Eizo releases FlexScan HD2441W, advertises proper scaling and no input lag

He doesnt even want to talk about it.

it isnt clear, aka, blurry

the colours are washed out from looking at it dead on

he suspects but yet has to test that it has about a 30ms input lag.

he is returning it.

that's so far his impression.

I dont want to rob his glory, but I kinda know him a bit now. talked about it for a while. I thought I would post being that he has not. I am sure he will give some info in a bigger way. Or, he may not. it was a complete let down except for the black being good, no blur/ghosting, and INPUTS WORK! 480i/p works. amazing. only monitor that does work in that regard. however, the thing sux for 1600 dollars. It looks like it sux even for 500 dollars.
 
He doesnt even want to talk about it.

it isnt clear, aka, blurry

the colours are washed out from looking at it dead on

he suspects but yet has to test that it has about a 30ms input lag.

he is returning it.

that's so far his impression.

I dont want to rob his glory, but I kinda know him a bit now. talked about it for a while. I thought I would post being that he has not. I am sure he will give some info in a bigger way. Or, he may not. it was a complete let down except for the black being good, no blur/ghosting, and INPUTS WORK! 480i/p works. amazing. only monitor that does work in that regard. however, the thing sux for 1600 dollars. It looks like it sux even for 500 dollars.

Thanks ~El~Jefe~, I wasn't aware that he had talked about it earlier. I checked his posts, but this part might have gotten lost in the last crash. :(

It would still be interesting to hear his finding. I've looked forward for a long time reading him testing this screen. Ever since he first made this thread. :(
 
Hi All,

I too was waiting to hear what the verdict was for this Monitor. Damn!
 
Hi All,

I too was waiting to hear what the verdict was for this Monitor. Damn!

I think a lot of people have waited to hear about his findings on this Eizo. Their advertisment shows great promise and even if ToastyX is disappointed, it might show potential for other users which don't have such absolute criterias. I hope he chooses to share with us. After all, he started this thread making us interested in how this screen performs to begin with. :)
 
I haven't posted about it yet. The forums have been flaky, and I was so disappointed that I didn't feel like talking about it right away.

I received it on Tuesday, but I was so disappointed that I ended up ordering the 24" NEC the next day. It just arrived, and I'm amazed. It's like the 26" NEC without the oversaturated colors and without some of the problems. I can tell you right now, don't even bother with the EIZO. The 24" NEC is much better overall, but it can only support 1080p and 720p perfectly.

The lag on the EIZO is closer to 40 ms, which isn't minimal at all. It's just as bad as all their other monitors, and it's slightly worse than the NEC monitors.

Samsung also changed the way S-PVA panels work. The pixels are structured differently. Each pixel looks like it's made up of two pixels, and for darker colors, only the top and bottom of the pixel are lit. This causes my eyes to blend the bottom of one pixel and the top of another, which results in a slight vertical blur. This ruins text quality for me, especially antialiased text.

The viewing angles still suck, so everything looks washed out, and it still has that problem where the left side of the screen appears brighter, especially with dark colors.

I'll post more details in a day or two.
 
I haven't posted about it yet. The forums have been flaky, and I was so disappointed that I didn't feel like talking about it right away.

I received it on Tuesday, but I was so disappointed that I ended up ordering the 24" NEC the next day. It just arrived, and I'm amazed. It's like the 26" NEC without the oversaturated colors and without some of the problems. I can tell you right now, don't even bother with the EIZO. The 24" NEC is much better overall, but it can only support 1080p and 720p perfectly.

The lag on the EIZO is closer to 40 ms, which isn't minimal at all. It's just as bad as all their other monitors, and it's slightly worse than the NEC monitors.

Samsung also changed the way S-PVA panels work. The pixels are structured differently. Each pixel looks like it's made up of two pixels, and for darker colors, only the top and bottom of the pixel are lit. This causes my eyes to blend the bottom of one pixel and the top of another, which results in a slight vertical blur. This ruins text quality for me, especially antialiased text.

The viewing angles still suck, so everything looks washed out, and it still has that problem where the left side of the screen appears brighter, especially with dark colors.

I'll post more details in a day or two.

