Eizo Foris FG2421: 120hz VA Panel

I also pulled the trigger on this. I yearn for proper color reproduction and insanely high contrast while lightboosting.....this should be glorious.
 
DVerde said:
The color reproduction is pretty bad, if the reviews are true.
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No review says it's "pretty bad" in regards to color reproduction, just that it's not perfect.

It does have good/great colors, but in combination with the best black level of any non-dimmed LCD, the overall picture quality is, at least in my opinion, the best on the market.
It's debatable in a bright room for viewing stills, but in a dim or dark room its' no contest, especially for games or other motion.
 
The colors are very good for general use (better than any Lightboost TN), but the panel limitations (gamma shift) and accuracy render it unsuitable professional <insert accuracy related work> use, but no one is buying this monitor for high end photo editing anyway.
 
Mine is out for delivery today, crossing my fingers that it is amazing with no problems at all. If its not, I hope newegg aren't dicks about it.
 
Alright, after a few hours with it I put it back in the box. Compared to my VG236HE the colors are very dull and drab, and both edges have pretty bad problems with grays. I also did not notice any improvement from the black frame insertion and my gaming in BF4 got significantly worse as I kept focusing on the edges and wondering why the colors were bad. It wasn't very good at all, and definitely not even close to $650 worth of good. I spent a solid hour tweaking the settings and trying different things but I just couldn't bring myself to like it. The gamma shift was pretty bad as well, from the middle of the screen to the edge looked like an entirely different color on any lighter shades.
 
Takeda Kenshi said:
Any chance you took pictures of these issues? You seemed pretty happy with it initially.
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I tried, my cell phone was not up to the task though. I got some vaguely screen shaped bright squares.

I don't know what to think about the colors. I expected it to be closer to an IPS panel, less over-saturated crap than my TN screen. For example, I loaded up FC3 and I was in the jungle where there are clearly about 17 different shades of green on the plants. On the Eizo they look identical, washed-out olive drab. I set the screens up side by side and the difference was staggering. No way in hell will I live with that for so much money. I already set up a refund through newegg, I'm not going to try my luck with a second one. Should have listened to my gut instinct which was to not order it at all.
 
I am looking to upgrade from a 2233rz so any of these newer monitors will of course be a vast improvement in motion quality. How much are Canadians here paying for this monitor? I got a quote from a EIZO distributor and to have it sent to my house, it is $680 before taxes and comes to $768 after taxes. I can get the VG24QE in my city for $322 after taxes!!

Damn, that is well more than DOUBLE the price to have better picture quality? I know Fleat mentioned the colour/picture difference compared to his friends VG24QE was night and day, but I'm curious to hear from others if I really should spend that much extra? I typically only play Quake Live. I know I want the better picture quality but damn...thats an arm and a leg difference!
 
Sent mine back yesterday after using it for a month.
Could not cope with the "right bleed", annoyed by the excessive glossiness (in my room), disappointed by the overall performances (I was hoping for a more dramatic improvement over my 6 years old TN...).
 
Dash23 said:
I am looking to upgrade from a 2233rz so any of these newer monitors will of course be a vast improvement in motion quality. How much are Canadians here paying for this monitor? I got a quote from a EIZO distributor and to have it sent to my house, it is $680 before taxes and comes to $768 after taxes. I can get the VG24QE in my city for $322 after taxes!!

Damn, that is well more than DOUBLE the price to have better picture quality? I know Fleat mentioned the colour/picture difference compared to his friends VG24QE was night and day, but I'm curious to hear from others if I really should spend that much extra? I typically only play Quake Live. I know I want the better picture quality but damn...thats an arm and a leg difference!
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I am going to piss of a few happy owners saying this but fuck it, I wasted my time with two of these and in my experience its not worth the extra money. Some people are very happy with their screens, great for them but in my opinion image quality is not that great on top of the issues well documented in this thread. My two work Eizo TN's offered a better (but not necessarily accurate) all round pleasing picture than the 2421. Greys and browns looked grainy and washed out and the gamma shift is just as bad as a TN as well. Granted blacks are pretty good, which is great if you want to stare at a black screen all day. Even with IPS glow, these types of panels still pick out detail better in darker games while having a more uniform picture without that annoying gamma shift.

