Square Monitor - 1:1, 1920p - EIZO EV2730Q

[Dredgy]

So this is a piece of tech that most people won't be able to try out, so I thought I'd do the hard yards. It's the Eizo 1:1 Square monitor - the EV2730Q. I think it's a really interesting piece of tech and would love to hear your thoughts.

 

@ALwin @ShadowCaptain if you haven't seen already. @Windspeed36 thought this might interest you.

 

 

 

Ironically the video is best viewed in 1440p on a 21:9 display. I worked really hard on the video so would like your opinion on it, as well as the monitor.

 

Positives

- Excellent quality panel, little to no backlight bleed, 10 bit IPS with great viewing angles and high colour accuracy.

- Perfect pixel density. Same amount of pixels as a 2560*1440p display in a 26.5" square. Can be pushed to 2048*2048.

- Good stand with tilt and height adjust.

- Resolution is f**king awesome for productivity. Cuts down on excess whitespace you get on 16:9 and 21:9 displays - nearly every pixel is actually useable.

- Best for video editing, audio editing, database/spreadsheet, layout design, photo viewing, web browsing, CAD, programming.....everything that's productive.

- Motion sensor for waking up the monitor when you sit down at your desk.

 

Negatives

- Price. Though if you are making money off of your work, this is a worthy investment.

- Speakers are terrible. Like 1W affairs with no depth. Even for monitor speakers....

- Gaming field of view is terrible, albeit novel.

 

 

Any questions or comments, please ask. This is unusual technology to see in a "consumer" space, and it still fascinates me. Never had anything change the way I work so drastically, so quickly.

[Paralectic]

One question: Why?

Okay.. for Roller Coaster Tycoon..

[Ivyk]

1 minute ago, Paralectic said:

One question: Why?

Okay.. for Roller Coaster Tycoon..

Work.

[Paralectic]

Just now, Ivyk said:

Work.

How so?

[You_are_a_cunt]

2 minutes ago, Paralectic said:

One question: Why?

Okay.. for Roller Coaster Tycoon..

I'd actually love a couple of these at work. Less scrolling would be so nice...

[Ivyk]

Just now, Paralectic said:

How so?

 

7 minutes ago, Dredgy said:

- Excellent quality panel, little to no backlight bleed, 10 bit IPS with great viewing angles and high colour accuracy.

- Perfect pixel density. Same amount of pixels as a 2560*1440p display in a 26.5" square. Can be pushed to 2048*2048.

- Good stand with tilt and height adjust.

- Resolution is f**king awesome for productivity. Cuts down on excess whitespace you get on 16:9 and 21:9 displays - nearly every pixel is actually useable.

- Best for video editing, audio editing, database/spreadsheet, layout design, photo viewing, web browsing, CAD, programming.....everything that's productive.

- Motion sensor for waking up the monitor when you sit down at your desk.

 

[Paralectic]

Just now, Ivyk said:

 

 

k

[Dredgy]

Just now, Paralectic said:

One question: Why?

Okay.. for Roller Coaster Tycoon..

RCT3 might have to happen. But it is literally night and day with everything else, and I show examples in the video. Nearly everything is made better and it's saved me massive amounts of time on programming and video editing projects. I really can't remember another piece of tech that has changed how I work so much for the better.

 

 

 

 

[Paralectic]

Just now, Dredgy said:

RCT3 might have to happen. But it is literally night and day with everything else, and I show examples in the video. Nearly everything is made better and it's saved me massive amounts of time on programming and video editing projects. I really can't remember another piece of tech that has changed how I work so much for the better.

 

 

 

 

The benefit here is from the pixel amount more than the aspect ratio I recon?

[Dredgy]

1 minute ago, Paralectic said:

The benefit here is from the pixel amount more than the aspect ratio I recon?

