Eizo FlexScan L367

Sales of TFT monitors are predicted to overtake those of CRTs during the course of the next couple of years, and not before time. Once you've become accustomed to using a good DVI-connected TFT, going back to CRT is frankly an upsetting experience. Big TFTs are currently making the headlines, but it's the 15in panels that are set to soar up the sales charts, and Eizo is hoping that its new FlexScan L367 will join the ride.

On the surface, the L367 looks like any other Eizo TFT but with an excellent height-adjustable stand and multi-edge thin bezel design. DVI-D and D-SUB inputs are included too, although you only get an analog cable in the box. There's also a single USB upstream port, which is the first suggestion that the L367 is no ordinary 15in TFT. Rather than forming the basis of a USB hub, the upstream port actually provides a means for the L367 to communicate with Eizo's ScreenManager Pro software.

ScreenManager Pro offers a number of features, including the ability to configure a custom-display mode from a Windows-driven interface. Adjustments include brightness, colour temperature, saturation and hue. Gamma correction is also included and is possibly the most significant from an image quality perspective. This is because PC displays don't reproduce linear colour intensities, skewing them depending on the monitor's own response curve. Gamma correction compensates for this effect, thereby producing a more accurate final image. To improve the accuracy of this process, the L367 also converts the original 8-bit RGB data into 10-bit data in order to obtain a more precise gamma curve, before converting back to 8-bit RGB for display. It's not all hype either, as the L367's performance in the DisplayMate Multimedia Edition colour tests is unmatched by any TFT I've seen.

Another function of ScreenManager Pro is Auto FineContrast, which lets you assign a preset mode, including sRGB, or your own custom mode to any application and have the monitor switch automatically to that mode when the application is launched. We found this more of a gimmick than a useful feature, especially as you can't assign a mode to the Desktop screen.

There's also a Desktop Viewer, which displays images using a DirectDraw overlay and includes various modes such as Nature for automatically adjusting the appearance of an image. Epson's Print Image Matching and the Exif 2.2 standard are supported too, meaning you can colour-match images with compatible digital cameras and printers. Desktop Viewer can also play video.

All these features come on top of superb image quality, including excellent sharpness via DVI, and fantastic brightness. However, we were disappointed by the extremely poor vertical viewing angles - only a slight movement up or down causes the colours to shift noticeably. This is the only blot on an otherwise exemplary monitor.

Eizo's ScreenManager Pro and Desktop Viewer are reasonable value additions, although many of the functions are gimmicky. The gamma-correction feature is superb, though, and the L367 delivers the most accurate colour blends of any TFT previously reviewed. The poor vertical viewing angles are the main downside, but even accounting for this there's no better 15in TFT.

Author: Gareth Ogden