Looking forward. :) I completely understand your unwillingness to report on this screen. The advetisments that you showed in your first post made me think that widescreen gamers were finally taken serious by a manufacturer concerning input lag. Since it was Eizo advertising NO input lag, I was expecting more then just a marketing gimmic.
 
I haven't posted about it yet. The forums have been flaky, and I was so disappointed that I didn't feel like talking about it right away.

I received it on Tuesday, but I was so disappointed that I ended up ordering the 24" NEC the next day. It just arrived, and I'm amazed. It's like the 26" NEC without the oversaturated colors and without some of the problems. I can tell you right now, don't even bother with the EIZO. The 24" NEC is much better overall, but it can only support 1080p and 720p perfectly.

The lag on the EIZO is closer to 40 ms, which isn't minimal at all. It's just as bad as all their other monitors, and it's slightly worse than the NEC monitors.

Samsung also changed the way S-PVA panels work. The pixels are structured differently. Each pixel looks like it's made up of two pixels, and for darker colors, only the top and bottom of the pixel are lit. This causes my eyes to blend the bottom of one pixel and the top of another, which results in a slight vertical blur. This ruins text quality for me, especially antialiased text.

The viewing angles still suck, so everything looks washed out, and it still has that problem where the left side of the screen appears brighter, especially with dark colors.

I'll post more details in a day or two.
is that the NEC LCD2470WNX you are talking about?

haven't really looked at that monitor yet,

can you perhaps give a brief list advantages / disadvantages compared to the benq, dell, lg, eizo?

thanks

btw: i do can get it at a nice price it seems... 730 euro for the NEC vs 1350 euro for the eizo, lol :)
 
No, I mean the NEC LCD2490WUXi. The biggest advantage the 24" NEC has is IPS color quality and viewing angles without the IPS glow. This gives it the best colors and viewing angles I've ever seen on any LCD monitor. I'm very happy with the image and color quality on the 24" NEC. It totally blows away the EIZO.

The EIZO has three main advantages over the NEC:

1. It has 50% better contrast, but that only affects how good black looks, not how good colors look.
2. It can support 1080p/1080i/720p/480p/480i. The NEC can only support 1080p and 720p properly. 480p has tearing, and interlaced modes aren't supported.
3. It has less motion blur, but this is also a disadvantage because motion is not as smooth, and it creates this weird effect, like I'm always seeing two frames on the screen at once. That might be due to the overdrive.

Maybe if the EIZO was $600, it'd be worth considering, but it's definitely not worth $1600.
 
many many ppl report problems on the 26" nec, like noise, bleeding tearing ecc

maybe nec solve this problema wiht the 24" and maybe ToastyX can confirm it.

I was seriously thinking about buying an eizo, but thanx to this forum i keep on waiting for a really good monitor

maybe nec 24 is the best right now ?
 
hmmm

the 2490 doesnt exist yet in the benelux :(

update:
after looking on the EU / US / BE site of NEC, it seems like this 2490 you are talking about doesnt exist at all?!
 
IanM said:
Why this rather than the 26" version?
I ran into several problems with the 26" version that aren't present in the 24" version. I just posted more information here: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1031368217#post1031368217

The 26" version is also wide gamut, which I don't recommend unless you absolutely need it because anything not handled by color-managed programs is oversaturated. Most programs are not color-managed, and most images, videos, and games are not designed to be viewed on a wide-gamut display, so colors end up being oversaturated. I don't like oversaturated colors.
 
Hi All,

The differences between the NEC 2470 & NEC 2490 are that the 2470 is a S-PVA Panel. The 2490 is a H-IPS Panel, with the addition of a 12- bit LUT (Look up table). IPS Panels are considered superior in color rendition as you don't experience the color shift that PVA Panels have. Most imaging professionals use IPS Panels. Here's a link at NEC's site for the 2490 model

http://www.necdisplay.com/Products/Product/?product=a46240bd-a846-4de7-b644-bd7f0b7e6ece
 
Here is some more detailed information. I'll start off with the viewing angles.

The first thing I noticed was how washed out the colors were. I had forgotten how bad the PVA washout was. The part directly perpendicular to your eyes is fine, while the rest of the screen is washed out. Some people have complained about black crush on PVA panels, but on a properly calibrated monitor like the EIZO, the crushed part is actually the correct part. That's what the colorimeter sees, and that's how IPS panels look on the whole screen. The Samsung 244T looks better, but that's only because Samsung fudged the colors to counteract the washout, which causes the black crush effect. The EIZO has a Picture mode, which does something similar, but it's not available over HDMI.

