Eve Spectrum 4K gaming monitor review | PC Gamer - williamsspirly

Our Verdict

A beautiful-looking monitor with a crisp, vibrant panel to match. Its HDMI 2.1 connection lone adds to the versatile package that Even has created with its first Monitor. Beauty and utility, IT's quite a shuffle.

For

Excellent design
Unreal LG IPS panel
Broad connectivity options

Against

Impoverished HDR and localized dimming
High sticker price

PC Gamer Finding of fact

A pretty-looking monitor with a crisp, vivacious panel to match. Its HDMI 2.1 connective only adds to the versatile package that Eve has created with its first monitor. Beauty and utility, it's quite a mix.

Pros

+
Excellent design
+
Fantastic LG IPS panel
+
Full connectivity options

Cons

-
Poor HDR and local dimming
-
High schoo sticker price

Looks like Eve has actually pulled it off. The crowd-created Eve Spectrum gaming monitor is an outstanding 4K, overflowing freshen up rate display, finally delivery HDMI 2.1 connections to our desktops. Who would have sentiment? Or rather the question you might have is: Who the hell is Evening?

It's a potentially loaded oppugn depending on how you sense about the company's first venture, the Evening V. That was a 2-in-1 pill that was supposed to crush Microsoft's Surface, but ran into production delays, and at last problems with its statistical distribution partner which resulted in some people ne'er actually receiving the gimmick they'd professional for. And in any cases they struggled to even off get their money back. Non a redemptive look for anyone.

So thither's a sure as shooting amount of ill-tactual sensation towards the company because of this, but that hasn't stopped up it from going full-bore at creating what IT hopes volition be the best play monitor. And that's not just based on its own theories about the subject, the Eve Spectrum has been designed by committee, with the caller asking for feature requests and feedback on potential paradigm designs all the way through the process.

Spectrum ES07D03

Screen size of it: 27-edge
Aspect ratio: 16:9
Native solving: 3840 x 2160 (4K)
Pel tightness: 163ppi
Brightness: 450cd/m2 typical, 750cd/m2 peak
HDR: HDR10 | VESA DisplayHDR600
Colour depth: 8-flake + A-FRC
Reaction time: 5ms GtG typical
Freshen plac: 144Hz
Adaptive sync: NVIDIA G-Synchronize Compatible certified| AMD FreeSync Premium Pro certified
Backlighting: Bottom bound-lit | 16-zone dimming (HDR mode)
Ports: 2x HDMI 2.1, 1x DisplayPort 1.4, 1x USB Type-C (video, 100W power, USB hub), 1x USB Typewrite-B (USB hub), 1x USB Type-C, 2x USB Type-A, 3.5mm audio jack
Speakers: Atomic number 102
Price: $799 (+$99 for stand)

And the result is an $898 4K play monitor with one of the best panels in the business and a specs list that ought to have your drooling. The LG nano-IPS Oxide display is the heart of the Spectrum and is the tonality to the stellar visual experience the monitor itself provides. There are wanted a few panel manufacturers on the planet, and LG is undoubtedly one of the best. This latest nano-IPS display is an 8-fleck + A-FRC screen, and one that buns get in 4K resolutions at 144Hz. For the professionals out there, it's rated with a colour gamut that covers 98% DCI-P3 and 100% of the sRGB colour blank.

Atomic number 3 an IPS panel you are acquiring a 5ms response time, but if you deprivation to go hard on the overdrive settings you can push that down to the 1ms point. At the 'normal' overdrive setting there is zero visible ghosting OR inverse ghosting that I can see.

Another symptom of the usance of an IPS panel, over something like a VA combined, is the black levels aren't anything to write home about. They are possibly among the best I've seen on an IPS display without specific tuning effects enabled, though, but non like OLED-good.

Visualise 1 of 2

Eve Spectrum 4K gaming monitor — (Image credit: Future tense)

Image 2 of 2

Dividing line, however, is superior, delivering a enlighten depiction between different dark glasses of colors across the gamut, and the panel's white saturation is great as well. Sure, a lot of that is down to the control board itself, but it must be aforesaid that the factory calibration Eve has done on this block out certainly looks good to me.

Then thither's the viewing angles. I mean, you are going away to be outlay most of your clock staring directly at the face up of the screen, just it's got to be said that the Eve Spectrum looks immaculate from any angle. The colours remain consistent across the panel, and consistently vibrant besides.

That 144Hz refresh rate looks great at 4K. Now, this isn't the first blind to nail a high refresh grade with an Ultra HD resolution, but with a pair of HDMI 2.1 ports in the back it's one of the first to be able to deliver that with happiness over a single HDMI cable. IT's also lengthways with adaptive sync to follow fit to maintain a silklike, flowing image in your games too.

Though strangely the claimed Nvidia G-Sync certification was seemingly not recognised by the GeForce RTX 3080 I had plumbed into information technology. We take over been informed that will appear in the next number one wood update at the end of the month, and IT is already listed in Nvidia's own G-Sync Compatible screens. IT is also still completely functional in terms of the canonic tenets of G-Sync, however, so I'm non sure that's necessarily a pressing government issue.

Honestly, having no more local dimming is preferable to just a handful of zones

Unrivalled thing the panel is absolutely not nifty for is HDR. Although the Even Spectrum has been surrendered a DisplayHDR 600 paygrad, and can bump off a peak brightness level of 750cd/m2, this is non a reminder you want to use for HDR gaming. In SDR mode the impanel uses a standard global backlighting arrangement which is lit from the rear end of the screen. That's grand and results in an excellent image.

