Controls & OSD

Being in the monitor business for as long as they are, Eizo knows how to create a proper set of controls and an intuitive OSD. Many of their competitors should grab a pen and a piece of paper and take notes. There are four buttons, all of them behind the monitor, somewhat close to its bottom-right edge. The first two are used for quick input selection (DisplayPort, dual HDMI, and DVI) and picture profile selection (User1, User2, Game, Cinema, Web/sRGB, and Paper - with an option to add four more custom profiles). The third button is in fact also a four-way joystick that's used to navigate the OSD. Pressing it once or pulling it to any side will open up the OSD. You can then press it again to enter the settings, or you can yank it to the left or right to get instant access to the brightness slider, or up and down to set the volume of the built-in speakers. The fourth button, placed a bit further away from the joystick, turns the monitor on and off. Since it's spaced further away from other controls and made in a way that has it protrude (first two buttons are concave), you won't press it by accident. In short, this is a fantastic set of monitor controls, and I only wish other monitor manufacturers would blatantly copy it instead of experimenting with button placement and functionality.


The same goes for the OSD itself. Everything's laid out neatly, so I was browsing the menus like a champ only after a couple of minutes even though I hadn't seen the OSD before.


In the Color menu, we can switch between picture profiles (Eizo calls them "Color Modes") and adjust brightness, contrast, temperature, and gamma. While brightness and contrast have their usual 0-100 range, the granularity for color temperature and gamma is absolutely impressive. You can adjust the temperature from 4,000K to 10,000K in increments of 100, and the gamma can be set to anything from 1.6 to 2.8. There are even some gamma presets available - FPS, RTS, Power, sRGB, and Paper. Nothing magical happens when you use them - they simply correspond to a certain gamma value that could, in theory, be better-suited to that specific scenario. For example, if you set the gamma to "FPS", it will switch to one of the lower values to ensure the shadows aren't as dark, which will net you a better chance of spotting enemies hiding in them. If you're wondering what you should set all those values to, the best practice is to keep the temperature at 6,500K and the gamma at 2.2.


Use the Advanced Settings submenu to finely tune the color performance of every picture profile. Here, we can adjust the hue (-100 to +100), saturation (-100 to +100), gain (adjustment of the red, green, and blue color channels with a range of 0%-100% for each of them), and black level (0-100). "Contrast Enhancer" is basically what other monitors call "Dynamic Contrast" - a feature that will change the picture's contrast in relation to what's currently displayed on the screen. It can be set to Off, Standard, and Enhanced. I find it distracting and wouldn't recommend using it as it offers no clear benefits in terms of picture quality. Overdrive is also controlled through this menu, as well as Motion Blur, which is a feature unique to the Foris FS2735 in that not all FreeSync monitors offer it. Find out more about both in the gaming performance section of this review.


The Smart Functions menu offers the Smart Resolution and Smart Insight features. Smart Resolution sharpens the picture and can be set to five different levels. The first two levels actually do a solid job of enhancing the picture's sharpness, which you'll primarily notice while surfing the web and playing games. I can't recommend setting it to 3, 4, or 5, though, as that will over-sharpen the image and make it look unnatural. The Smart Insight option can also be set to one of five different levels. It does a per-pixel analysis of each frame and dynamically adjusts the brightness of extremely dark or bright parts in the scene, resulting in better in-game visibility. As soon as you set it to any level but "Off", you can also turn on the Saturation Enhancer, which offers 10 different levels of its own. As the name suggests, it uses the same per-pixel analysis to adjust the saturation on the fly. While using those three smart functions won't result in the optimal, most natural picture quality, I do have to admit that they can give you a competitive edge. They basically do a smarter version of what you'd get by installing ReShade, the famous post-processing injector for videogames, only on a hardware level and with no hits to your in-game framerate. I can see competitive gamers using all three of Eizo's smart functions. There's also a nice way to see exactly what they do in real time to find out if they fit your needs - just go into the OSD, scroll down to "Smart Insight Demo", open it and set it to "On". You can then play with these Smart Functions and their levels while having half the screen display the picture before and the other half display the picture after the post-processing has been applied.


In the Signal menu, we can adjust the input color format (RGB, YUV or Auto) and input range (Full, Limited, Auto). Unless you're experiencing problems with the picture when those options are set to Auto, which could be the case if you're using certain DVI-HDMI adapters, you shouldn't have to change either of those options.


In the Sound menu, we can set the volume of the built-in 1 W stereo speakers, force the 3.5-mm audio output to act as a line input, and adjust the sound level for each input, which could prove useful if you get significantly different audio volumes from different inputs.


The Bluetooth menu lets us turn Bluetooth on or off. Bluetooth on a monitor? You better believe it. Eizo would like you to connect your smartphone with the monitor and adjust its settings through the G-Ignition mobile app. You'll also see various on-screen prompts when you receive messages, calls or other notifications on your phone. Note on the messages themselves though - the monitor can only display various icons corresponding to the type of notification you received on your phone. At least that's the theory. We'll discuss the actual implementation in the software section of this review.


The Preferences menu will allow you to turn off the Auto EcoView feature, which uses the ambient light sensor to adjust the brightness accordingly. From here, you can also control input detection, brightness of the red LED at the front, pick the inputs and picture profiles the monitor should ignore, and do a factory reset of its settings. The Menu Rotation option will be useful to anyone using the Foris FS2735 in portrait mode.


The last interesting menu is called "Information". Here, you can check out the serial number, currently used interface, resolution, refresh rates, and total usage time.


Aside from the usual menus, the Foris FS2735 also offers a hidden administrator menu where you'll be able to adjust several things Eizo sought to keep away from less experienced users. To access it, you will first need to turn the monitor off. Then, push and hold the joystick up while pushing the power button for about three seconds without letting go of the joystick. The first two options are simple enough - they let us remove the company's logo while the monitor is booting up and lock its buttons. Then, we have the Signal Format option. Here, we can force the monitor to use a certain version of the DisplayPort interface (DP 1.1 or 1.2) with no FreeSync, as well as switch between two available FreeSync ranges - 30-90 Hz (FreeSync Low) or 56-144 Hz (FreeSync High). This is an unusual feature as most FreeSync monitors come with just a predetermined FreeSync range (range in which the FreeSync technology does its magic), but not a silly one. If you're playing a game where your PC can't reach more than 90 frames per second but can dip below 56 FPS, you're better off using the FreeSync (Low) setting, which will allow you to remain within the FreeSync range at all times. On the other hand, if you have a PC that can't stay above 56 FPS in the games you play, you shouldn't be looking into buying a 144 Hz 1440p FreeSync monitor in the first place, especially at the price of the Eizo Foris FS2735. Finally, there's the Compatibility Mode option which needs to be switched to "On" should the monitor not wake up correctly when returning from power saving mode. I had no such issues, so I kept it off.