You don't even need to be at an angle to see the color shifting:

For some reason, the color shifting is worse when looking from right to left, which is why the left side appears brighter. All of EIZO's 24" models have that problem.

I took some viewing angle shots against the 26" NEC LCD2690WUXi before I got the 24" NEC LCD2490WUXi:



The 24" NEC has the same viewing angles as the 26" NEC, so I don't feel like redoing the shots against the 24" NEC.

The next thing I noticed was how everything was slightly fuzzy, especially text. I mentioned this earlier. When I put my face up to the screen, I could see each pixel is made up of two smaller pixels, and for darker colors, only the top and bottom of the pixel are lit.

I found a picture that confirms what I saw:
s-pva.jpg

Notice how only the top and bottom of the pixel are lit. This causes my eyes to blend the bottom of one pixel and the top of another pixel together, which results in a slight vertical blur.

Here is a picture of light gray text on a black background:

I chose a blurry picture to show what my eyes see. It looks like the pixel grid is IN the pixels instead of between the pixels.

Here is a picture of antialiased text on a white background:

Notice how the antialiasing is messed up.

This ruins text quality for me. I didn't expect this. Older PVA panels weren't like this.

As if that weren't bad enough, the anti-glare coating is fuzzy compared to older PVA panels, which just makes things worse.

Now on to the lag.

Instead of testing against a CRT, I tested against a 23" Apple Cinema Display using a DVI splitter:


Every single shot showed the EIZO was exactly two frames behind the Apple. Here are a couple of the shots:



EIZO claims the following on their site:
Liars said:
Images in Overdrive with No Delay
An overdrive circuit reduces midtone response time to 6 ms and helps prevent ghosting during moving picture playback. This circuit has minimal effect on “input lag” or the difference between the time a signal is inputted into the monitor and then shown on screen. Gamers can rest assured that their movements and those of their opponent are virtually synchronous with what they see on the screen.
Since the Apple itself is about half a frame behind a CRT, that means the EIZO has about two and a half frames of lag, which is around 40 ms.

I'll give PVA panels one thing. The contrast is very good. I did a quick measurement in the center of the screen. At 50% brightness, white was 204 cd/m², and black was 0.17 cd/m². That's 1200:1! That's 50% better than IPS panels, but black is still susceptible to the washout, which reduces visual contrast. The EIZO can get down to 65 cd/m² without losing contrast.

I'll post some more information later.
 
ToastyX thank you very very much for your great review, now I hope to be able to find the nec2490 in europe/italy

After a fast search : too bad i am not able to find the 2490 in europe
 
ToastyX thank you very very much for your great review, now I hope to be able to find the nec2490 in europe/italy

After a fast search : too bad i am not able to find the 2490 in europe

Not surprising since it was announced that it won't be distributed in Europe.
 
ToastyX your little review is amazing. Very simple and too the point thankyou! I wondered why my text seemed a bit fuzzy and now i understand. However this is only an issue when I am sitting right up to the screen comparing between my 930BF and the 244T.

I personally really like the 244T and other then the left side being brighter can not find a flaw in it's picture. Sometimes I notice input lag and other times I honestly can not see a difference between my 244T and 930BF.

To everyone with input lag issues one thing I have noticed is this. Please don't quote me on this or get mad if this doesn't work as I have not done any scientific testing on this but...

When I first got the 244T I noticed I can not set the scaling in nvidia control panel to not scale. So what I found is that if you shut off the computer and boot up with the monitor off and then turn it on once you are at the desktop you can set the scaling to do not scale. Which is great because it is nice to play games @ 1600x1200. But the next thing I noticed is that when I did that... the input lag seemed to be gone. I am not saying that it is but at the very least I did not notice it anymore as where before I would notice it while surfing the web.

So I do not know how much truth there is in my little test but it does to seem to work at least for me.
 
I'll finish off with scaling and some of the features.

Here are the DVI scaling options:

Full screen - This stretches the image to fill the screen.
Enlarged - This scales the image while maintaining the correct aspect ratio.
Normal - This centers the image with 1:1 mapping.