There are people who claim this thing is a *high end* VA. I have had high end VA's before and trust me this thing does not even come close.
 
Dcode, thanks for the honest reply. I've been reading through the entire thread and trying to decide whether more than twice as much in price is really worth it.

Do you, or does anyone know how a VG24QE with lightboost on compares with a 2233rz in terms of picture quality? (I know the Asus/lightboost makes it much better for motion blur, but I'm talking strictly color/picture quality) I realize TN panels aren't great for colors, etc., but the 2233rz I currently own isn't all that bad for what I need in terms of color and its not washed out. Would using a VG24QE with lightboost on be THAT much worse and more washed out compared to the old trusty 2233rz?

If a light boost hack enabled VG24QE can be calibrated to at least have very similar picture quality to a 2233rz, I think I would be quite satisfied and would save a LOT of money overall!

Thanks in advance for the help guys!
 
Dash23 said:
Dcode, thanks for the honest reply. I've been reading through the entire thread and trying to decide whether more than twice as much in price is really worth it.

Do you, or does anyone know how a VG24QE with lightboost on compares with a 2233rz in terms of picture quality? (I know the Asus/lightboost makes it much better for motion blur, but I'm talking strictly color/picture quality) I realize TN panels aren't great for colors, etc., but the 2233rz I currently own isn't all that bad for what I need in terms of color and its not washed out. Would using a VG24QE with lightboost on be THAT much worse and more washed out compared to the old trusty 2233rz?

If a light boost hack enabled VG24QE can be calibrated to at least have very similar picture quality to a 2233rz, I think I would be quite satisfied and would save a LOT of money overall!

Thanks in advance for the help guys!
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I've used the VG248QE in a store and it didn't look very good to me, I was planning to get one when they went on sale for $269. The AG coating was distracting and the image was grainy. I liked the BenQ XT2420TE a lot better although I still don't like the coating on that panel either, the colors looked much nicer. My friend has a 2233RZ and it looks much better than the Asus IMO.
 
Dash23 said:
Dcode, thanks for the honest reply. I've been reading through the entire thread and trying to decide whether more than twice as much in price is really worth it.

Do you, or does anyone know how a VG24QE with lightboost on compares with a 2233rz in terms of picture quality? (I know the Asus/lightboost makes it much better for motion blur, but I'm talking strictly color/picture quality) I realize TN panels aren't great for colors, etc., but the 2233rz I currently own isn't all that bad for what I need in terms of color and its not washed out. Would using a VG24QE with lightboost on be THAT much worse and more washed out compared to the old trusty 2233rz?

If a light boost hack enabled VG24QE can be calibrated to at least have very similar picture quality to a 2233rz, I think I would be quite satisfied and would save a LOT of money overall!

Thanks in advance for the help guys!
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I could not tell you. Never used the VG24QE before nor I have used lightboost. The motion clarity on the 2421 was very good with Turbo 240 enabled but there was some serious ghosting on browns.

Your going to have to make a compromise on image quality somewhere if you want 120Hz on an LCD. You could try looking into the overclockable 1440P Korean panels but I don't think motion clarity will be as good as what you are getting with your current TN.

To be honest I was sick and tired of these so called "gaming grade" monitors with poor image quality, gimmicky features and garish designs. I thought Eizo had nailed it with the FG2421 as it looks pretty professional and its the first to use a 120Hz panel that includes decent panel technology, but it was a fiasco. In the end I ended up buying a 60Hz 23" PLS monitor with no input lag (which is actually marketed as an office monitor). I play a lot of CS:GO and it had no effect on my performance moving from a 120Hz panel. In fact I have never played as well these past few weeks. The ultra low input lag was noticeable straight away and its nice to play games with awesome image quality with adequate performance for competitive shooters. Some people might be throwing up on their keyboards reading this but to me 120Hz is more of a luxury than a necessity for me when it comes to the games I play. And I do play some pretty fast paced games (RTCW, Quake 2, CS:GO).

If someone can make a great 120Hz IPS/PLS monitor that does not look like its out of Batman and without screwing up the image quality in some way then i'll tip up the coffers.
 
Looks like i'm going for a CX240.

I had contact with EIZO Europe today about the fan in de CX240, and they told me in May 2013 they changed the fan that's in the CX240 with a much quieter one.

