NEC 23" IPS EA231WMi

To the people connecting the graphics card to the monitor over VGA - what do you think of image quality? Blurry or sharp? Stable?
 
Hey guys I just got my EA231 after reading this thread. I like it a lot. I've never had a monitor that could go into portrait mode before, though. Is there a way for my monitor to sense which mode it's in and rearrange the display (landscape to portrait and back), or do I have to do it manually w/n the CCC (I'm running a 5850)?
 
In my experience, connecting a high end lcd over vga is counterproductive. If you are limited to vga source, save some money and get a $100 dollar tn panel like aoc.
 
ar09 said:
how does this 23" nec compares to my u2410?
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It's junk. Has the worst anti-glare coating I've ever seen on a monitor and it's also extremely tiny. Besides those issues, it doesn't look anywhere near as good as a NEC 20wmgx2.
 
I guarantee that my laptop's screen has the worst anti-glare coating of all time... it's a 15.4" WUXGA LG Panel...

But I paid $50 and it's from 2004 and still works, so whatever... I just wanted the high pixel density.

This isn't junk, it's an IPS with a good stand, display-port, 1080p, 3yr warranty, and it's reasonably priced for those specs.
 
ebolamonkey001 said:
It's junk. Has the worst anti-glare coating I've ever seen on a monitor and it's also extremely tiny. Besides those issues, it doesn't look anywhere near as good as a NEC 20wmgx2.
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Do I misunderstand, or are you actually claiming a 23'' screen is tiny and praise a 20''?
 
gregord said:
In my experience, connecting a high end lcd over vga is counterproductive. If you are limited to vga source, save some money and get a $100 dollar tn panel like aoc.
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I suppose I knew that, but I wanted someone to prove me wrong. It's too bad, I was keen on buying 2 identical displays, but I can only use HDMI and VGA. I think I might follow your recommendation, if I end up going that route.
 
setekh said:
Do I misunderstand, or are you actually claiming a 23'' screen is tiny and praise a 20''?
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They're roughly the same height since the ea231wmi is 16:9 and the 20wmgx2 isn't. The panel looks like a flaming turd in comparison to the 20wmgx2 though.
 
I have both the EA231WMi and the 20WMGX2 and I'm quite happy with each one. I plan on replacing the 20WMGX2 with another EA231WMi actually. I've had both evaluated by a few picky friends and they would agree with my choice. For the price, the monitor really is hard to beat.
 
Blue Fox said:
I have both the EA231WMi and the 20WMGX2 and I'm quite happy with each one. I plan on replacing the 20WMGX2 with another EA231WMi actually. I've had both evaluated by a few picky friends and they would agree with my choice. For the price, the monitor really is hard to beat.
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Yea right. The ea231wmi looks worse than the Dell 2209wa and the 20wmgx2 looks far better than either of them. The 2209wa has a much better AG coating and doesn't have backlight bleed from all four corners.
 
I have no issues with mine, so it might just be you. I have a FW900 to compare it to as well. I'm replacing it with the EA231WMi as well. Going to buy another 2 shortly.
 
The EA231WMi and the Dell 2209WA both have the same exact coating. I agree that the coating is a bit harsh, but the 2209WA is just as bad. I don't know why people are seeing differences that aren't there. Some people even said the NEC was better. I had multiple units of each, and there was never any variance in the coating.
 
ToastyX said:
The EA231WMi and the Dell 2209WA both have the same exact coating. I agree that the coating is a bit harsh, but the 2209WA is just as bad. I don't know why people are seeing differences that aren't there. Some people even said the NEC was better. I had multiple units of each, and there was never any variance in the coating.
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Mine weren't. I distinctly remember touching the 2209wa screen and when I moved my finger across it, it felt smooth. When i moved my finger across the ea231wmi's screen, it felt rough like sandpaper. Text was also harder to read on the NEC.
 
ebolamonkey001 said:
Yea right. The ea231wmi looks worse than the Dell 2209wa and the 20wmgx2 looks far better than either of them. The 2209wa has a much better AG coating and doesn't have backlight bleed from all four corners.
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I agree with you there, but I assert that the EA231WMi is better for watching HD video.
 
