I had been using an EIZO ColorEdge CG241W for the last eleven and a half years, and during that time grown to love and trust that monitor. Well, in fact also grown to not trust any other brand when it comes to high-end color correct displays (no, it’s not prejudice, it’s experience).

While the CG241W still works perfectly, my recent upgrade to the current (2019) 8-core MacBook Pro having 10-bit per component color capability was a good cause to get a new monitor.

I did think about going larger than 24″ for a while. But also didn’t want the super tiny pixels of a 31″ 4K display.

Here I have to note that Retina-style (high DPI) displays are totally unusable for photo editing – you simply can’t see what’s sharp and what’s not. Unfortunately the CG319X, having an even superior panel than the 279X, fell out because of its tiny pixels (at 149 PPI vs the 109 PPI of the 27″ size).

From EIZO’s current lineup two monitors matched my size/resolution criteria: the CG2730 and the CG279X (the latter replacing the CG277). The 2730 was quickly ruled out because it doesn’t support Gray Balance priority I’m used to with the CG241W. Plus the CG279X can be fed with a single USB-C cable (for both DisplayPort signal and upstream USB), which greatly reduces cable clutter on my desk (more on this in a later post).

The monitor arrived six days ago, and I’m still in awe. It is a very rare occasion to see me running out of (positive) superlatives when describing a device. This is because it is very rare to have a device that doesn’t exhibit even a tiny fault within a week.

The EIZO ColorEdge CG279X is such a device.

Setup

It is pretty straightforward: connect the cables, and install ColorNavigator 7. But since the monitor’s main market is HDR video editing, it has to be reconfigured for a better fit for photo editing and print proofing. The setting I’m referring to is called DUE Priority, which needs to be set to Uniformity (which is also the one recommended by EIZO). My unit arrived set to Brightness, so you at least need to check it before calibration.

Well, my only minor gripe with the monitor is that this setting isn’t trivial to access. You either have to go to the administration menu (hold the leftmost button and the power switch for two seconds when turning on the monitor) or use ColorNavigator. In the latter case you have to manually enable the Monitor option setting extension in the app’s preferences for the DUE Priority item to appear under the Monitor settings menu. Both are documented in the user manuals, so it’s worth reading them.

Calibration

My usual practice is to set the monitor to 80 cd/m2, D50, L* gamma (my complete workflow, even working spaces, revolves around L* gamma) and Gray Balance priority.

The CG279X calibrates beautifully, with the average deltaE 2000 being less than 0.5, and the highest deviation not being more that 2.

Note that this is a hardware calibrated device, so the calibration curves are stored in the monitor’s internal LUT. It’s worth mentioning that all monitors drift over time, so regular re-calibration is mandatory.

Calling any monitor that lacks hardware calibration abilities a professional device is pure marketing bullshit in my book (yes, I’m referring to Apple’s new Pro Display XDR, for example).

The CG279X removes another pain from my life: assembling the spectrophotometer for calibration. It has a built-in colorimeter for the job. It is so much easier to just fire up ColorNavigator and let it do everything without human intervention.

There’s even self-calibration ability: you can program the monitor to wake up in the middle of the night, sit for 30 minutes to warm up and do an automatic calibration. The only downside is that your display profile won’t be updated, so I prefer to do it the good old way.

10-bit per component color

Or 30-bit color, in Photoshop parlance. As I mentioned earlier, this was one of my excuses to get this beast. Please keep in mind that you need a cooperating graphics card, operating system and applications for proper 10-bit color. The Radeon Pro Vega 20 in my 15″ MacBook Pro supports it. macOS 10.14.5 supports it. The weakest link is application support.

At the time of writing, I get 10-bit color in Photoshop CC 2019 and Capture One 12.1. Maybe in earlier versions, and other apps, but these are what I’m using and can say anything about. Lightroom doesn’t handle 10-bit color. In Photoshop you should check whether 30-bit display is enabled (in Preferences > Performance… > Advanced Settings…), but Capture One automatically engages it.

Pricing – in different light

Retailing for around 1700 EUR net, it isn’t a cheap shot. But if you are only using the monitor for the five-year warranty period, that’s 0.93 EUR a day. My former CG241W did cost me about 0.33 EUR a day (during its 11.5 year service time). And this doesn’t include the resale value. So for less than the price of a coffee a day, you can get the best monitor money can buy for photo editing and print proofing. Think about it.

  ☕ ☕ ☕

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