NEC EA275WMi 27-inch QHD IPS Monitor Review

Reviews
By Christian Eberle
published

There are few monitors engineered or built better than those from NEC. Today we’re testing the EA275WMi, a 27" QHD-resolution IPS panel with features that will appeal to enterprise and business-class users.

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OSD Setup & Calibration

The extensive OSD is exactly the same as seen in previous EA-series displays. Touching the Menu key brings up your options along with small labels telling you the functions of the other controls.

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The luminance menu controls brightness and contrast along with several options for power saving and settings for the sensors mounted on the bezel. The EA275WMi can be programmed to shut down after you walk away from your desk or just dim the backlight. It can also vary output based on ambient light levels. To ensure accurate calibration, we turned the sensors and the Eco mode off. This menu also offers six fully-adjustable picture modes. We stuck with the default Standard preset for all testing.

The aspect menu allows sizing of the image for analog signals. In this case, you’d have to use a DVI input for that since there’s no VGA connector. The main feature of this menu however is the Uniformity option at the bottom. That can be either on or off. If you want finer control, NEC’s PA-series monitors offer five levels of compensation.

The color menu has seven color temp presets plus a programmable memory that works with NEC’s calibration instrument. N (Native) and sRGB are identical and come pretty close to Rec.709 and D65. The numbered slots can be adjusted with very precise RGB sliders. D stands for Dicom Sim and is used for some medical imaging equipment.

Remaining ergonomic settings are packed into the fourth sub-menu. You can control things like LED brightness, DDC/CI, DisplayPort MST, PBP, overdrive, and the like. We left all these settings at their defaults for our tests.

The OSD menu offers nine languages plus lock, timeout, and hot key functions. You can also control on-screen messages here. Of note is the Data Copy option, which copies settings from the master to the sub-monitors in a ControlSync setup. We were able to test this since we had a second EA275WMi on hand. Full details are on the next page.

The last two screens are all about information. Every NEC display has detailed power consumption data which includes carbon footprint and actual energy cost based on the user’s particular rates. Signal info includes resolution and refresh rate along with the monitor’s serial number.

Calibration

The EA275WMi comes set to its Standard picture mode and Native color temp. This combination produces very accurate color and is not in great need of a calibration. Our only gripe is the default gamma tracking is a bit off the 2.2 standard. There is no gamma control, so the only way to make improvements is to calibrate one of the numbered memories. We chose number 3 and tweaked the RGB sliders to get all grayscale errors below 1dE. This helped gamma a little and added a bit more boldness to the image. Please feel free to try our settings below. If you have the SpectraView II kit with meter and software, you can achieve the same results without making adjustments to the OSD.

Swipe to scroll horizontally
NEC EA275WMi Calibration Settings
DV ModeStandard
Brightness 200cd/m252
Brightness 120cd/m229
Brightness 100cd/m223
Brightness 80cd/m217
Brightness 50cd/m29
Color Temp 3Red 96.9, Green 98.4, Blue 96.4
Christian Eberle
Christian Eberle
Contributing Editor

Christian Eberle is a Contributing Editor for Tom's Hardware US. He's a veteran reviewer of A/V equipment, specializing in monitors. Christian began his obsession with tech when he built his first PC in 1991, a 286 running DOS 3.0 at a blazing 12MHz. In 2006, he undertook training from the Imaging Science Foundation in video calibration and testing and thus started a passion for precise imaging that persists to this day. He is also a professional musician with a degree from the New England Conservatory as a classical bassoonist which he used to good effect as a performer with the West Point Army Band from 1987 to 2013. He enjoys watching movies and listening to high-end audio in his custom-built home theater and can be seen riding trails near his home on a race-ready ICE VTX recumbent trike. Christian enjoys the endless summer in Florida where he lives with his wife and Chihuahua and plays with orchestras around the state.

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8 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Jeffrey_44
    That's a sweet little monitor you got there. I run four 23 in Lenovo LCD monitors here on my trading station. Looking to do a server upgrade next spring and go with 32 or 36 in monitors. Getting old. Sometimes, the pips are hard to see...lo!
    Reply
  • thundervore
    NEC monitors are always a beauty. Nice matte black, not the shiny piano black we see everywhere. These always go toe to toe against the Dells that cost more.
    Reply
  • DirgDub
    "NEC’s much vaunted build quality"
    Both of my EA231wmi monitors died just after the 3 year warranty expired.
    Reply
  • kittle
    Love my NEC PA27W - its still going strong after several years of use. NOT cheap, but it should last through several system upgrades.
    and despite what the gaming sites say, its great for games and movies, general use..and the occasional photo
    Reply
  • alidan
    what is uc on uc off in the contrast page?
    Reply
  • Spanky Deluxe
    I'm so fed up with these 27" monitors. Why can't they make something a little larger. 32-40. My 30" 2560x1600 monitor is almost a decade old but I'm yet to see anything that tempts me to upgrade. I'm probably going to have to hold out until 8k becomes mainstream and we get 8k 40" panels.
    Reply
  • alidan
    18845567 said:
    I'm so fed up with these 27" monitors. Why can't they make something a little larger. 32-40. My 30" 2560x1600 monitor is almost a decade old but I'm yet to see anything that tempts me to upgrade. I'm probably going to have to hold out until 8k becomes mainstream and we get 8k 40" panels.

    https://www.amazon.com/Philips-Computer-Monitor-3840x2160-Truevision/dp/B00UBCVY02/

    It may not be the best monitor, but its a 40 inch 4k monitor.
    Honestly Im toying with the idea of a 2 monitor setup myself, something massive for every day use, 40-50 inch 4k, especially if i can get 10 bit and a fantastic contrast ratio, and then something for more demanding things like gaming

    also, 8k is never going to be a thing, at least till its so trivial to make the panels it just out right replaces 4k for the same price. 4k looks amazing in a store, when you are up close, you see the crispness, but then put the 50-60 inch tv 7-10 feet away from you and that 1080p tv right next to it looks the same for far less money., the same will be true for 8k, on a computer, there is a practical benefit for photographers, artists, people who work with video, but for the normal person they ui scale their crap up the monitor looks the same as the old one maybe a bit crisper in areas, but it takes 4 times the hardware to run it even idle.

    the next thing that will push monitors forward is oled, possibly quantum dot if they emit their own light, don't know enough to make a call there. Not sure if you know this, but contrast is the number 1 thing that determines how good a monitor looks ot normal people, nothing else matters so long as its at least tn quality, but contrast is king. its funny to me how much manufactures lie on boxes for this too, had an argument with someone who claimed his 3000:1 monitor was worse then his apple 5k, and i had to dig up a review for his monitor where they did the contrast test and not just put out a press release, turns out that his monitor was actually about 800:1 and apple is around 1250:1

    contrast ratio is what will push sales of tvs and monitors next, and it will be oled or qd that do it. and you want the normal people to adopt things enmass, just because that drives the price down faster.
    Reply
  • Spanky Deluxe
    Yeah, I know about the 40" 4K one. I've thought about it numberous times but it doesn't really feel like enough of an upgrade - it's about the same DPI as my 30". I'd like a bigger size with more pixels and a higher resolution too. 5k at 40 would be perfect. I'm using two 20" 1600x1200 monitors in portrait mode either side of my 30" and I'd ideally like a larger monitor that I feel can replace the whole lot. If they'd made 32" 5k monitors instead of 27", I would have bought one years ago.
    Reply