So would this be one of the best options to go with for everyday work related use (spreadsheets, web surfing, quickbooks etc). Occasional personal photo work and I do watch some DVDs once in a while but 95% of the use would be work.

Or should I just stick with cheaper TN panels like the HP 2338h I have at my office.

FYI - this would be 2 LCDs since I need a dual monitor setup at home as well. I also I would just be using DVI since my video card does not have display port and there is no need for me to change at this time.

TIA

Greg
 
SkiesOfAzel said:
I wish i had paid 300$ for it, but not everyone lives in the US. It cost me 350 euros which is more than double the price of an acceptable 23" monitor with a tn panel. What did i pay double for if not for the better colors? Most tn panels i've seen lately are more uniform that this.
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If it has issues, either return it or get a replacement. Sometimes there are problems with individual panels, that doesn't reflect upon the entire monitor line as a whole.
 
Hi guys,

My first post here after utilising the well of knowledge you guys have to offer for months now. Basically, I'm having a really hard time choosing between the samsung xl2370 and the NECea231wmi.

I've heard that the blacks on the samsung are amazing but I dont really know how they compare to an ips. Reading through this gigantic thread colour uniformity issues and backlight bleed have started to worry me as well as the "lottery". Will the samsungs amazing TN panel really compare to NEC's IPS?

Price is the same here in the Uk, so thats not a contributing factor. It will be used mainly for surfing, office, a few movies, xbox360 gaming and thats about it.

Also when googling the NEC, it comes up with a NEC ea231wmi-BK. Any idea what this model is?

All help will be much appreciated. I'm terrible at making decisions and the more I research and read the worse it gets...
 
amazing TN panel
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I have never found anything amazing with any TN panel, personally I find them borderline unusable. TN image quality is trash compared to even mediocre IPS, don't get me wrong though, mediocre IPS wasn't a reference to the EA231wmi.

By the way, the "BK" just stands for the black colour of the plastic fascia.
 
Hi to all,
Found this tread when i was searching for uniformity problems with the ea231wmi, i have mine a couple days now and i also have the color tint problem.
The right half of the screen has a yellow glow, this is the most noticable on a white or grey background.
After reading a couple replies in this thread from people who are having problems getting a replacement by nec for this problem i was not sure contacting nec could get me anywhere.
But i am very pleased to say that after contacting nec today and describing the problem they are gonna send me a new one directly from germany.
Hope i have more luck with the new one, i got mine from a retail shop in Belgium so sending it back was not an option...
 
Update: received a new display today, a first sight no tint issues en no dead pixels.
 
I read this entire forum before deciding to buy this monitor and I am pleased that I did.

I got mine on Amazon.com and it was delivered the next day with standard shipping, which was a cool surprise. On opening it, I loved the matte black bezel, the great adjustable stand with cord management and height adjustment. 23 inches is a nice size, it is about as wide as my Microsoft Multimedia Keyboard.

The highlights of the monitor are that it is a real pleasure to watch movies, play games, and look at photos on. I find that I really have enjoyed seeing the details in all these activities in a richness of color and contrast that I had never experienced in my typical Dell and now Acer Laptop Desktop Replacement computers from the past five years.

The lowlight is that I found myself spending quite a bit of initial time trying the color tweaking and found that all kind of a waste of time since I don't have any equipment and the settings from the user community didn't work well for me. So, in the end decided to go with standard RGB and very high brightness 100 percent and high contrast 75 percent for the best, richest, most enjoyable picture on multimedia stuff and basic web surfing. When I watch a movie I crank the contrast to the full 100 percent and it looks the best to me. I noticed however that doing Excel and Word on these settings causes some eyestrain so I turned them down to 50 for that, the trade off there is that you have a duller screen that doesn't pop, but hey, I am typing.

The speakers aren't bad to me, they sound better if you leave the volume around 50 percent on the monitor controls and use windows to crank it up. Higher than that and I get some buzz and intereference sounds.

