NEC 23" IPS EA231WMi

where is the best place to buy this monitor?
You probably need to watch the prices of a few well regarded sites to see how they fluctuate. I saw Buy.com, Amazon, and Provantage prices for the EA231WMI swing dramatically the week before I purchased mine from Provantage for $295 + shipping (no CA tax).

I felt that Provantage had a decent return policy for this monitor, but I probably did not do enough homework to compare exchange policies with the different on-line stores. I'm glad I have not had to test this!
 
Ok, so to update my thoughts on input lag/ghosting.

I spent a little while playing Oblivion on absolute max settings on this screen, then at minimum settings on a 1280x1024/4ms TN panel I had lying around. I didn't notice any difference in the responsiveness of the controls. MW2 is the only really new game I have to test with, but neither it nor Halo nor Republic Commando seemed any less responsive between the two panels, and there was no (to me) noticeable lag in response.

Halo had what might have been some slight ghosting on one or two occasions, but that may also have been because I had v-sync off and my computer was trying to run it at some strange frame rate. Republic Commando, MW2, and Oblivion looked fine. V-sync was on in Republic Commando and MW2, if that makes any difference. I also failed to notice any ghosting on the blu-ray of V for Vendetta I watched. That doesn't mean it wasn't there, as I'm far from a professional, but I certainly didn't notice any.
 
Does anyone have this monitor hooked-up to a PS3? How do blu-ray movies look with this set-up, 1920 x 1080?

Can the PS3 support 1080P @ 24fps or does it only allow 1080P @ 60fps?

Come to think of it, does this monitor even support 1080P @ 24fps!?!?

I ask because I'm in the process of looking for a blu-ray player below $300.00.

Thanks!
 
Last edited:
You probably need to watch the prices of a few well regarded sites to see how they fluctuate. I saw Buy.com, Amazon, and Provantage prices for the EA231WMI swing dramatically the week before I purchased mine from Provantage for $295 + shipping (no CA tax).

I felt that Provantage had a decent return policy for this monitor, but I probably did not do enough homework to compare exchange policies with the different on-line stores. I'm glad I have not had to test this!

how long did it take from the time you ordered it to the time you got it from provantage?

How much was shipping?

I saw the price and the no CA tax, but then i read some bad reviews of provantage from CA customers. Saying that they ship to the product from their CA warehouse to the east coast, and then back to CA to avoid the CA tax. But the process takes too long and customer service is uncommunicative and, in some cases, rude.

thanks for any info
 
how long did it take from the time you ordered it to the time you got it from provantage?

How much was shipping?

I saw the price and the no CA tax, but then i read some bad reviews of provantage from CA customers. Saying that they ship to the product from their CA warehouse to the east coast, and then back to CA to avoid the CA tax. But the process takes too long and customer service is uncommunicative and, in some cases, rude.

thanks for any info

Provantage does their shipping differently than other vendors I've used like Newegg, because the order has to be shipped to their intermediate warehouse before being sent to you, but they are up front about the process. It was not quick, but it got to my door step just the same. Shipping was $22.65.

I ordered my monitor on the evening of Wednesday 1/6 and it shipped out from the source warehouse in Illinois on 1/7, arriving at the Provantage shipping warehouse in Ohio on 1/11. Provantage then shipped the monitor from Ohio to my home in CA and it arrived on Friday 1/15.

It's hard for me to rate Provantage and their customer service, since this was a simple transaction and nothing went wrong with the shipment or the delivered product (thank goodness). I'm happy with my experience, but I also think I probably should have been more familiar with how they might handle exchanges for things like dead pixels, etc. and how it compares to other vendors like Amazon and Buy.com (their return policy is pretty straight forward).
 
Does anyone have this monitor hooked-up to a PS3? How do blu-ray movies look with this set-up, 1920 x 1080?

Can the PS3 support 1080P @ 24fps or does it only allow 1080P @ 60fps?

Come to think of it, does this monitor even support 1080P @ 24fps!?!?

I ask because I'm in the process of looking for a blu-ray player below $300.00.

Thanks!
PS3 works fine with the monitor. I don't believe it will do 24fps, but I haven't tried it yet.
 
PS3 is capable of outputting 24fps, but it doesn't work with every display, even if the display is technically capable of 1080p/24.
 
Just got my replacement monitor from Buy.com and, I'm sad to say, this one is actually WORSE and will be going back as well. :(

Some images for those of you still on the fence:


-- The contrast of the sides are more pronounced when viewed in person. But it's definitely WORSE than the last version I had. On a GRAY (RGB:128) background, the left of the screen seems almost white, or very light blue. Whereas on the right of the screen, the color appears more green/red'ish.


-- If the uniformity wasn't bad enough, that little white dot that you may notice near the center is not dust on the camera, but rather a dreaded dead pixel!!! JScreen and another app running for over an hour + "massaging" the area w/ a pointed pencil did not fix this.

It's a damn shame. I'd really like to keep this monitor if it wasn't for the uneven balance in brightness (and, now, get rid of the dead pixel!), but I'm assuming ALL EA231WMi's must be cursed w/ the same issue (albeit to other level of degrees), and I'm not sure if I should try the lotto again. So if anyone was successful in getting a near perfect version of this, I for one would be happy to hear of it. Otherwise, I'm 95% leaning towards saying "Screw it" and just getting a refund and play the wait 'n' see game for these new HP IPS monitors recently announced...
 
Just got my LCDS for Buy.com and I'm in love. Here a quick picture of my new babies that I posted in the "show your lcds thread"

Thought I would share it with you guys as well.