So i'm going to try and get one with a recent manufacturing date.
 
Dcode said:
I could not tell you. Never used the VG24QE before nor I have used lightboost. The motion clarity on the 2421 was very good with Turbo 240 enabled but there was some serious ghosting on browns.

Your going to have to make a compromise on image quality somewhere if you want 120Hz on an LCD. You could try looking into the overclockable 1440P Korean panels but I don't think motion clarity will be as good as what you are getting with your current TN.

To be honest I was sick and tired of these so called "gaming grade" monitors with poor image quality, gimmicky features and garish designs. I thought Eizo had nailed it with the FG2421 as it looks pretty professional and its the first to use a 120Hz panel that includes decent panel technology, but it was a fiasco. In the end I ended up buying a 60Hz 23" PLS monitor with no input lag (which is actually marketed as an office monitor). I play a lot of CS:GO and it had no effect on my performance moving from a 120Hz panel. In fact I have never played as well these past few weeks. The ultra low input lag was noticeable straight away and its nice to play games with awesome image quality with adequate performance for competitive shooters. Some people might be throwing up on their keyboards reading this but to me 120Hz is more of a luxury than a necessity for me when it comes to the games I play. And I do play some pretty fast paced games (RTCW, Quake 2, CS:GO).

If someone can make a great 120Hz IPS/PLS monitor that does not look like its out of Batman and without screwing up the image quality in some way then i'll tip up the coffers.
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Meanwhile, my old 19-inch Phillips CRT can do everything you listed and more (no input lag). Have you considered Craigslist for an old CRT? You'd be amazed at what you could find. Hell, 2 hours from me is a brand new Mitsubishi Diamatron 22-inch for only $50.
 
jbltecnicspro said:
Meanwhile, my old 19-inch Phillips CRT can do everything you listed and more (no input lag). Have you considered Craigslist for an old CRT? You'd be amazed at what you could find. Hell, 2 hours from me is a brand new Mitsubishi Diamatron 22-inch for only $50.
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Mate I live in the UK, and believe me I have looked. If I could have found a mint FW900 it would be on my desk right now.

I am not switching to a smaller 4:3 monitor. The resolution is too small and the geometry is no where near as good as LCD. Looking around there is hardly anything in the UK, maybe a small handful of white Diamondtron tubes knocking around but they all have white cabinets and finding someone to fix/calibrate it will be a pain in the ass.

A mint FW900 would have twisted my arm, but everyone is hanging onto these with dear life.
 
Sorry, I just dont buy some of these comments. I don't think many people know how to properly analyze a display or how to set one up properly. Most people simply do not know what they are doing. My experience with three of these displays has been exceptional, and the professional reviews back that up. I have not seen one negative review of this monitor. Most are downright glowing.
 
Vega said:
Sorry, I just dont buy some of these comments. I don't think many people know how to properly analyze a display or how to set one up properly. Most people simply do not know what they are doing. My experience with three of these displays has been exceptional, and the professional reviews back that up. I have not seen one negative review of this monitor. Most are downright glowing.
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I understand what you mean, and it's hard to really know what's going on. Either you're the luckiest Eizo purchaser in recent history, or something else is in play.

Not that I'm knocking any of you with displays that have issues. I wonder if they're cherry-picked?
 
Vega said:
Sorry, I just dont buy some of these comments. I don't think many people know how to properly analyze a display or how to set one up properly. Most people simply do not know what they are doing. My experience with three of these displays has been exceptional, and the professional reviews back that up. I have not seen one negative review of this monitor. Most are downright glowing.
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Vega, I SECOND THAT ALL THE WAY!!!

Unkle Vito!
 
Dcode said:
Mate I live in the UK, and believe me I have looked. If I could have found a mint FW900 it would be on my desk right now.

I am not switching to a smaller 4:3 monitor. The resolution is too small and the geometry is no where near as good as LCD. Looking around there is hardly anything in the UK, maybe a small handful of white Diamondtron tubes knocking around but they all have white cabinets and finding someone to fix/calibrate it will be a pain in the ass.

