Eizo Foris FG2421: 120hz VA Panel

Dcode said:
I have the EV2336W and it pisses all over the FG2421 in image quality.
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This is probably true almost all of the time because the fg2421 does some weird things. Even though it has amazingly deep blacks, sometimes they appear overly digitized... the deep black starts breaking up into squares of other deep blacks and it looks pretty bad when that happens. It's really hard to get the gamma right for me. If you aren't watching compressed content then it doesn't seem to be an issue so much.

In games and other 2d graphics, the monitor really shines. With dark photographs and movies... it's not good.

For me, this is a get me by while things are up in the air display. I'm using it because I couldn't step down from 120Hz+strobing backlight motion blur reduction, and it is solid at these things, but I didn't like the color reproduction and greyish blacks of Lightboost. The fg2421 isn't the holy grail monitor we been waiting for. It's more like a spoonfed taste of what's to come in the future.

I would recommend it for someone who is frustrated with already expensive 120Hz displays and their poor contrast. I would not recommend it for someone who really likes their very nice 60/75Hz monitor that has no weird quirks that is sort of thinking they want to try out 120Hz. Unless I had to have a 120Hz display NOW I would wait until someone does a better version of this display. I think they can get it better for sure.
 
Dallows said:
Vega do you think you could post some pictures of your monitor with these colors full screen in a dark room?
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I don't think we'll ever see how these pics known to cause the border shit in the Eizo look in one of those supposedly perfect monitors. Call me exceptical or prove me wrong. :)
 
Perhaps none of us want to take pictures of those colors because the files are awful. Take a look at them. Give me a decent color to display and I'll take a picture. The red one at the end on my silly iphone looks horrible in a picture... and fine in person. The photo makes it look like there's horrible bleeding and a dark hole in the middle. It's not like that at all. The other files all have a weird diagonal line drawn on them and I'm just not taking a picture of that on my monitor. Anyway why go to all the trouble so people can tell us how dumb we are for buying such an awful monitor. If I didn't like it so much I wouldn't have gone to the trouble of buying 4 of them and returning 3.
 
Can any owners tell me how well this monitor handles framerates in the 90-120 range? With my 60Hz monitor, I'll set the settings in games to run around this level, then set a framerate cap at 60 so more often than not I'm maintaining a solid 60. When I do get dips in the 50's and even the high 40's, it doesn't really bother me at all. Obviously it isn't as smooth as a flat 60, but dips like that aren't a problem.

So if I get this monitor, I'll probably set the settings a little lower to try and run things in the 120-140 range, but I'll get dips in the 90-120 range. I'm assuming these dips will not bother me but I'm not sure if the 60Hz vs 120Hz refresh rate changes things.
 
MOLeary04 said:
Can any owners tell me how well this monitor handles framerates in the 90-120 range? With my 60Hz monitor, I'll set the settings in games to run around this level, then set a framerate cap at 60 so more often than not I'm maintaining a solid 60. When I do get dips in the 50's and even the high 40's, it doesn't really bother me at all. Obviously it isn't as smooth as a flat 60, but dips like that aren't a problem.

So if I get this monitor, I'll probably set the settings a little lower to try and run things in the 120-140 range, but I'll get dips in the 90-120 range. I'm assuming these dips will not bother me but I'm not sure if the 60Hz vs 120Hz refresh rate changes things.
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I feel the same way you do about your current monitor when it dips into the 40s and 50s about this sucker when it goes to the 90-120 range. I really can't tell and if I actually notice it's not a bother anyway. 60-90 is not so smooth. One thing you can do is set the FG2421 to 100Hz and turbo still works pretty well. Then you can use vsync at 100fps or a cap for less lag. Then again if lag is a serious concern you should turn turbo 240 off. I do not think there is any competitive advantage to be gained from the blur reduction the turbo 240 feature offers. It is very nice looking, however, it adds a teeeny bit of lag (which I am not sensitive to).

People are underestimating how nice this thing is with the Turbo240 off. There's this whole issue of warmup time as well. Turbo on or not, when you first turn the thing on it will ghost noticeably. Half hour later it's much smoother. This is mentioned in the documentation.
 