DSC_0526.JPG
 
NICE! bigheadanthony

Sorry to hear about your lottery loss Yeastwood. My monitor has some slight color uniformity issues, but I'm 99% sure I'm gonna stick with it. I don't think its worth the hassle of exchange, wait, and pray. Maybe you'll get lucky with a third try? If it wasn't for the damn LG panel quirks, this monitor would be perfect. I absolutely love the the hosing and adjustment features that NEC has built around the LG panel!
 
Last edited:
Hi, everyone -

I received my monitor after only three business days--not bad for free shipping! Unfortunately, I'll be exchanging it immediately. There is considerable backlight bleed, and color uniformity is terrible, possibly as bad as others' worst experiences here.

Regards,
Brian
 
Hey,

Nice NEC Eyefinity system, bighead.

And I see those Klipsch Promedia THX speakers, too.

Rock On!

Peace to you all,
C. Livingstone
 
Color uniformity / backlight bleed never really bugged me much, but on my 3007WFP-HC there was something severely wrong with the coating / display itself... it looked like liquid spilled between the coating and panel or something on the left 1/5th of the screen it wasn't a straight line or anything.

Either way the new one looks perfect by comparison in that regard, although backlight/color uniformity probably aren't perfect.

I picked one of these up from buy.com and will wait for the results... get 2 more later on if it goes well :D

What triple LCD stand is that big-head-anthony ? And does it do portrait mode ?
 
Quick note to bigheadanthony - those look like Klipsch ProMedia speakers - I have the same, they are very directional because of the waveguide on the tweeter. They sound harsher sideways (I tried the same thing and it started bothering me after a while). Not that they are exactly mellow standing up either - one of these days I need to look for new speakers.
 
Just saw this on a review:

"Text on websites was a little fuzzy, but this was quickly resolved by running through the ClearType calibration in Windows 7"

That makes me very scared of purchasing this monitor. I can't stand it if text is worse than a $100 TN panel.
 
I just got my monitor today, and while I really like it the backlight bleed is a bit annoying. Is this pretty average for this monitor?

The room was completely dark, and this was taken straight on.

4297482130_d68fa142da_o.jpg
 
Wow.. ANY backlight bleed is unacceptable, imo. That's ridiculous. Very disappointing.
 
most of you guys are confusing the IPS glow as backlight bleed


2 different things ...

Ok, so this is a normal amount of glow for this monitor? It's annoying because anything in the corners with dark colors looks almost completely desaturated. Also, color temps from the left to right side are around 500K off from my spyder3. I'm still happy with the monitor though, especially for the price. Hopefully NEC's new monitors don't glow as bad as this, but they're not supposed to have the a-tw polarizers :(
 
Ok, so this is a normal amount of glow for this monitor? It's annoying because anything in the corners with dark colors looks almost completely desaturated.

The one I had was no where near that bad. It had a tiny bit in the lower right corner. Thats it. I would get it replaced.

Just saw this on a review:

"Text on websites was a little fuzzy, but this was quickly resolved by running through the ClearType calibration in Windows 7"

That makes me very scared of purchasing this monitor. I can't stand it if text is worse than a $100 TN panel.

Text is slightly grainier than most TNs with the same dot pitch because LG tends to use more aggressive antiglare coatings on IPS panels. But text is quite good on this monitor in my opinion.
 
Just saw this on a review:

"Text on websites was a little fuzzy, but this was quickly resolved by running through the ClearType calibration in Windows 7"

That makes me very scared of purchasing this monitor. I can't stand it if text is worse than a $100 TN panel.
It seems that quote is from Bit-Tech review. Here's a link if anyone is interested, altough it's not very in-depth and offers nothing if you've already read Prad's and TFTCentral's reviews.
 
Last edited:
Could someone recommend RGB settings to use with this monitor?
Since you don't have a calibration device, it's best to use the sRGB mode (or Native, there's some difference, but TFTCentral thought sRGB is more accurate). Fortunately the factory calibration is pretty good and since you can't change RGB values in sRGB/Native mode, you don't need them.
 
Someone else's RGB values aren't really any sort of thing to go by. The difference between my two monitors in terms of RGB values is quite big.
 
I just got my monitor today, and while I really like it the backlight bleed is a bit annoying. Is this pretty average for this monitor?

The room was completely dark, and this was taken straight on.

4297482130_d68fa142da_o.jpg

That looks pretty bad to me. I don't have that monitor but I do have a 20" IPS that doesn't "GLOW" or "BLEED" like that. That would annoy me.
 
Some of these backlight pictures are outrageous

They can seem much worse if you have a long exposure time etc.

Honestly I think if you're unhappy with ti you can talk to NEC about it, they're supposed to have really good support. And if they keep coming back with backlight bleed maybe it's just poor quality / design and there's nothing you can do about it.

I'm willing to take the risk though, as backlight bleed doesn't bug me that much.
 
IPS glow is what you see at an angle. The picture taken is not glow, it is uneven backlight bleed and it is a little worse than average, IMHO.
 
IPS glow is what you see at an angle. The picture taken is not glow, it is uneven backlight bleed and it is a little worse than average, IMHO.

I disagree. The picture has captured in an overexposed manner the diagonal glow of current IPS monitors.
 
Yeah,

That photo looks nothing like my NEC EA231WMi looks like with my own eyes.

Peace to you all,
C. Livingstone
 
I'd also prefer the silver/white color, but can't find it in the US. Anyone find it available in the US?

Note: I see the silver/white on the NEC UK web site, but not on the US NEC web site.
Is this monitor offered in silver in the US yet? All US resellers I've seen so far only offer the black model :( Black matches all my other accessories but I'd prefer the silver :(
 
Well, I just bought one for $210. Hopefully it's as nice as my 20WMGX2. I have a FW900 to compare it to too, but we'll see...
 
Back
Top