 

No, it's a combination of the resolution and aspect ratio (as well as physical size). I have 4K monitors, 2560*1440p monitors and 3440P*1440P monitors and (for work) this beats all of them. A 2560*1440P screen has exactly the same number of pixels and is nowhere near as useable. The problem with widescreen monitors, is that they have a lot of horizontal space (great for content consumption) but most professional and mildly productive tasks need vertical space more (which is why 5:4 or 4:5 monitors are still common in offices)

 

Plus most applications are designed to work (and work well) on a monitor that is 1920 pixels across, so there is no added whitespace (happens on 21:9s and 1440P monitors) and you don't have to deal with scaling.  

[Guest]

Really good video dude, might look into that monitor myself

[TheGamingBarrel]

Just now, Windspeed36 said:

Really good video dude, might look into that monitor myself

Your work have never sold one? Get a shipment in and then sell them to yourself

[ShadowCaptain]

36 minutes ago, Paralectic said:

The benefit here is from the pixel amount more than the aspect ratio I recon?

The aspect ratio is great for productivity which rarely takes widescreen into account

[ALwin]

If I'm going to get an Eizo monitor, it will be from their ColorEdge line of products.  A 4K model with very wide gamut.  While a square display sounds nice for productivity, as I work a lot with media more than documents, I need that wide gamut and color accuracy.  If I need the vertical space, I do have a spare monitor that I can turn on its side.

[Sharif]

Great video! 

[Dredgy]

23 hours ago, Windspeed36 said:

Really good video dude, might look into that monitor myself

 

If you can justify the cost, might as well. I couldn't quite bring myself to do it for my personal rig, but will likely pick up a couple for the office. Though the price discrepancy between retail and wholesale isn't quite as much as I'd like. Then again, a curved ultrawide is only a couple of hundred dollars cheaper so I guess it's not that much of a stretch

 

19 hours ago, ALwin said:

If I'm going to get an Eizo monitor, it will be from their ColorEdge line of products.  A 4K model with very wide gamut.  While a square display sounds nice for productivity, as I work a lot with media more than documents, I need that wide gamut and color accuracy.  If I need the vertical space, I do have a spare monitor that I can turn on its side.

We have ones with in-built calibrators, but I don't really know anything about them, and my poor colour perception makes me the worst possible person to review it.

 

16 hours ago, Sharif said:

Great video! 

Thanks, glad you enjoyed.

[chicksoup]

People talk about how inconvenient 16:9 is, but am I the only one not having issues working with this kind of aspect ratio?

[Dredgy]

Just now, chicksoup said:

People talk about how inconvenient 16:9 is, but am I the only one not having issues working with this kind of aspect ratio?

I use 16:9 without issues every day (I have 5 16:9 monitors on my personal rig). Doesn't mean there aren't better solutions though - you don't realize how much you're compromising until you've tried something that doesn't make you compromise. 

Now that you have 1080p and 1440P and even 2160P monitors at 16:9, it's alot more workable than it used to be. When everything was switching from 4:3/5:4 to 16:9, it was usually 768p or 900p monitors and they were/are TERRIBLE for things such as spreadsheets.

[chicksoup]

I can understand that struggle  have used old school monitors like that. I'm actually really intrigued by the ultrawide monitors and plan on buying one when I upgrade in a year or so

[minibois]

When this monitor was announced I asked what it was for, I also heard it was for people who played Quake competitively. So.. Got any opinions on that? (not planning to get this monitor tbh)

[Dredgy]

3 minutes ago, Minibois said:

When this monitor was announced I asked what it was for, I also heard it was for people who played Quake competitively. So.. Got any opinions on that? (not planning to get this monitor tbh)

 

I haven't played quake since the 90s, so I'm not sure what this monitor would bring to the table? I would think a high refresh rate monitor (EIZO do make a "240HZ" one) would still be the better option, unless there's some special FOV requirements in Quake I'm not aware of.

