monitor fits best.

This article is divided into three parts – the good, the not-so-good, and the disappointments – with my conclusion and recommendations to the ASUS team at the very end. Of course, Mixing Light Premium members, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section!

Is it a potential game-changer?

I first encountered the PA32UCDM tucked in a corner of ASUS’ booth at NAB 2024, nestled between two less interesting desktop monitors. The super-clean, crisp image grabbed my eye, but it took me a few moments to realize what I was looking at: a 31.5” QD-OLED desktop monitor claiming 1000nit peak luminance and a factory-calibrated delta-E 2000 average <1.0. No MSRP was listed, but an ASUS rep expected it to land somewhere sub-$2k.

Three thoughts immediately came to mind:

• There’s only one industrial panel supplier for QD-OLED (Samsung Display) with one 31.5” panel that matches those specs.
• That panel had just been deployed in one of the hottest “affordable” HDR grading monitors of the moment, Flanders Scientific’s XMP310.
• That competing “affordable” 1000nit grading monitor cost around $10k.

So… a 1000nit QD-OLED using the same panel as a $10k grade-1 monitor for around $2k? I wasn’t alone in thinking that this monitor had a real shot at being a total game-changer. I placed my pre-order as soon as they went live on B&H.

The long, long wait

We had to wait almost a full year to find out if this monitor would live up to its promises. My personal unit didn’t ship until late March 2025, and by that point, I was in serious need.  My trusty CM250 from 2013 had given its all for over a decade, but its RGB OLED panel had finally started deteriorating to the point where I couldn’t trust it. So the ASUS was pressed into service the day it arrived.

This ASUS was either the ultra-affordable, high-quality, HDR-capable unicorn we’d all been waiting for, or a temporary stopgap until I could secure a high-end Sony or FSI.

Now, three months later, I can finally say that the latest firmware is getting closer to fulfilling the monitor’s initial promises. The decision to keep it as my main display will probably rest on ASUS’ commitment to further addressing the display’s remaining quirks through firmware, because that’s where the user experience falls a bit short. But we’ll get to that.