Connectivity

In terms of video inputs, the EIZO FlexScan EV2785 is equipped with a DisplayPort 1.2 and a pair of HDMI 1.4 ports. The power supply unit is integrated, so there's no external power brick we need to deal with. A simple IEC power cable will be enough to power it.


Next to the aforementioned video inputs is a USB-C 3.1 Gen1 port, which EIZO considers a strong selling point of this monitor, and a strong selling point it is. If you own a laptop with a USB-C port, you can easily connect it to the monitor and have your desktop extended. At the same time, the USB-C port will charge the battery of your laptop (it can deliver up to 60 W of power), and in case you have anything connected to the standard USB 3.0 Type-A ports on the left side of the monitor (peripherals, external hard-drive), those devices will also be detected by your laptop, and you'll be able to use them just like when plugging them directly into the laptop. In other words, the monitor will act as a docking station and spare you the cost of buying one from its manufacturer—if one's even available. For users who don't need a ton of additional ports, this is a great solution, and monitors with USB-C ports are the definite way to go. With that in mind, it's a shame that EIZO didn't find room to give us two more USB 3.0 Type-A ports. Two are nice, but four would be great. It probably goes without saying that the same USB-C port can be used to charge a USB-C smartphone or tablet.

Just in case you're interested in the time it takes the monitor to switch from one input to the other, as well as to display a picture after you press the power button on your PC case, here are the measurements of those parameters:

Power Consumption

The power supply is built into the monitor, so it's sufficient to connect it to a power outlet by using a standard IEC power cable (supplied). I used a power meter to determine the power consumption of the monitor at various brightness levels, as well as in Sleep mode. Sleep mode activates as soon as the PC goes to sleep, assuming you set the "Power Save" option in the OSD to "On". It can be found in the Preferences sub-menu. If you keep it off, the monitor won't enter sleep, which will have it consume 17 W of power even when your PC is turned off. My power consumption measurements are summed up in the chart below. They've been made after resetting the monitor to its factory defaults and with the "Auto EcoView" function turned off.



Similar to the previous EIZO monitor I reviewed, the actual brightness is not even close to being linear in relation to the percentile brightness values that are chosen via the OSD. The range starting from 0% and going all the way up to 75% covers only 140 nits of brightness. Those remaining 25% of the total range cover the other 250 nits. What that means is that, at higher percentages, small increments result in significant changes in actual screen brightness. In short, these power measurements tell us that you shouldn't set the brightness of this monitor to less than 70% as the picture simply becomes too dark and the vividness of colors is lost.


As for the aforementioned Auto EcoView function, it uses a built-in EcoView Sensor to actively measure the level of ambient light and automatically adjust the picture's brightness accordingly. In my fairly dim work environment, the sensor was far too aggressive as it kept lowering the screen's brightness to about 20 nits. For me, that renders the monitor next to unusable for anything other than typing e-mails or this review. The EcoView Sensor is accompanied by the EcoView Optimizer 2 feature. It aims to further reduce backlight brightness while increasing the gain of darker content, which should result in no perceivable loss of brightness, but reduce power consumption. My power meter showed almost no difference with the EcoView Optimizer 2 on or off, nor did the estimated "Power Reduction" value in the OSD change in any way. With all of that in mind, you're best off avoiding the Auto EcoView feature and should simply manually adjust the brightness to a preferred level.