Product Reviews

Need to view an A3 spread at a decent size on a colour-accurate display? How about switching between two different computer inputs at the touch of a button? And why stop there? How about showing two different computer inputs side-by-side on one screen at the same time?

Eizo's new CG301W display, revealed here for the very first time and not available until March, can take all this in its stride.

This is a 30in LCD display, a monster of a monitor, that packs in 2560 x 1600 pixels and promises high-end colour accuracy to keep prepress professionals smiling.

The device's huge size is exaggerated slightly by the monitor hood that can be attached to the top and sides. This helps prevent stray light from affecting the display's colour accuracy - but at the same time makes it an even more imposing object to put on a desk.

Driving this display at the full resolution isn't something you should assume that your Mac can do. This requires a dual-link graphics card capable of running an Apple 30in Cinema Display at maximum size (single-link cards fitted to many mid-range G5 or Mac Pro towers manage only 1920 x 1200). If you have two dual-link computers, note that only one of the monitor's inputs works at this maximum resolution; the other is a single-link input with the lower resolution.

Driving two inputs at once is an interesting trick and this could be of great interest to web developers wanting to compare Windows and Mac browser appearance as closely as possible.

In this mode, the left half of the display shows one input, while the right half shows the other. This does mean that you get only half the width of visible desktop for each but this monitor has enough pixels available to get away with it.

It isn't something you'd be likely to do all the time but it's certainly an interesting use of the super-size monitor.

As well as regular display input this monitor also supports HDCP devices, so it can be used to play back DRM-protected content from HD-DVD or

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Blu-ray discs. This feature might be useful at times but using this monitor primarily for HD video playback would be rather extravagant.

We have to say at this point that the CG301W's extras weren't quite what we had expected. Eizo's ColorNavigator calibration software is bundled with the monitor - although this is available as a free download from the eizo.com site anyway.

ColorNavigator provides display calibration and profiling abilities but you'll need to obtain and use a hardware colorimeter (in other words, a profiling device) to do this; note that a there isn't a profiling device bundled with the display.

The software works with the Eye-One and MonacoOptix models from X-Rite and the Spyder 2 from ColorVision. What's not clear is why someone should use ColorNavigator rather than the software that comes with the profiling device of their choice. Although ColorNavigator is made for Eizo displays, the profiles that it creates are significantly less detailed than those from the calibrators' own software.

But having said that, the practical result of the calibration and profiling process was good and the colour fidelity of the display was very impressive. With a well-managed colour workflow, the soft-proofing abilities of this display are just unbeatable.

Ergonomically though, there were a few quirks that we noticed. The display can be rotated to a portrait orientation should you want this, but it was prone to hitting its own feet as it was turned. Moreover, it didn't lock into position at either end; give it a nudge and you might need to straighten it out again.

The buttons at the base of the front bezel, used to switch inputs or fine-tune settings, were discreet and non-distracting. However, we did find that because they were virtually invisible we kept triggering them when turning on the display. In our view though, that's something that you can get used to in time.

If you're scouting about for a new monitor, this is certainly one to consider. But make sure you're sitting down before you look at the price... because at £2676 this is not even remotely aimed at those on a restricted budget.

Despite the slight shortcomings that we've pointed out, this is one of the best displays we've seen. We recommend that you try third-party profiling software; it will come with the calibration hardware that you need to buy for the display anyway.

But do make sure that you have a dual-link graphics card or you'll end up with a vastly overpriced 1920 x 1200 pixel display instead of the marvellous 2560 x 1600 that this can manage.