EIZO Nanao Color Edge CG18

Eizo Nanao ColorEdge CG18 Review

by Sean Captain

- What's Hot: The ColorEdge CG18 posted some of the highest graphics scores we've seen for large LCDs. It displayed our two test photograph screens with a full spectrum of true-to-life colors: In our photograph of a fruit tart, strawberries had deeper reds, and blueberries had more subtle shadings of blue, than they did on competing LCDs. In our photograph of children, skin tones looked remarkably lifelike. The CG18 is one of the few LCDs that use a 10-bit (1024-step) internal lookup table to smooth out the shadings and color gradients specified by the 8-bit (256-step) signals coming from the operating system of the PC or Macintosh machine. (The Sharp LL-T1820B, reviewed alongside the CG18, also features a 10-bit table.) Each CG18 comes with a certificate from the factory stating that Eizo custom-adjusted the 256 tones for each primary color by selecting from the 1024 possibilities allowed by the 10-bit lookup table. The goal, according to Eizo, is to produce the smoothest transitions from the very lightest shades to the very darkest--a progression known as the gamma curve. When looking at this monitor from a variety of angles, we saw very little color shift.