Picture Quality

The Eizo Foris FS2735 features an AU Optronics M270DAN02.3 AHVA panel. It's an 8-bit panel capable of displaying 16.7 million colors. AHVA is in fact an IPS-type panel, not to be confused with VA panels. Meaning, the pixels use in-plane switching (IPS) to display the picture, and the general behavior of the panel is the same as that of any other IPS panel. If the name of this panel sounds familiar, there's a good reason for that - it is also a part of the AOC AGON AG271QG I reviewed a couple of weeks ago, as well as some other famous gaming monitors, such as the Acer Predator XB270HU and Asus MG279Q.

The screen uses a White-LED (W-LED) backlight unit. It's controlled by a hybrid system that combines direct current (DC) and pulse-width modulation (PWM). When the brightness is set to anything ranging from 56%-100%, the backlight is controlled by DC. From 0%-55%, a high-frequency, low amplitude PWM is used to control it. I didn't spot any flickering at any brightness level, and I should also reiterate what I already wrote about in the power-consumption section of this review: to get a brightness of around 120 nits, you need to set the brightness in the OSD to 70%. Most users are even more likely to aim for around 250 nits (90% OSD brightness). Meaning, in practice, you'll never have the brightness set below 56% (that would be the equivalent of around 60 nits of actual brightness - too dark to be usable), which means you won't enter the "PWM zone" of the hybrid backlight control system.

The screen coating on the Eizo Foris FS2735 is light anti-glare (AG). The screen is quite resistant to reflecting its surroundings even when used in a room with a lot of natural or artificial light, and the picture isn't perceived as grainy or dirty from a normal sitting distance, which can be the case with heavier AG coatings. The maximum specified brightness of the panel is 350 nits, accompanied by a static contrast ratio of 1,000:1. Let's fire up the Datacolor Spyder5ELITE+, an excellent colorimeter I use to test and calibrate all of my screens, to find out what the Eizo Foris FS2735 has to offer in terms of picture quality.

Picture Quality at Factory Settings

The picture quality of the Eizo Foris FS2735 at its factory defaults was tested right after plugging it in and allowing it to warm up for about an hour. At its factory settings, the "User1" color mode (picture profile) is active. The monitor has its brightness set to 90%, Contrast to 50%, Temperature to 6500K, Gamma to 2.2, Hue and Saturation to 0, and Black Level to 50. Contrast Enhancer, Overdrive, and all Smart Functions are turned off. Interestingly, the color channels (called "Gain" in the OSD) are set to 98% (Red), 100% (Green), and 99% (Blue). That would imply that someone really did check and finely tune the out-of-the-box picture quality for each individual Foris FS2735, as I've seen several other samples of the same monitor that had the RGB channels set to slightly different values.

The Auto EcoView option is set to Standard, which is why the picture will probably strike you as darker than you'd prefer, depending on the amount of ambient light in your environment. In order to turn the EcoView sensor off, which I did before doing my initial set of measurements, you have to open the OSD, go to Preferences, and set the Auto EcoView option to "Off".

After I switched Auto EcoView off, and with the brightness being set to 90% by default, I was greeted by a bright, good-looking picture with punchy colors and well-balanced gradients. I was able to spot some slight inaccuracies in the lower spectrum of the black/white gradient, but the color performance struck me as pretty great regardless. Compared to the Acer XB271HU or AOC AGON AG271QG, two other high-end 27" AHVA 1440p gaming monitors I reviewed recently, the Eizo Foris FS2735 definitely has the best out-of-the-box picture quality. It has no yellowish hue - or any other hue for that matter - and it's generally so good that I don't expect it to get visibly better after calibration.


As we can see by looking at the CIE diagram, we get a 100% coverage of the sRGB and 79% coverage of the Adobe RBG color space out of the box, which is completely in line with a standard-gamut IPS monitor. There's a certain amount of over-coverage in the greens and reds, but nothing to lose sleep over. This measurement is perfectly in line with what we saw in the AOC AGON AG271QG review, which doesn't surprise since it's equipped with the very same AU Optronics AHVA panel.


The measured display gamma was 2.3, with the target being set to 2.2. However, the graph shows almost no deviation from the ideal value, which is fantastic as gamma-related issues are not easy to fix without a proper calibration.