Bluesun311 said:
I feel the same way you do about your current monitor when it dips into the 40s and 50s about this sucker when it goes to the 90-120 range. I really can't tell and if I actually notice it's not a bother anyway. 60-90 is not so smooth. One thing you can do is set the FG2421 to 100Hz and turbo still works pretty well. Then you can use vsync at 100fps or a cap for less lag. Then again if lag is a serious concern you should turn turbo 240 off. I do not think there is any competitive advantage to be gained from the blur reduction the turbo 240 feature offers. It is very nice looking, however, it adds a teeeny bit of lag (which I am not sensitive to).

People are underestimating how nice this thing is with the Turbo240 off. There's this whole issue of warmup time as well. Turbo on or not, when you first turn the thing on it will ghost noticeably. Half hour later it's much smoother. This is mentioned in the documentation.
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Thanks for the info! That's great to hear there is a 100Hz option. It seems like I won't have to change any settings around except to cap my framerate at 100 instead of 60. I'm not overly concerned with lag unless it is really bad. I won't even notice the difference in lag between having the turbo mode on or off so I'll just leave it on.
 
I should post a guide on how to nail ProVantage with a chargeback when they still haven't refunded your money after receiving a defective FG2421 back 3 weeks later, but luckily it's super easy to file a chargeback when a merchant breaks their own return policy. Will NOT be ordering from them again.
 
Uggg Im at two weeks with no refund from provantage yet. I'm gonna launch my size 14 foot through the phone on Monday.
 
It took two-three weeks to get a refund back from them when I returned an LG 29EB93-P last year. It happened eventually. Probably minimally staffed returns center I'm sure.
 
My Amazon order for this thing just got pushed back to March 17th at the earliest... put my order in on Dec 16th. Gotta wonder wtf is going on.
 
Takeda Kenshi said:
My Amazon order for this thing just got pushed back to March 17th at the earliest... put my order in on Dec 16th. Gotta wonder wtf is going on.
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I'd walk away from it. Amazon has never carried this thing yet and I don't think they ever will.

Otherwise order from Provantage, Newegg, or I think B&H? Just check the return policies first.
 
Q-BZ said:
I'd walk away from it. Amazon has never carried this thing yet and I don't think they ever will.

Otherwise order from Provantage, Newegg, or I think B&H? Just check the return policies first.
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If it wasn't for their better price and outstanding return policy I would definitely be done. I'm in no great hurry for the monitor, but if it gets delayed again I'll need to look elsewhere.
 
Bluesun311 said:
Perhaps none of us want to take pictures of those colors because the files are awful. Take a look at them. Give me a decent color to display and I'll take a picture. The red one at the end on my silly iphone looks horrible in a picture... and fine in person. The photo makes it look like there's horrible bleeding and a dark hole in the middle. It's not like that at all. The other files all have a weird diagonal line drawn on them and I'm just not taking a picture of that on my monitor. Anyway why go to all the trouble so people can tell us how dumb we are for buying such an awful monitor. If I didn't like it so much I wouldn't have gone to the trouble of buying 4 of them and returning 3.
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Agreed. TFT Central already covered this in their review. Solid, uniform colors are not the strong suit of this monitor. It was never the intention of the monitor in the first place.

If you want a monitor to display uniform color across a fullscreen, the FG2421 isn't for you. This was stated in the TFT Central review and I was well aware of what I would be getting with this monitor. If you want lots of contrast and a fluid gaming experience, the FG2421 is your monitor. I haven't felt this happy about a monitor purchase in a long time. I agree with Vega. I would have gladly paid $1K for this monitor. It's that good. After looking at his set up, I am considering purchasing a couple more of them.

Try one and give it a week or two of your gaming time. See if you want to go back to what you were using before. I wouldn't.
 
I made those color samples to prove what I saw in games and movies first and what bothered me in games and movies (even though I don't really watch movies). Not to show problems with solid colors. And that is:
Bluesun311 said:
horrible bleeding and a dark hole in the middle.
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in particular.
 
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I got mine a few days ago from b&h with a 11/21/13 (or something like that, i am not at home right now) build day. For the most part everything is fine with it, no dead pixels, good uniformity, no restart issues. Only issue is that there is some crosshatching near the top left and middle right.

I am not really that bothered by it as I only notice it if I look closely on certain kinds of scenes and I'm not sure is worth the hassle of returning it (even though b&h is supposed to be good on that). I might not have even thought that much about it if I hadnt read about the issue here.
 