On the color shifting and backlight issues and dead pixels I have these comments: none, none, and none, the current Amazon stock appears to be the way to go.

Surprisingly to me, I am just using the standard analog cable and I get a perfect rich picture at 1920x1080p on my Acer 8940G laptop, that laptop has terrible viewing angles and negative black with any slight headshift which really torked me and sent me searching for a monitor to use instead. I had read that this setting doesn't work but I get it showing both in windows and on the monitor itself at that resolution so it must be correct. I got a displayport cable too but it was defective and fell apart and a new one is coming soon, it didn't look any better to me, when the replacement comes I will probably switch to that so I can ditch the wire for audio, it pipes right through that cable on my Windows 7 64bit Home Premium with no drivers, you do have to set it on the monitor menu to use that rather than the analog audio, though, so be sure to do that.

I tried the rotation feature on some photos and an excel and it was a nice feature, however, your cord management might be a problem when go to rotate the monitor so leave enough slack. A full sized 12 mp photo in vertical is stunning to behold.

If you need a new monitor, get this one, my wife wants one for her office now. It was great, we actually watched a movie on it together and it was perfect in a dark room and plenty big enough for two people sitting three feet away on a futon.

You can't get anything else in this quality, this good for $330.
 
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My 2nd one arrives today. I ordered this one from Provantage as well since my first one was perfect. Best monitor I've ever had. :cool:
 
What are the basics to using two screens? I had my laptop set up as one screen and the monitor as the other and wasn't able to move from screen to screen, it must be some simple trick. Does the mouse go from screen to screen, I couldn't get it to? Can I view an excel in one window and a web page in the other? how do I get the mouse to go to the other one to do stuff?
 
timoric said:
What are the basics to using two screens? I had my laptop set up as one screen and the monitor as the other and wasn't able to move from screen to screen, it must be some simple trick. Does the mouse go from screen to screen, I couldn't get it to? Can I view an excel in one window and a web page in the other? how do I get the mouse to go to the other one to do stuff?
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Is the image from the laptop screen cloned in the external monitor? If so, you have to change from clone to extend the working area. What OS are you using?

Once you do that, moving the mouse from screen to screen is as simple as moving left and right (over the edges of each screen). And yes, you can use excel in one and something else in the other. That's the whole beauty of using multiple monitors.
 
OK, so on your desktop press the right button -> screen resolution; choose your external display on the diagram and then then, on the multiple displays tab, choose "extend desktop to this display".

Should do the trick.
 
So my 2nd NEC arrived and again it arrived without a single dead pixel or any manufacturers defect, but I noticed the colors on this 2nd one are a bit better than the one I received 2 weeks ago. I have both of them on "standard" and Srgb and cant get them to match. The first one's colors look just a tad bit washed out compared to this new one. I tried to use the window7 color calibrator and cant get them to even out. I can return the first one and hope the next one I order will better match the colors on the 2nd but it seems like such a big hassle to go through when this monitor would be considered perfect to the average pc user.

Anyone out there using more than one of these or going eyefinity? Should I return or just live with this issue? Shouldn't 2 or 3 monitors from the same manufacturer be able to match up with some slight calibration or am I asking too much?

Oh yeah, one is on display port and the other is on dvi. I swapped onnections and that didnt make a difference.
 
EnJoY120 said:
Man, the 23" looks so small at 16:9 next to the 16:10 Dell.
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well duh... It's an inch smaller, and it has a different aspect ratio. If you compared a 24" 16:9 to a 22.5" 16:10, the 24" would look like a monster.
 
Hello all ,

I have this beautiful lcd and I'd like to 80hz as refreshment screen but unfortunately powerstrip is not compatible with my hd5870.Does someone could create an inf file to make a connection with 80hz DVI or Display Port as erictooth ?

erictooth said:
Thanks a bunch, I've gotten 83hz working perfectly. I don't really know what timings to use and how they affect LCDs (I kind of understand how it works for CRTs though). How would I figure out what values to use for 80hz and 75hz?