With the monitor in HDR mode, however, it switches to a local dimming backlight with 16 zones. Regrettably that is still powered by the bottom edge-lit backlight and results in a strange rising column bleed gist in high contrast images. It's ugly, and can really mask the item of a dark picture, which is precisely where you want HDR content to sparkle.

Linear more or less a camp in Assassinator's Church doctrine: Valhalla, pallidly aflame aside aflicker torches and camp fires, IT was most impossible to see what the hell was going on. Walhalla actually also highlighted the effect again with the animated saving logo looping over a black screen, causing the bleeding impression to beryllium even more obtrusive.

Aboveboard, having no localized dimming is far more preferable to just a handful of zones. If you're not talking in the hundreds, then thither's not enough coarseness to lay down local dimming worthwhile.

And, alas, right now there's no way to disable it when HDR is enabled.

I say 'right now' because, since I've had the monitor lizard, Eve has already launched a firmware update to improve Xbox Series X compatibility. Sol, there's a good chance that, if the community of interests wills it and thither is a way, Eve could update the OSD to give you the pick to disable that local dimming down pat the line.

In casebook SDR mood, however, the Eventide Spectrum is a fantastic monitor. IT's already brighter than most, and the impressive way it handles contrast means games can really pop on it. The pin-sharp 4K resolution, especially at 27-inches, is gloriously elaborate—and with the refresh rate at 144Hz IT flies with computer hardware competent of driving IT to those extremes.

Whether the computer hardware inside the Xbox Series X counts as that I'm still non 100% confident, though this is one of the first gaming monitors to actually leave the high-end Microsoft solace to output at its 4K/120Hz peak. But it looks great paired with a high-finish PC.

HDR parenthesis, the Evening Spectrum delivers a optical feed for the eyeballs, but the actual design of the monitor itself is just as good. There is barely whatsoever bezel about the screen and the frame around it is wonderfully clean, with only a solitary LED under the bottom bezel to indicate that it's powered risen.

Set on the back of the screen, just behind that midway LED, is the power button and the joystick which controls the OSD. My main monitoring device still uses a ordered of buttons panoplied side-by-side-by-position and I chance them an absolute nightmare to economic consumption when navigating nested menus. A control stick is far more intuitive.

Then there's the elective stand, which is potentially divisive. It doesn't come as criterial and means you deliver to add another $99 to your order monetary value unless you've already invested in a VESA mount. The flipside, and the argue it was posited by 46% of the biotic community in the first place, is that for those already with VESA mounts along the desktop it means they don't have to pay for a chunk of metal they'Ra only going to junk anyway.

And that would be a supreme shame as it's i stylish stand.

The base is relatively narrow, but its depth makes it perfectly steady, and the slimline standstill itself is marvelously minimal, curving outwards to provide a cutout for cable management and the height adjust mechanics. The Spectrum can also tilt and rotate too.

The naivety surrounding its low over-ambitious product is something the society has learned from

The final feature worth shouting about, and another thing regularly requested by the community, is its USB hub. That's not a especially unusual thing for a gaming supervise, but the Eventide Spectrum has both USB Typecast-B and Type-C hub options. And, with the DisplayPort Alt mode feature, you derriere cud in your laptop with a single USB Case-C cable and get that one-cable-to-pattern-them-all feeling.

The single electrify will transmit a 60Hz output at 4K, power the ride herd on's hub (with another Eccentric-C and a pair of Eccentric-A USB ports available), and charge your notebook to the tune of 100W. That's plenty plenty to keep a Razer Blade Stealth 13 live, outputting and running all three USB ports at the same time. It's not quite enough to keep a heftier gaming laptop running at full power under load, but still has enough oomph to charge when you're not gambling on information technology.

I'm truly a sizeable fan of the Eve Spectrum gaming monitoring device. I've enjoyed watching information technology come to life as a crowd-designed product, been disappointed by the delays, apprehensive by Eve's history, and finally delighted by the experience of actually using it. There leave be people understandably so jaded away their battles over the Even V tab that they'll never present the caller another chance, but it has shown the naivety close its first over-ambitious product is something the company has learned from.

The product has been ready-made, is transport to customers, and the company is nailing down contracts to issue its screens to actual retail stores. That ought to give you the confidence that it has banished its nightmarish past to the annals of account.

And if we're focusing on the product itself, the Eve Spectrum is an undischarged gaming monitor. My only proper issue is around the price. Now at $898 for the full package, it's a lot of cash. But it's not immensely different to the competition when it comes to high-spec, high refreshen plac 4K screens. And the LG panel makes a great basis—providing typically luscious optic faithfulness—the manufactory calibration is operational, and the overall design makes for one of the most adaptable, easy-to-use play monitors around.

Eve Spectrum ES07D03

A beautiful-looking Monitor with a crisp, colorful panel to couple. Its HDMI 2.1 connection only adds to the versatile package that Eventide has created with its first monitor. Beauty and inferior, it's quite desegregate.

Dave has been gambling since the days of Zaxxon and Peeress Bug on the Colecovision, and code books for the Commodore Vic 20 (Death Race 2000!). He built his first gaming PC at the tender age of 16, and finally finished bug-fixing the Cyrix-based system around a year future. When he dropped it out of the window. He first started authorship for Official PlayStation Magazine and Xbox World many decades past, then moved onto PC Format regular, then PC Gamer, TechRadar, and T3 among others. Now helium's back, writing about the bloodcurdling graphics lineup market, CPUs with more cores than sense, gaming laptops hotter than the sun, and SSDs more capacious than a Cybertruck.