The LG ColorPrime 27EA83-D monitor takes aim at professional photographers and content creators who require accurate color reproduction to ply their trade. It uses 10-bit color technology and a beautiful 27-inch IPS panel to deliver solid color and grayscale performance and is loaded with features, including a USB 3.0 hub, TruColor Pro calibration software, an ergonomic stand, and three digital video inputs. It can display 99-percent of the Adobe color space and has a maximum resolution of 2,560-by-1,440. You'll pay top dollar for all this goodness but if your business demands the best, the LG 27EA83-D delivers, which is why it merits our Editors' Choice for high-end monitors.
Design and Features
The 27EA83-D is modestly stylish. The back of the matte black cabinet is textured and sports an LG logo while the front is framed by thin (0.80-inches) black bezels. The bottom bezel contains another LG logo as well as five touch sensitive buttons beneath its right corner. A brushed silver band adorns the cabinet's perimeter.
The cabinet itself weighs 12.1 pounds and is 1.5 inches thick. The rectangular stand and mounting arm assembly adds another four pounds to the total weight and 7.4 inches to the overall depth. The stand provides 20-degrees of tilt and a little more than 4-inches of height adjustability, but oddly, it doesn't swivel. You can pivot the panel 90-degrees for portrait mode viewing but unlike the NEC MultiSync PA271W($999.00 at Amazon), it does not support automatic image rotation. it The cabinet has 100mm x 100mm VESA compatible mounting holes if you prefer to hang the monitor on a wall.
Video inputs include dual link DVI, DisplayPort, and HDMI ports, and there's a four-port USB 3.0 hub (1 up, 3 down) and a headphone jack. All ports are at the rear of the cabinet but they face outward for easy access. The 27EA83-D comes with a dual-link DVI cable, a DisplayPort cable, and a PC USB cable. LG covers the monitor with a one-year warranty, which is a bit stingy given its lofty price. By way of comparison, the Dell UltraSharp U3014($937.55 at Amazon) and NEC PA271W both come with three-year plans.
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Pressing the menu button launches an on-screen menu bar along the bottom of the screen that is populated with bright, colorful icons. Here you can adjust brightness and contrast, select an input source, change the aspect ratio, and select one of four color modes (Custom, sRGB, Adobe RGB, and Calibration). The Calibration mode, when used with the included True Color Pro software and a compatible calibration device such as a Datacolor Spyder4($169.99 at Amazon) or X-Rite ColorMunki($149.00 at Amazon), recalls your custom calibrated settings. The Picture menu offers black level adjustments and three response time settings that will help smooth out the picture if motion blur is apparent. The Color menu lets you perform advanced adjustments such as gamma and color temperature as well as hue and saturation levels for the six colors (RGBCMY). There are also several picture in picture settings and an ECO setting. The 27EA83-D comes with a handy Screen Split utility that lets you divide the screen into two, three, or four quadrants with various aspect ratios.
Performance
The 27EA83-D's matte coated, non-reflective panel performed brilliantly on my color accuracy tests. As illustrated in the chromaticity chart below it was able to accurately reproduce reds, greens, and blues in accordance with the standard put forth by the CIE (International Commission on Illumination).
Picture quality was typical of an IPS panel; colors were bold and well defined and blacks were dark and remained that way when viewed from a top, side, or bottom angle. The panel handled the DisplayMate 64-Step Grayscale test with aplomb, accurately displaying every shade of gray from dark to light, and small text was crisp and easy to read.
The panel's 5-ms (g-g) pixel response provided a relatively smooth video and gaming experience. The action while playing Far Cry 2 on the PC was very fluid with no discernable lag and the blu-ray movie 2012 looked fantastic. If you want to watch movies you'll need to supply your own sound system as the 27EA83-D is not equipped with speakers.
The 27EA83-D consumes a good deal of power but it's energy usage is not going to break the bank. It averaged 61 watts during testing with the ECO mode disabled, and oddly enough, that number didn't change at all when ECO mode was enabled. The Dell Ultrasharp U2713HM($629.99 at Amazon) used 32 watts, and the NEC PA271W used 82 watts.
With a list price of just under a grand, the LG ColorPrime 27EA83-D will give most consumers a good case of sticker shock, but if you're a graphics pro with a critical need for superior color reproduction, it's worth every penny. The high-res 27-inch IPS panel delivers very accurate colors and good grayscale performance, and it can display 99 percent of the Adobe color gamut, which gets you much more consistent and lifelike colors. As with most high-end monitors it is pre-calibrated at the factory and comes with built-in software that works with popular hardware calibration devices. Other than its hefty price tag my only gripes are that the panel doesn't automatically change image orientation when the screen is pivoted and the warranty is only good for one year. However, that's a minor annoyance and doesn't prevent the 27EA83-D from earning our Editors' Choice award for high-end monitors.
Geared toward photographers and graphics professionals, the LG ColorPrime 27EA83-D is a feature-rich 27-inch-wide gamut monitor that uses a high-res IPS panel and 10-bit color depth to deliver accurate, robust color reproduction. It's expensive, too.
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