A mint FW900 would have twisted my arm, but everyone is hanging onto these with dear life.
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I completely understand. I love my FW900. For the record, calibrating monitors is not *that* difficult with CRT. Get a cheap/free monitor and read up. Grab a decent (cheap) signal generator and have at it. Quantum Data units, if working, are usually good bets as they have self-calibrating outputs.
 
jbltecnicspro said:
I understand what you mean, and it's hard to really know what's going on.
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Ye agree, its so strange. First we got Vega that tested alot of displays and praise it, then one guy say its got worse colors then his TN and not good at all. Like what the hell :)
 
mmaker said:
Ye agree, its so strange. First we got Vega that tested alot of displays and praise it, then one guy say its got worse colors then his TN and not good at all. Like what the hell :)
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he's clearly making it all up because he cant afford one and praises his cheap office monitor for gaming.

ever heard of silencer trolls? well, now you've seen one.
 
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TroyX said:
he's clearly making it all up because he cant afford one and praises his cheap office monitor for gaming.

ever heard of silencer trolls? well, now you've seen one.
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I've never heard of silencer trolls, actually. What is a silencer troll? I don't know. I don't think it would be a bad idea to get these monitors. The fact that Vega purchased three and all three are awesome is a good sign, imo. That - and just get from Amazon, so that when you DO have an issue, you can return and try another one - no questions asked.
 
Ya, I don't doubt I'd be loving the shit out of even one of these. I almost jumped on one from NE this past week. But I'm going to give the VG278HE another shot for a bit I decided. On my way to pick up the new unit right now.

As for the bad Eizos... it's unfortunate that they allowed it to happen but I don't doubt there were some bad panels. Not for a second. However, unless Vega is on their payroll I seriously doubt his 3 panels are cherry picked. Wasn't he like just about looking for one wherever he could find it? I can't remember through the thread where they came from. Did he ever have to change any of them out? I don't think so. There just aren't a lot of people buying these monitors and talking about it. They may want to keep the joy to themselves rather than share it! If it were 27" and even half as uniform on blacks as this VG278HE is it would be sitting on my desk even if it were 750-800$. For a smaller display I just didn't want to spend more money without giving the manufacturers a little more time to put out more LightBoost or PWM-free blur-reduction models.
 
Vega said:
Sorry, I just dont buy some of these comments. I don't think many people know how to properly analyze a display or how to set one up properly. Most people simply do not know what they are doing. My experience with three of these displays has been exceptional, and the professional reviews back that up. I have not seen one negative review of this monitor. Most are downright glowing.
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I'm not a pro monitor reviewer by any means, but that thing looked like ass no matter what I did to it. I tried all of the settings people recommend in this thread, settings found on the review sites, different inputs, messing around with the graphics card color settings. I've never used a VA panel before, only IPS/PLS and TN (and CRT) so maybe I was expecting something different? I eventually settled on 50 contrast, 50 black level, 25 brightness and color mode of "off" which sets all the bars at 100. Turbo 240 on or off made no difference at all that I could tell.

Not sure what to say about it, I could have lived with the gray shift at the very edges if the colors weren't so dull. I set it up side by side with the TN panel expecting more saturation on one and more accuracy and range on the other and that isn't what I saw. What I got was a panel where it was almost impossible to tell the difference between different shade of the same color. Maybe I got a bad one, I don't really care too much though because I bought it specifically for the turbo 240 capability and I noticed no difference in my gaming compared to regular 120hz which probably means I'm not sensitive to motion blur. It wasn't $650 worth of awesome, and I feel like even if it was somehow perfect it still wouldn't be worth that price to me so I don't want to try another one.

I do still have it, I have not had the chance to ship it out yet. I can try and set it up again tonight and see if my HTC 8x camera can capture what I'm seeing.
 
TroyX said:
he's clearly making it all up because he cant afford one and praises his cheap office monitor for gaming.

ever heard of silencer trolls? well, now you've seen one.
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That's some funny shit lol.

I don't think the monitor is worth it's money with my experience with it. My mate who came over with no pre conceived notion spent 5 minutes looking at it and said "send it back".

Others here have felt the same.

Some people are happy with it and that's great. In fact I encourage anyone to try it if you can easily return it and make up your own mind.
 
I felt the same. The monitors so called great black level was ruined in games like Sins of a solar empire and X-Com as the backgrounds went a strange greyish black because of the monitor.

