Gaming Performance

The EIZO FlexScan EV3240X sports a 60 Hz refresh rate IPS panel. It offers no adaptive synchronization technology support, as you would expect from a 60 Hz business monitor.

Response Time and Overdrive

The response time of the EIZO FlexScan EV3240X is specified as 5 ms GtG. The panel uses overdrive technology to make the pixel transitions faster, and you will find the option under Color > Advanced Settings > Overdrive in the OSD. Overdrive has three settings: Off, Standard, and Enhanced.

I tested the response time with the Open Source Response Time Tool Pro (OSRTT Pro), developed by Andrew McDonald of TechTeamGB. It's a nifty tool that, combined with the OSRTT Launcher app, measures panel response times and presents them through detailed graphs and easy-to-read heatmaps. You can find everything you might want to know about the OSRTT in its technical documentation and on the official website, where you can order your unit, too. The OSRTT Launcher gives us three interesting heat maps to observe.

Perceived Response Time tells us how much time the panel took to transition from one color to another. This measurement is expressed in milliseconds and includes overshoot. In other words, if the panel exceeded the target value, the perceived response time also includes the time it took for the transition to recover from overshoot and stabilize on the target value. I'm running my tests with recommended settings, so with a fixed RGB 5 tolerance level and with gamma-corrected RGB values.

RGB Overshoot tells us how much a specific transition missed the target value. For example, if the panel was transitioning from RGB 51 to RGB 204, and it initially landed on RGB 212, the overshoot RGB value is 8. Overshoot can be both positive and negative, and it commonly occurs at extreme overdrive settings when pixels are driven by high voltage. In practice, an overshoot manifests as an afterimage or a halo around a moving object. It can be easily spotted even when doing something as basic as scrolling through a webpage.

Visual Response Rating is the most abstract heatmap generated by the OSRTT Launcher; in essence, it's an ever-evolving scoring system. To quote OSRTT's technical documentation, it is a finite score rather than a direct measurement. The calculation is pretty simple; it's: "100 – (Initial Response Time + Perceived Response Time)". Since both metrics use the same tolerance level, if a display doesn't overshoot, both times will be identical. This essentially rewards displays that are fast with a small amount of overshoot over displays that aren't as fast even if they don't overshoot at all – while still overall preferring ultra-fast, accurate monitors.

Here's how the EIZO FlexScan EV3240X fares in the pixel response time test at a 60 Hz refresh rate with all three overdrive options applied.





The best overdrive setting is Standard, as it has the lowest average perceived pixel response time (15.26 ms), with minimal, completely unnoticeable overshoot. It's somewhat pointless to engage in deep contemplation about pixel response times on a 60 Hz business monitor, so take this information as it is.

Input Lag

To measure the input lag of a monitor, I switched from using the LDAT V2 (Latency Display Analysis Tool), which I've covered extensively in my NVIDIA Reflex review, to the OSRTT Pro Tool. The OSRTT Pro Tool and the accompanying software include a DirectX code developed by Andrew McDonald of TechTeamGB, which allows the OSRTT Launcher to track the events and capture the frame time, making it possible to isolate the monitor latency from other factors that come into play when using the click-to-photon testing methodology, namely the USB polling rate and game render time. For a deeper insight, I suggest you watch an excellent overview video made by Andy himself.

While I used a consistent methodology in all my previous LDAT-based monitor reviews and kept everything the same, switching to the OSRTT-based approach isolates me from potential issues, such as game engine updates (I based my tests on Overwatch, which transformed into Overwatch 2), and allows me to move on to a different testing system at will. I have to admit it was becoming increasingly annoying having to keep my old Core i9-9900K/RTX 2080 SUPER test system around for nothing but monitor input lag testing. Thanks to Andy for his tireless work on the OSRTT Tool and the OSRTT Launcher software!

Here's how the EIZO FlexScan EV3240X holds up in terms of input lag after doing 100 iterations of the input lag test.



The EIZO FlexScan EV3240X shows an average input lag of just below 7 milliseconds, with a noticeable 15.5 ms peak. You get exactly what you'd expect from a 4K business monitor, which won't be used for gaming often (if ever). The monitor doesn't feel nearly as responsive as it would be if it had a high refresh rate panel, but it's in no way sluggish, either.