Eizo ColorEdge CG241W Contrast Variation?

[sjt1]

I have recently gone from a CRT monitor to an LCD on my desktop machine, and one thing that is bugging me is the contrast variation I get if I view the screen at different angles. When doing photoshop, the little picture in the navigator window at the top right of the screen is noticeably darker than the main picture, because the main picture is lower on the screen and I am looking at it at a different angle - the lower your eyes are, the darker the screen becomes. This makes judging contrast of the picture difficult. BTW I have calibrated the screen with a spyder 3.

I have read about the Eizo ColorEdge CG241W on here and other places and it looks like a very nice machine, good in many respects, but could anyone that has one tell me if the contrast variation I talk about above is present or absent on the CG241W? I would hope that you should see constant contrast when viewing at a wide set of angles, but I would like to have confirmation.

Thanks for any replies

Steve Taylor

[thrid]

If you are going to spend that sort of money take a look at this LCD screen.

HP DreamColor LP2480zx

HP DreamColor LCD hands-on event: 1bn colors & CRT-class images - SlashGear

HP DreamColor LP2480zx Professional Display overview - HP Small & Medium Business products

I know some of the people that helped design this screen and apparently it will blow away pretty much everything else out there. The goal was to come as close as possible to the Sony Artisan CRT, which was the standard display in film and design work for many years. We had benchmarked pretty much all highend displays from EIZO, NEC etc, so there was a good baseline to compare to.

I know someone who saw one of these about two weeks ago and he said it was basically the best LCD he had ever seen.

Believe it or not the NEC Spectraview 2090 and 2190 will outperform many displays that cost twice as much as they do. These screens are rather small, so many people run a two monitor setup. The NEC for color accuracy and a second monitor to work on.

[AlanG]

Originally Posted by sjt1

I have recently gone from a CRT monitor to an LCD on my desktop machine, and one thing that is bugging me is the contrast variation I get if I view the screen at different angles...

Steve Taylor

Your LCD almost surely uses a TN panel. These are the least expensive panels and have a lot of variation from top to bottom depending on viewing angle. If you look at your screen at an extreme angle from the very bottom and it beomes a negative image, then you have a TN panel.

I have an NEC 2690 and it uses an S-IPS panel which is very even at any viewing angle. It also has hardware and software that makes the brightness of the entire screen very even.

I also have a Samsung 213T from a few years ago. It uses a PVA panel and I can certainly see differences in contrast in shadow areas from side to side. (E.g. when I look at part of an image straight on it shows more shadow detail then if I move my head over and look at the same spot from a slight angle.) It is my understanding that some newer PVA panels are better than this one. But I haven't compared any.

The Eizo CG241W (widescreen) has a 24 inch 6 ms (g2g) S-PVA (Samsung LTM240CS) panel. (According to flatpanels.dk)

Here are two resources that may help:

TFT Central - LCD Monitor Information, Reviews, Guides and News

Face to Face : cameras, printers, ... - DigitalVersus

As for the Dreamcolor display, that certainly looks promising but I don't see how we can take advantage of its 30 bits (10 bits per color.) There are a number of graphics cards that support 10 bits per color hardware, but the software we typically use doesn't. These cards seem to be aimed mostly at gamers but it seems odd to me as there have been so few 10 bit monitors to use them on. NEC used to also make a 30 bit screen and I wondered then how to take advantage of it.

I presume there is some kind of software support out there for people using this display in animation or game applications, but I don't know what.

[hoppyman]

Originally Posted by sjt1

I have recently gone from a CRT monitor to an LCD on my desktop machine, and one thing that is bugging me is the contrast variation I get if I view the screen at different angles. When doing photoshop, the little picture in the navigator window at the top right of the screen is noticeably darker than the main picture, because the main picture is lower on the screen and I am looking at it at a different angle - the lower your eyes are, the darker the screen becomes. This makes judging contrast of the picture difficult. BTW I have calibrated the screen with a spyder 3.

I have read about the Eizo ColorEdge CG241W on here and other places and it looks like a very nice machine, good in many respects, but could anyone that has one tell me if the contrast variation I talk about above is present or absent on the CG241W? I would hope that you should see constant contrast when viewing at a wide set of angles, but I would like to have confirmation.

Thanks for any replies

Steve Taylor

Steve it is precisely that eveness across different viewing angles that make the Eizo monitors really stand out when first you look at one. The tonal range is also really, really smooth. At the PMA show in Australia this year, the Eizo monitors were prominent on about 95% of the exhibitors' displays. The new 22 inch smaller brother sold out every single demo model completely from the stands on the trade days before the public even arrived. So yes, they are that good. Get thee to a dealer and look for yourself!

[sjt1]

Thanks so much to those that replied. I looked at the websites in the posts above and phoned up colour confidence in the UK and the answer I got from them was consistent with that here: the contrast variation is much less on the Eizo. I have one ordered, and will report back when it turns up.

Thanks again. Very helpful.

Steve

[sjt1]

Well I have had the monitor for about 3 weeks now and it is magnificent. There are so many more colours visible than with other monitors I use. Even the button bar of windows vista looks more colourful (this is a reasonable test as I see this quite a lot on other computers and on the Eizo screen it is clearly more colourful).

There is a small contrast variation if you look at extreme angles (e.g. standing up looking downwards at the monitor from a foot away), but when sitting at the monitor it is good indeed.

Overall I'm very pleased, and I don't regret digging into my savings for this!

Steve Taylor