Takeda Kenshi said:
My Amazon order for this thing just got pushed back to March 17th at the earliest... put my order in on Dec 16th. Gotta wonder wtf is going on.
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That's a bummer to hear since that is where I was going to order it from. Newegg's price is more expensive than everyone else, and I've never ordered from Provantage or B&H so I don't have any experience with dealing with them.
 
MOLeary04 said:
That's a bummer to hear since that is where I was going to order it from. Newegg's price is more expensive than everyone else, and I've never ordered from Provantage or B&H so I don't have any experience with dealing with them.
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Amazon dodged a bullet if they aren't carrying this thing (which they never have, outside of marketplace sellers, to my knowledge). It's an awesome product for the end-user if/when they get a good sample, but it must be an absolute nightmare for retailers.

Remember that a LOT of these etailers all share the same distributors, so you can't really tell if Provantage and Newegg have the same stock or not.

Newegg has put the FG2421 on their Premier membership with free shipping/free return shipping no restock fee and you can do a month trial of Premier service for free right now just to try out this monitor. Interestingly none of the other Eizos they carry are Premier eligible. :rolleyes:

Provantage is legit and low prices but very slow with returns... They finally set up the credit to my account and I called the Bank of America dogs off. They actually threw in the money for my 2-day shipping it seems like, which is abnormal, but we will see when the credit actually clears.

B&H does not pay for return shipping (even on defective items) as far as I know--and that is the only reason I did not order one of these from them.
 
Bluesun311 said:
Perhaps none of us want to take pictures of those colors because the files are awful. Take a look at them. Give me a decent color to display and I'll take a picture. The red one at the end on my silly iphone looks horrible in a picture... and fine in person. The photo makes it look like there's horrible bleeding and a dark hole in the middle. It's not like that at all. The other files all have a weird diagonal line drawn on them and I'm just not taking a picture of that on my monitor. Anyway why go to all the trouble so people can tell us how dumb we are for buying such an awful monitor. If I didn't like it so much I wouldn't have gone to the trouble of buying 4 of them and returning 3.
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Or maybe you guys just don't want to show your monitor sucking. Any occurrence of that kind of color will look like crap in real life, like it happened to me:

 
STaRGaZeR69 said:
Or maybe you guys just don't want to show your monitor sucking. Any occurrence of that kind of color will look like crap in real life, like it happened to me:

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I'm having Newegg replace mine, so we'll see how lucky I am on the second try. If it exhibits the same problems I will try to take pictures so you can see the difference. I understand color uniformity but what I saw were the same problems that others saw. Simply not up to the quality and cost of this monitor.
 
STaRGaZeR69 said:
Or maybe you guys just don't want to show your monitor sucking. Any occurrence of that kind of color will look like crap in real life, like it happened to me
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Yes, why would I waste my time posting pictures for people who don't like this monitor to pick apart? I'm not really sure what you are trying to point out with your picture, it looks like a picture of a monitor. If you got a bad one, I'm sorry. I definitely know how THAT feels.
 
Two and a half weeks after receiving my return provantage finally says my credit card has been refunded, but it may take another 3-5 business days to process before I actually get my money back.

This will be my last provantage purchase. I suppose I am spoiled by Amazon, but I have returned things to provantage before without this kind of problem....I don't know but three weeks to a month for a $600 refund is insane. :mad:
 
l88bastard said:
Two and a half weeks after receiving my return provantage finally says my credit card has been refunded, but it may take another 3-5 business days to process before I actually get my money back.

This will be my last provantage purchase. I suppose I am spoiled by Amazon, but I have returned things to provantage before without this kind of problem....I don't know but three weeks to a month for a $600 refund is insane. :mad:
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It's pretty slow... I wasn't pleased. At the same time... I was confused why they refunded my original shipping cost. That was unexpected--especially because it was a 40dollar 2 day shipping charge. That bought them another purchase from me in the future.
 
STaRGaZeR69 said:
Or maybe you guys just don't want to show your monitor sucking. Any occurrence of that kind of color will look like crap in real life, like it happened to me:

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IMG_0265.jpg
 
Well, I have a lot of time on my hands today so I gave it a shot. The real issue I have with taking pictures of my quote-unquote good Foris here is that my camera is an iPhone4s.