Did not do this on other monitors I have purchased. It did not always appear in some games but it did in others. Like the whole background got lighter in certain action scenes as well. Something mentioned previous in the thread and reviews that the monitor does not transition well with some black to white to black and it comes out grey instead. Happened alot to me.

The other thing I found with this monitor that negates the great black. Tthe grey vertical strip on the right side of the monitor that is lighter than the rest of the monitor. The strip went all the way down and was about 2" wide or more. It makes the colours looked washed out in that region and look terrible and stood out like a sore thumb in darker scenes in games.

It had to go back regardless of the contrast ratio.

If they even just solved the issue of the 2" band of lighter shade I would buy another in a second. At the moment I have a nice new Qnix overclocked and it's not doing bad at all! The black level is better than my TN by a long shot but it does not match VA. At least I have a consistent fairly black background though unlike the Eizo.
 
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I'm sure there's some FUD and "silencer trolls" but I also see some legit feedback in here that still spells out a mixed bag and a panel roulette overall. I'm speaking as someone interested in this monitor who has kept tabs on this thread.
 
I think a got a good panel but it still exhibits some of the complaints that other users are having here. There is a right edge bleed on certain colors (grey shows this the most) but after some tweaking of settings I can't even notice it. There is cross hatching found on the top left and bottom right of my screen that is visible when I focus on it but it's not something that completely ruins the monitor for me.
I can't disregard the negative comments because it seems these issues are present for a lot of people, ranging from slight to heavy light bleed, cross hatching, etc.

Even with these issues this monitor has been my favorite gaming monitor so far. I don't miss my TN panels one bit when I look at these colors and motion clarity.
 
I had to mess with the height of the monitor to make sure that I was not viewing the image straight on but at a slight downward angle. This helped with the black crush seen with dark grey images on the screen.

The other oddity I notice is that the screen looks liked dog shit when I have it hooked up to HDMI (need to use onboard video while I wait for my new video card) - even after putting on my original calibration profile the whites looked off. It does not exhibit this issue under Dual-Link DVI. I might need to do the whole loop again if it is hooked up to a different video card though.

Other then that I am still pleased as punch with this monitor. The only time I notice Turbo 240 actually making a difference is when playing Quake Live, for what it's worth. And maybe a hair in TF2. Just having 120 Hz with these fantastic blacks (and all the rest) is what really makes me enjoy the monitor.
 
jbltecnicspro said:
Bluesun, I should reiterate. I was asking if the review samples (not Vega's) were cherry-picked.
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Of course I am not saying that there won't be bad panels out there. Any monitor line has bad panels. Heck, I had the 4K IGZO Asus and it was horrible. $3,500 for a monitor and it had some defects that a $200 monitor shouldn't have. IMO at $600, these Eizo's are an incredible value. Don't tell Eizo, but I would have paid up to 1K each for them. There is nothing else out there that can do what this monitor does besides FW900's of yonder.

My samples are not cherry picked. I happened to order them from whatever vendor had them first, and I just happened to get three panels that were all built on the same day in Japan! It was a good day. ;)

I have directly compared the Eizo's to TN panels, Lightboost, 4K IPS, other VA and it held up extremely well in image quality. That experience matches the overall quite favorable online professional reviews. Really the only caveat I've seen multiple reviewers say is the color accuracy, not saturation or quality of colors reproducible left something to be desired. Color accuracy is one of the least important things for a gaming monitor IMO, I'm not doing any photoshop on this thing for pete's sake.

I really won't consider IPS anymore, as once you get used to the contrast and blacks of a panel like the Eizo, it would be incredibly hard to go back to low contrast, poor blacks and IPS glow. Yes, the VA panel has some gamma shift, but that is the lesser of the evils IMO.

Really, just buy from a vendor like Amazon that has a no-questions asked return policy and give it a try. The vast majority will be extremely pleased.
 
jbltecnicspro said:
I've never heard of silencer trolls, actually. What is a silencer troll? I don't know. I don't think it would be a bad idea to get these monitors. The fact that Vega purchased three and all three are awesome is a good sign, imo. That - and just get from Amazon, so that when you DO have an issue, you can return and try another one - no questions asked.
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Vega got the three (3) GDM-FW900s units from me.

Unkle Vito!
 
Vega
Do you think this monitor is too much of a downgrade from the catleap? Won't it cut ones eyes with its razor small shape....
 
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