The Westinghouse 32-Inch Ultra HD Home/Office Monitor (hereafter referred to as the "Westinghouse Ultra HD") serves up a large screen with UHD resolution (aka, 4K, or 3,840 by 2,160 pixels) at a moderate price.
While it has limited ergonomic features, some color-fidelity issues, and a tricky-to-learn onscreen display (OSD), it performs well in Standard mode and provides a cost-effective alternative to fuller-featured (and pricier) UHD monitors.
If all you are after is maximum raw resolution at this screen size without the frills, it's a fair buy.
The Westinghouse Basics
The Westinghouse Ultra HD measures 28.3 by 20.6 by 9.7 inches and weighs 13.2 pounds.
The screen is a 32-inch vertical alignment (VA) panel, with 3,840 by 2,160 pixels of native resolution.
It is housed in a matte-black cabinet, with a half-inch bezel on the bottom and nearly invisible bezels on top and at the sides, making it a good candidate for a multi-monitor setup.
In back, the cabinet is attached to a shaft ending in a tripod-like base, with a "heel" in the rear of the base and two arms extending in a V to the sides.
The cabinet can tilt backward or forward, but the monitor does not support height, swivel, or pivot adjustment.
The port selection is adequate.
You get two HDMI ports, one DisplayPort connector, one upstream and two downstream USB ports, and an audio-out jack.
(The Westinghouse Ultra HD lacks built-in speakers.) One port I would have liked to see is USB Type-C, which can deliver power to a laptop at the same time it's transferring data or video using the DisplayPort over USB protocol.
No such luck here.
Hidden Buttons
The monitor's physical controls consist of five small buttons arranged vertically on the back of the cabinet, near the monitor's right-hand edge.
The bottom button is the power switch, and the top one opens the main menu for the OSD, while the two below it move you forward or backward in the menu, respectively, and the next button down lets you select a setting.
The first-level menu items include Brightness, Contrast, DCR (dynamic contrast ratio), Mode (from which you can choose Standard, Movie FPS, RTS, and EyeSaver), Color Temperature, Aspect Ratio, Input (a toggle between HDMI and DisplayPort), Adjust (for color, gamma, and white balance), and Other (language, factory reset).
Although the buttons are labeled with icons, you can read them only when you're in back of the monitor, and the Westinghouse Ultra HD is a bit too large to easily turn far enough to reveal their labeling.
(It lacks a swivel adjustment feature, for one thing.) I eventually mastered the basics of navigating this OSD, first by trial and error and later by referring to the manual.
But it is an awkward system and not easy to learn.
Good in Standard Mode
I measured the Ultra HD's brightness, contrast ratio, and color accuracy using Portrait Displays' CalMAN 5 calibration software and an X-Rite Pro 3 Plus spectrometer.
I measured the luminance in Standard mode at 208.5 nits (candelas per meter squared), a tad below its 220-nit brightness rating.
Its black level was on the high side, meaning that the darkest shade looked deep gray rather than black, accounting for its relatively poor contrast ratio of 242:1.
Below is a color accuracy or chromaticity chart, which was generated when testing the sRGB color space in Standard mode.
The area within the triangle represents all the colors that can be made by mixing the primary colors red, green, and blue.
The circles, representing our measurements, lie just outside the triangle (except for the blue) and are fairly evenly spaced.
It essentially covers the full sRGB gamut (well, 99.9 percent of it).
It covered 82.8 percent of Adobe RGB (once again, measured in Standard mode) and 79 percent of DCI-P3 (in Movie mode).
Kind of Purple
Below is the chromaticity chart for our DCI-P3 testing.
Although the outer points are all pretty near the edges of the triangle, most are a considerable distance from the white boxes in which they would be for full coverage of the color gamut.
While the red point is where it is supposed to be, others are not.
For instance, the blue point is skewed well toward the purple, which bears out our observation that some areas that should have looked blue appeared decidedly purple.
The same sorts of color issues were apparent in both gaming modes (FPS and RTS), while absent in Standard and EyeSaver modes.
We test color and brightness over an HDMI connection, but the situation was the same when I switched to DisplayPort.
Distracting as this color issue may have been in our testing, video was fine for light viewing.
Likewise, the slightly skewed colors didn't bother me in our gaming testing.
The Westinghouse Ultra HD has a 60Hz refresh rate, and it isn't built for hardcore gamers, but it's fine for casual gaming.
See How We Test Monitors
Westinghouse includes a mere one-year warranty for the panel.
This is standard for Westinghouse's displays (as well as its TVs).
You may pay a bargain price up front, but the all-too-brief warranty doesn't speak well of the company's confidence in its products relative to three-year and longer plans offered by competitors.
A Frill-Free UHD Display
The best reason for buying the Westinghouse 32-Inch Ultra HD Home/Office Monitor? You can land a spacious screen with 4K resolution—and that means a sharp, detailed view of whatever you're viewing, whether a diagram, a spreadsheet, a photo, or a video—at a modest price.
In our testing, it had problems with color accuracy in its movie and gaming modes, but as long as you stick to Standard mode, you should be fine.
The Westinghouse Ultra HD doesn't have the color features of the BenQ PD3220U DesignVue Designer Monitor; the brightness, port selection, or easily navigable OSD of the Dell UltraSharp 32 4K USB-C Monitor (U3219Q); or the gaming prowess of the Acer Predator XB3 (XB273K), all Editors' Choice models.
But it comes in at a considerably lower price than all of these models.
If money is the first consideration and getting a 4K panel is the second one, it's worth putting eyes on.