Here are the HDMI scaling options for 1080p, 1080i, and 720p:

16:9 Full - For 1080p and 1080i, this is 1:1 mapping. For 720p, this is 16:9 aspect scaling without overscan.
16:9 - This is 16:9 aspect scaling with 2.5% overscan.

Here are the HDMI scaling options for 480p and 480i:

4:3 - This is 4:3 aspect scaling with overscan.
Letterbox - This is 4:3 aspect scaling with overscan zoomed to fill the screen with the top and bottom cut off.
16:9 - This is 16:9 aspect scaling with overscan.

There are no "4:3 Full" or "16:9 Full" options for 480p and 480i, which means overscan can't be disabled. This is not much of a problem since standard definition content is designed with overscan in mind, but it's not quite done correctly. It cuts off 18 pixels from the left and right, which is 2.5%, but it only cuts off 4 pixels from the top and bottom, which is not enough to maintain the correct aspect ratio. It needs to cut off 12 pixels, but it scales as if it cut off the correct amount. This results in very slight horizontal stretching, but most people won't notice it.

Here are some pictures...

PS3 at 1080p:



PS3 at 720p:


Cable box at 1080i:


Cable box at 480i:


Everything except 1080p and 1080i set to 16:9 Full has slight sharpness artifacts, even with OutlineEnhancer set to 0. This is not a problem for most people, but I don't like images being messed with unless I'm the one messing with the image. The strange thing is DVI does not have these artifacts.

Speaking of OutlineEnhancer, it's a nice feature, but it affects all resolutions per input, so you can't sharpen 720p while leaving 1080p unsharpened.

ContrastEnhancer is the best implementation of dynamic contrast I've ever seen. It's actually usable. The changes are usually gradual, and there's no banding, unlike on most other monitors.

Picture-in-picture is done without interpolation, which doesn't look good with high definition content, and the size of the window can't be set. Still, I don't know any other monitor that can do picture-in-picture with HDMI.

Supposedly, it can route HDMI audio, but I haven't bothered testing this feature.

Also, it treats all HDMI input as limited range RGB, so there's no black washout. There's a color space option which lets you have full range RGB if you want it.

Even with all these features, I don't think it's worth paying this much for a monitor with lag and PVA problems. Even EIZO can't overcome the limitations of PVA panels.
 
I'm seriously disappointed with this :mad:

Is it a new kind of S-PVA panel in this Eizo, or just modifications by Eizo?
 
I'm seriously disappointed with this :mad:

Likewise, lost interest in the SX3031W as well because of this. EIZO have obviously been contacted by a number of people about the input lag issue. I really hoped they were responding with a genuine product rather than marketing BS

Is it a new kind of S-PVA panel in this Eizo, or just modifications by Eizo?

Very speculative answer here: I have previously read that the 22" IPS panel in the EIZO CG221 was custom built by Hitachi to EIZO spec (hence the stratsospheric price of the panel)

Now EIZO have built the colour critical CG241 using a VA panel that was initially described as S-PVA (S-PVA is Samsung specific technology?) but the description was later amended to just VA in the product sheet. This is described in the Japanese language WUXGA round up that I posted previously (before the forum database was rolled back)

http://translate.google.com/transla...&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=/language_tools (scroll down to the CG241 section)

So perhaps EIZO do have a custom ordered VA panel with an unusual VA configuration.(supplied by Samsung if S-PVA really is Samsung only?) It seems quite possible, given that VA is known for crushed blacks you'd think EIZO would want to make sure that their colour critical monitors are using panels that can handle precise grey scales accurately. Maybe the EIZO specific VA is a cost/colour accuracy compromise compared to IPS in the same way that VA was originally developed to bridge the gap between IPS & TN?

EIZO UK told me that all the 24" models used the same panel (I asked if the CG241 would be IPS) and that they would all lag exactly in the same way. They were correct about the lag, so it seems likely that they would be correct about the panel as well.


N.B. CG221 is still the top of the range CG monitor
 
You might be on to something here! :)

Eizo Norway have stated that their S-PVA models are not to be used for making color critical descitions.