Source material does make a difference.

Here's a few screenshots of movies and some color tests:
IMG_0013_zpsf9bdbd01.jpg
IMG_0020_zps3d35ef80.jpg
IMG_0021_zps3fbfcfa0.jpg
IMG_0022_zpsf0489be4.jpg
IMG_0023_zps39d7e8d2.jpg
IMG_0026_zps50fc415b.jpg
IMG_0028_zps2882566d.jpg
IMG_0029_zpsbc214c5f.jpg
IMG_0030_zpsad195bd2.jpg
IMG_0032_zps046192fd.jpg

The blue one has a buncha glare on it in the photograph, but in person the bright circle is not there, taking pictures of pictures is a bit fiddly.
 
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During games ( and i dont talk about BF ) the tearing showing is bother in this monitor specially with a lower frame rate than refresh ?
 
63jax said:
it's just me or does it have some bad blb on the sides? :/
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It's probably more like my camera phone. The FG2421 above is backlight bleed free. Actually, I think it's you. The pictures don't even show any hint of backlight bleed, the pictures just suck in the dark.

Edit: Sigh, now I want a real camera... damn this thread all to hell. :rolleyes:

eizo_zpsf811cf9b.png~original

Old Sony Cybershot wife had stashed... Wasn't gonna happen without the flash. Compressed images just look awful on this monitor. It's really a big downer and I don't really get what the problem is. If you can get rid of any compression artifacts with pristine source material, then it shines.

The coating is a little weird, I think. Reflections are a problem for taking good photos of it for me, the little brighter spot lower left on that last one is a reflection.
 
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Well at least now I know what cross-hatching looks like.

My replacements seems to have most of the same problems and is way way worse with this cross-hatching.
 
Hi all,
It's just arrived (I'm living in Italy, ordered from Amazon EU, shipped from Germany).
Build Date: Jan 2014 Japan, distribuited by Eizo Dusseldorf (Germany).

Very first and most important impressions/test: no crosshatching, no light bleed, no dead stuck pixels... I'm a lucky dude or improved quality control? who knows :) just keep my fingers crossed.

Great black and contrast, I used tft central's settings for first... no time to calibrate with Spyder3 right now.
My past monitor was a Dell IPS U2311H Spydy3 calibrated, which had better colors overall (linear red for sure).
Smearing like all the VA panels. I know, I was prepared. Dont care alot... probably it needs to warm up a while.
Great gaming!! games like Outlast or Thief literally pops up!
If 240 hz option is activated, I can see a strange "hiccup" effect on Battlefiled 4... investigating.
... sorry for my english,
 
Is there a review of this monitor that shows proper measurements? It seems that just about all of the review sites use the same exact software to demonstrate display accuracy. That software SUCKS. It doesn't show information in a useful manner. How can they not know of free HCFR and/or CalMAN RGB?
 
edit: ... LoL, just in time. I hope you enjoy MonarchX :)

Here we are after a half day of measurements and test..
this is the best achieved:

Colorimeter: Spyder 3 pro

Software HCFR 3.1.0.7

Settings:

Luminance: 29
Black level: 50
contrast: 50
Temperature: Off
Gamma : 2.0
Red Gain: 100
G gain: 87
B Gain: 84
Turbo :Off
DCR: Off

Main values:
Black point: 0,06
white point: 99,85

HCFR pics, 30 points

rdiu.jpg


prr5.jpg


90x5.jpg


y9y3.jpg


r7jn.jpg


Trailing
960 lines

u12d.jpg


1080 lines

gwzu.jpg


1080 lines from far

qf06.jpg


1920 lines

wq4i.jpg
 
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@alienzero What was the manufacture date of your monitor please? How is your overall impression? Are you happy with the monitor? I have a little crosshatching (only if I put face close to the monitor can I see it) a stuck red pixel (at the bezel's edge) and usually I would hate that... but this is the best monitor I've ever seen, so I'm very happy. I went through a bunch of other monitors this past year and none were like this at color depth and motion clarity.

I must admit after some weeks/months with an FG2421 I rarely use Turbo240.

@monarchX can you please describe the values that are depicted in alienzero's test results? I do not understand what they mean.
 