I also did a measurement of the gamma after setting the target to 1.8, which is the second most popular value amongst users. The quantified measured value again had an offset of 0.1, sitting at 1.9, but the graph clearly shows next to no deviation from the set value. Excellent! As already stated earlier in the review, you're free to set the gamma to any value from 1.6-2.8 and even to a certain preconfigured profile (FPS, RTS, Power, sRGB, Paper) that corresponds to a certain gamma value but makes it easier to understand and use for users who aren't completely sure on what gamma is.

These are the measured brightness and contrast values for various brightness settings:


What the table shows us is that the Foris FS2735 needs to be pushed to at least 70% brightness in the OSD to offer an acceptable level of actual brightness. Since the picture is so dark up until that point, it comes as no surprise that the black point has no trouble staying at 0.00, which also results in a high measured contrast ratio. To achieve 120 nits of brightness, the OSD brightness needs to be set to 70%. However, don't be afraid you won't get a picture that's bright enough - when the brightness is set to 100% in the OSD, its value goes all the way up to 359 nits, which is more than enough for any kind of use. In practice, you won't want to keep it above 250 nits, which corresponds to setting it to 90% in the OSD.

At its factory settings, the static contrast ratio sits at 780:1, which is decent, but not spectacular. The white point is also a bit higher than it's supposed to be. I measured a value of 6,695 K, with the target set to 6,500 K. However, this offset wasn't high enough for the colors to seem too cold.


Checking on the color uniformity, this is where we get a taste of Eizo's excellent quality control. While the Delta-E deviation of some other gaming monitors I've tested went up to 7, the Foris FS2735 keeps it well below 3 for all but the bottom right of the screen where it goes to 3.3 at 100% brightness.


The luminance test shows us that the upper part of the screen is up to 17% darker than its middle at the factory defaults (OSD brightness set to 90%). It may sound like a lot, but is in practice very hard to spot unless most of the screen is filled with the same shade of a certain color. Having said that, a $1,000+ monitor should offer better luminance uniformity out of the box.


As for color accuracy, we can see that the average Delta-E is 1.07, which is an excellent score for an uncalibrated display. Remember, you want this value to be as low as possible because it indicates how much a certain color deviates from its perfect representation. I don't expect the average Delta-E to improve by a lot, if at all, after calibrating the display because the measured value is very low as it is.

Picture Quality After Calibration

I calibrated the display by using Datacolor's recommended settings. They suggest you set the gamma to 2.2, the color temperature to 6,500 K, and the brightness to 120 nits. The Spyder5ELITE+ does allow you to do the calibration with more brightness (up to 180 nits) or a value you enter manually should you find that to be too dark. To achieve those values, here are the OSD settings I had to use:


Let's take a look at the post-calibration report:


Not often do I run across a monitor, especially a gaming one, that requires no calibration, but the Eizo Foris FS2735 is definitely one of the select few. Even though calibration did manage to improve some aspects, most notably the white point, which went from 6,695 K to 6,450 K (the target is 6,500 K), the fact remains that the picture quality didn't improve by a huge margin. We did get a bit more warmth and punchiness of colors, even though some slight color banding in the black/white gradients still remained somewhat visible. Luckily, you could only possibly notice it in very specific cases. In practice, just about every aspect of the color reproduction of the Foris FS2735 will leave you very, very happy.

Here's the ICC profile (download) that was made by calibrating the monitor with the recommended settings, listed in the table above.

The second ICC profile (download) was created after manually setting the desired brightness and related calibration settings to 250 nits (90% brightness in the OSD with everything else left exactly like in the table above). Setting the brightness so high can be uncomfortable to the eyes, but many users simply prefer using a very bright display.

Backlight Uniformity

To give you an idea of the backlight's uniformity, brightness was set to 120 and 250 nits before I took photos in a completely dark room. I did my best to find a combination of the ISO value and shutter speed that would capture the screen in a way that has it look as close to what my eyes were seeing in real life.



At 250 nits, we see some minor bleed along the bottom edge of the panel and in the top-right corner. At 120 nits, it's hard to see that the panel is even present in the photo. Overall, backlight bleed is a non-issue with the Foris FS2735.

Viewing Angles

This being an IPS-type panel, the viewing angles are great. There's no visible shift in colors when you change your sitting position. You'll have a lot of freedom to move your head any way you like.


Here's a photo of a completely black screen taken at a wide angle. Don't confuse what you see with backlight bleed - it's IPS glow, an inherent feature of the technology. It looks nasty, but isn't an issue at all because you won't see it at a normal sitting distance if your eyes are roughly level with the center of the screen. In case you find yourself noticing it in everyday usage, you're simply sitting too close to the monitor.