By the way, for anyone with a 5xxx series card (and you can't use powerstrip), here's the driver. I've only tested it on Windows 7 + HD5850 + displayport. If for some reason it doesn't work, at worst you'll have to either boot in safemode and uninstall the driver or switch to a dvi cable temporarily to uninstall it.

Edit: Aahhhhhhhhhhhh, no more tearing in any games anymore (with vsync off). Even Dirt 2 is tear-free now. :D
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And sorry for my bad english I'm french ;)
 
is there any negative with using 83hz?
like headache or some other kind of dizziness?

I get eye strain/pain from too much contras/brightness from all displays.

Also the CRT monitor used to give me big headache I could imagine high hz on TFT giving similar effects?
 
Gamerdad said:
So my 2nd NEC arrived and again it arrived without a single dead pixel or any manufacturers defect, but I noticed the colors on this 2nd one are a bit better than the one I received 2 weeks ago. I have both of them on "standard" and Srgb and cant get them to match. The first one's colors look just a tad bit washed out compared to this new one. I tried to use the window7 color calibrator and cant get them to even out. I can return the first one and hope the next one I order will better match the colors on the 2nd but it seems like such a big hassle to go through when this monitor would be considered perfect to the average pc user.

Anyone out there using more than one of these or going eyefinity? Should I return or just live with this issue? Shouldn't 2 or 3 monitors from the same manufacturer be able to match up with some slight calibration or am I asking too much?

Oh yeah, one is on display port and the other is on dvi. I swapped onnections and that didnt make a difference.
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are you using tripple setup?

I currently use this panel (2365wb) as side monitors in portrait with my 2405fpw in middle, I don't really see any differences in colors but I don't look wery accurately on differences so far, in eyefinity only the main display is looked at most of the time.
 
Anyone compared this monitor to the Asus vw246h? I'm thinking of going with the EA231WMi since it seems to be the better monitor but it more money than an Asus.
 
Howie said:
Anyone compared this monitor to the Asus vw246h? I'm thinking of going with the EA231WMi since it seems to be the better monitor but it more money than an Asus.
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It really depends on what you want in a monitor. The ASUS will give you an inch more space, and since it's TN, a bit more responsiveness in FPS games. However the NEC will give you better viewing angles, higher picture quality, and an awesome stand and pivot function. I really like mine, but they are pricier than a TN monitor for sure.
 
Maybe it's just me but my EA231WMi gives me serious eyes strain!
I have to take breaks from stairing at it when I work during the day. I'm not sure it's a by-product of the newer IPS technology or my refresh rate? My older S-PVA screen didn't have this problem at all and I could stair at it for hours without an issue. I'm seriously thinking about selling it because of this reason. Anyone else have this issue?
 
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dirtdiggler said:
Maybe it's just me but my EA231WMi gives me serious eyes strain!
I have to take breaks from stairing at it when I work during the day. I'm not sure it's a by-product of the newer IPS technology or my refresh rate? My older S-PVA screen didn't have this problem at all and I could stair at it for hours without an issue. I'm seriously thinking about selling it because of this reason. Anyone else have this issue?
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that's interesting, I currently have these as side panels and my old 2405fpw as main display, I did notice with black text on white background the text to be "very strong" like brain bleeding.

It does seem like in win 7 when choosing white text and black background getting better.

I will later use the display as main to see if I can use it for long times without eyestrain.

with my 2405fpw I do not see eyestrain but with time I usually decrease the contrast/brightness of it.
 
I'm currently using the ea231wmi as my main display with an old Sony SDM18 as a secondary, and I haven't had any issues with eye strain yet. I'd assume that if I was going to, it would have happened by now, as I've spent in excess of 9 consecutive hours editing word and excel documents on the screen. Text is slightly harsher than on the old Sony TN panel, but its also sharper and more legible. Refresh rate is 60hz over dvi on both panels.
 
you propably need to see what happens when everyday for a week working to get correct information how good this display is.

sometimes 9 consecutive hours is not enough.
 
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