@Bluesun311
What was the manufacture date of your monitor please?
- January 2014, Japan
How is your overall impression?
- impressed by contrast and motion clarity for a VA = 8/10
Are you happy with the monitor?
- yup
I have a little crosshatching (only if I put face close to the monitor can I see it) a stuck red pixel (at the bezel's edge)
- Maybe I'm a lucky guy, no crosshatch, no dead pixel
.. so I'm very happy. I went through a bunch of other monitors this past year and none were like this at color depth and motion clarity.
- Yes me too, I'm only regret about black level, it's only 0,05/6 not the 0,025 claimed in tft central review.. that means, 1:1900 contrast ratio, not 1:4800
 
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alienzero said:
I'm only regret about black level, it's only 0,05/6 not the 0,025 claimed in tft central review.. that means, 1:1900 contrast ratio, not 1:4800[/I]
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Interesting! So we have better monitors to look forward to in contrast soon i bet.

alienzero said:
Luminance: 29
Black level: 50
contrast: 50
Temperature: Off
Gamma : 2.0
Red Gain: 100
G gain: 87
B Gain: 84
Turbo :Off
DCR: Off
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I was using nearly the same settings but for G gain and B gain I was using TFTcentral's settings: G: 96 B: 92

I put your settings in instead and the red is fixed... thanks so much! I am not good with colors... perhaps I should invest in a Spyder?
 
alienzero said:
@Bluesun311
What was the manufacture date of your monitor please?
- January 2014, Japan
How is your overall impression?
- impressed by contrast and motion clarity for a VA = 8/10
Are you happy with the monitor?
- yup
I have a little crosshatching (only if I put face close to the monitor can I see it) a stuck red pixel (at the bezel's edge)
- Maybe I'm a lucky guy, no crosshatch, no dead pixel
.. so I'm very happy. I went through a bunch of other monitors this past year and none were like this at color depth and motion clarity.
- Yes me too, I'm only regret about black level, it's only 0,05/6 not the 0,025 claimed in tft central review.. that means, 1:1900 contrast ratio, not 1:4800
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I found that turning on the dynamic contrast ratio actually works for this monitor. Some people said it did nothing and others saw a definite improvement. I happened to be one of those that saw an improvement. Give it a shot.
 
Do NOT trust any Spyder colorimeter results!

I am sorry to say but unless it was profiled with a spectrometer on that exact screen using that exact colorimeter unit - you cannot trust the results. All Spyder series colorimeters are highly inaccurate. Please do not be offended - the results are more than likely to be much better than what Spyder is telling you. Black is far more likely to be 0.03 or 0.02 and contrast ratio is at least 4000:1 but closer to 5000:1. Too many reviews reported that for it to be false. If you do not believe me - head to AVS Display Calibration forums and ask there. Any Spyder is considered to be below the minimum requirement for accuracy.

It shows your red as being pretty much orange - that is the exact behavior of Spyder series colorimeters. You need to get rid of it and get either i1Display Pro for $250 or ColorMunki Display for $175, both of which use the same hardware, but ColorMunki is software-restricted. ColorMunki does work with HCFR and that is ALL you need unless you plan on buying very expensive packages like CalMAN or ChromaPure. I provided retail prices - eBay has better prices. Another, cheaper option is to profile your colorimeter using a rented spectrometer from here - http://www.lensrentals.com/rent/calibration/colormunki . It takes less than 5 minutes to profile a colorimeter.

You got yourself an excellent monitor, but it needs an awesome calibration using the right equipment. ColorMunki will get you within 90% accuracy, while a spectrometer or a spectrometer-profiled colorimeter will get you within 2-3%, which is where you want to be because 90% accurate is visibly worse than 98% accurate.

Anyway, I can assure you that color accuracy of your monitor is far better than Spyder 3 suggests.
 
MonarchX said:
ColorMunki will get you within 90% accuracy, while a spectrometer or a spectrometer-profiled colorimeter will get you within 2-3%, which is where you want to be because 90% accurate is visibly worse than 98% accurate.
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Are these figures based on your own measurements on the Eizo with both the Spyder and a spectro?


MonarchX said:
Anyway, I can assure you that color accuracy of your monitor is far better than Spyder 3 suggests.
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This doesn't really follow.

A less accurate instrument can still report perfect adherence to a given standard (i.e. Rec 709), it's just that you can't trust the result.
 
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