"CE-modellene (21" wide og 24" wide) er tenkt for bedrifter som arbeider med å skape publikasjoner, design, arkitekter etc der arbeidsområde og farge er viktig men der man ikke tar fargekritiske beslutninger direkte på skjermen."
http://www.eizo.no/eizo/smpage.fwx?smlanguage=NOR&page=72

Translated, it would be:

"CE models (21" wide and 24" wide) are ment for businesses who works with creating publications, design, arkitects etc. where workarea and color is important, but where you don't take colorcritical descitions directly on screen".

Traditionally (though some actually contests this), PVA panels are useless for colorcritical work. Not only are they extremly vulnerable to minor shifts in viewing position, but they are not uniform when it comes to brightness/contrast/gamma. Left side being brighter then right etc. In addition, black crush at center have been a plague on the PVA screens.
It doesn't matter how well you calibrate it on center, since it will differ from other points on the screen.

When Prad.de examined the Eizo S2111W, they found this:

On the very left, the brightness is lower than on the very right hand side. This is surprising because when you look at the monitor with the naked eye, the image seems to be brighter towards the left hand side – in exactly the place where the brightness measured is lower than on the right hand side. How can this be?

As our measurements established, this phenomenon is certainly not as result of the background lighting. The cause seems much more likely to be an incorrect activation of the pixels. For example, if an average Gamma value of 2,22 is calibrated in the centre of the picture, the Gamma values for dark and bright tones are significantly lower on the left hand side yet increase slightly towards the right hand side.

Lower Gamma values mean brighter grey tones; higher Gamma values mean darker grey tones. The effect that causes the brightness to seem higher on the left hand side although the light intensity is lower there than on the right hand side occurs as a direct result of this irregularity.
http://www.prad.de/en/monitore/review/2007/review-eizo-s2111w-part9.html#Image

There have never before been a PVA panel (yes, they are Samsung only) amongst the high-end CG series and the Radiforce series before. They simply weren't good enough even with Eizo's massive customizations.

The CG241W might prove to be useful for color critical work, even if it is PVA based. Sure, they will have viewing angle shifts as always (and as Toastyx's pictures shows), but they will not have the crushed black at center. Eizo also have a brightness/color uniformity compensation similar to NEC's colorcomp, which they have used on this model.

On the NEC, using the colorcomp function reduces contrast, since it evens out brightness and colors high without compensating for brightness low (black depth). Eizo do the same, and I can see that they advertise this S-PVA screen with a lower contrast then their non-color critical brothers. This might imply that for the first time in history, there actually might be a PVA based screen which has a uniform brightness and color. :D

Of course, the CG221 will always have higher color accuracy and image consistency, but we might have a PVA panel here that can be used for color critical tasks!
 
I have the Eizo S2110W and have to say it's amazing, it's just a shame about this one :(
 
Well if you look the extensive test of PRAD you see that in the end it comes out as Really Good. No offense to Toasty who does a wonderfull job in reviewing these things and certainly knows much more about these things then me, he sees alot of things from his own perspective. In Europe we don't have the NEC's nor the Gateways, so there is no better choice then this Eizo screen. It perfectly serves the purpose, which is playing games ( hooking up a 360, PS3 and PC ). I am not looking at a solid black screen, I am playing games or I am watching a movie. So you don't get bothered by any of the downsides mentioned by Toasty or Prad about bleeding isssues etc. This monitor simply rocks and you can search whatever you want, but in Europe there simply is no substitute.

Cheers ;)
 
I received this monitor last Friday and had to return it on the next Monday! I can confirm that the monitor has a severe problem in displaying dark text on light background. For example, black letters on white background have a kind of light red shadow all around. If you put, for instance, 2 “l”, one just after the other, the pixels or space between the 2 letters is not purely white but rather light red.
This is absolutely unacceptable if you remember that the screen costs not less than close to 1.500€ in Europe.
I don’t know if the technical explanation of ToastyX is right (pixels sub-divided in parts). I just believe my eyes and on that basis I can say his conclusions are right.

Now, because there a risk the same LCD panel can be used in a lot of other monitors, I would like to know what is the exact LCD panel reference of the Eizo HD2441?
I may exclude buying another monitor with the same panel.
I’ve had also recently the Fujitsu Siemens P24W-3 and returned it back for the same reason. I don’t know what panel is used in the P24W-3.
Can anyone help?
 
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