Eizo ColorEdge CE240W

At $1650, Eizo's 24-inch ColorEdge CE240W is not for everyone--and that's not a bad thing. Its target audience of graphics professionals will appreciate its handy color-correction software. Touch-sensitive controls and a tiny blue LED power indicator at the bottom of the monitor add a shot of pizzazz to an otherwise staid design. But with impressive performance numbers in PC World tests and an outstanding warranty, Eizo's unit proves that it's no slouch and deserves consideration.

The warranty includes a rare five years on labor and three years on parts. In addition, you get round-the-clock support.

Word documents and Excel spreadsheets had a fine readability on this monitor. Some testers found the factory default screen settings a bit dark, but it was one of the best at producing distinguishable shades of white. The LCD really excelled in our graphics tests. Judges found it to have rich, well-saturated colors. Photos of a variety of glazed fruits and skin tones showed a satisfying naturalness, while object detail was very good indeed. Cumulative points in these areas pushed the ColorEdge up to a score of Very Good.

A viewing of scenes from Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl bore out some initial impressions of the monitor's dark settings. However, a hidden "sRGB" setting, accessed through the on-screen display (OSD) controls' left arrow, adjusted the brightness and contrast to showcase the unit's movie-screening talents. Here, as with some other good performers, colors were rich and warm. Darker swaths of movie scenes are well-defined. The monitor handles action sequences nimbly, marred only by very slight artifacting in the sky and manageable ghosting when characters run or the camera pans. All in all, it's an excellent monitor for occasional movie viewing.

As mentioned, Eizo's black-bezeled wide-screen (which also comes in white) includes OSD adjustments. The four touch-sensitive arrows on the thick subpanel at the bottom of the bezel help you go through these controls. The most difficult part of the OSD is trying to get out of the menu, because you need to scroll back to the top menu item each time, but it was otherwise adequately navigable.

The base of the monitor swivels almost 360 degrees, a convenient feature when sharing your work or making a presentation to a circle of colleagues or clients. The panel does not pivot, but it tilts and is height-adjustable on a unique mechanism Eizo calls ArcSwing. Instead of moving up and down, the panel slides on an arc or curve. At its lowest point, a user can look down at the panel almost as if it were a very large book or, more appropriately, an electronically illuminated manuscript. I felt this adjustment to be more difficult than with other panels, however, requiring more force to move the display up and down (don't think of using just one hand), coupled with a constant tilting motion. (Another reviewer, though, quite liked this same mechanism on another Eizo monitor.)

The ColorEdge CE240W doesn't come with a lot of added features. Two USB ports on the side let you connect peripherals, but they're also useful for USB-connected calibration hardware, which is sold separately. You'll need such a unit--for example, the $279 ColorVision Spyder2 Pro (which I used in my hands-on evaluation) or the $249 GretagMacbeth Eye-One Display 2-- for the color-correction software to operate at all. (Eizo anticipates that many graphics professionals will have this hardware already). Two DVI-I ports connect the monitor to your graphics card, while an included VGA-to-DVI adapter ensures compatibility with older cards.

Roy Santos