 

This is definitely geared towards productivity in a professional environment. That's what it was marketed to me as and, after using it, that's definitely the case. I've been back on more conventional monitors the last week and am probably going to end up forking out the big bucks for the Square

 

I was talking to EIZO about it's use cases, and square monitors are apparently very necessary in air traffic control (makes sense, you want radar displays to be equidistant from center point). ATC uses a much more expensive model though, that's not available to the general public - and features stuff such as redundant SDI inputs and replaceable backlights.

[l__T__l]

I personally prefer using a 16:10 monitor that has an arm attached or a decent quality stand as its good for content consumption and for work or web browsing you can just put it in portait giving more vertical space. I prefer 16:10 as its close to the aspect ratio of your vision but 16:9 would work just as well.

[Dredgy]

2 hours ago, l__T__l said:

I personally prefer using a 16:10 monitor that has an arm attached or a decent quality stand as its good for content consumption and for work or web browsing you can just put it in portait giving more vertical space. I prefer 16:10 as its close to the aspect ratio of your vision but 16:9 would work just as well.

 

Not even close to the same thing. I use a 16:10 (on an arm) as my daily driver (where I had the 1:1 in the video) and it just doesn't allow for as easy an experience as the 1:1 in any area of content creation, especially print design, video editing, spreadsheeting, audio editing, database design, diagramming/drafting or programming. Directly compared side by side with the 1:1 monitor, both 16:10 and 16:9 are awful!

 

Aside from the issues mentioned with rotating a monitor in the video (reconfiguring things such as desktop background, resolution etc), most tasks - if not all - greatly benefit from having both horizontal and vertical working area.

[Curufinwe_wins]

On 4/21/2016 at 11:42 PM, Dredgy said:

 

Not even close to the same thing. I use a 16:10 (on an arm) as my daily driver (where I had the 1:1 in the video) and it just doesn't allow for as easy an experience as the 1:1 in any area of content creation, especially print design, video editing, spreadsheeting, audio editing, database design, diagramming/drafting or programming. Directly compared side by side with the 1:1 monitor, both 16:10 and 16:9 are awful!

 

Aside from the issues mentioned with rotating a monitor in the video (reconfiguring things such as desktop background, resolution etc), most tasks - if not all - greatly benefit from having both horizontal and vertical working area.

So just a comment here.... But 16:10 is literally identical functionality to two smaller 4:5s... 

 

I use dual 16:9 (I do attest 16:10 might be preferable) and absolutely detest 1:1 and 4:5 monitors, there isn't anywhere close to enough horizontal space to do what I need to (either spreadsheets which require the full space of a single 16:9, or 4 strips of space for supreme multitasking (esp relevant when I need to write reports).

 

But hey, I rarely use real full screen on any one application (outside of excel or teamviewer if that counts).

 

Perhaps the issue is you are comparing to bad choices... A 40in 4k 16:9 panel offers even greater vertical and horizontal physical space compared to two of these 1:1s (with the same or greater pixel count in both dimensions) and is available at significantly lower prices than even one of these 1:1 displays.

 

Also it takes up less space on a desk and doesn't require a multi-mount system.

[Dredgy]

@Curufinwe_wins I tested pretty much every scenario you listed above, including my 4K TV and monitors, 21:9 monitors, my work dual 5:4s, a projector we use for collaborating on programming, professional colour grading monitors, my personal 144Hz gaming monitors and 16:10 production monitor, and an old 4:3 and a couple of 1440p monitors I had laying around. The 1:1 dominated all of them in productivity scenarios, as it was the perfect physical size, resolution, pixel density etc. A 40" 4K TV does give you a lot of space to work with, but I can about 10 minutes of actually using a display that big on my desk before I'm schizophrenic.

 

The one I reviewed here does have the full horizontal resolution of a 1080p 16:9 display which makes it perfect for spreadsheeting. I replaced all the business monitors with these and my analysts and accountants - none of whom are particular computer savvy - have all reported satisfaction and an increase in productivity.