Price when reviewed
The Eizo ColorEdge CG2700X is one of the more expensive 27-inch monitors around but it provides an excellent viewing experience and brings your images to life. It’s about as close to looking at the original scene as you can get with a computer screen.
Its inbuilt calibration system is also easy to use yet it has a wealth of options for experienced users and those who work in a multi-monitor environment. It comes backed by a 5-year guarantee and customer service that can help you ensure you get the best results from it.
The Eizo ColorEdge CG2700X is a high-end 27-inch 4K UHD (3840 x 2160) computer monitor that’s aimed at photographers, content creators and videographers. It features a USB-C port for easy connection with modern laptops and computers, and a built-in calibration system to help ensure that the colours you see are exactly as they should be.
It employs in-plane switching (IPS) LCD technology, which is considered the best for colour accuracy and consistency.
Eizo announced the ColorEdge CG2700X alongside the more affordable ColorEdge CG2700S (2560×1440) in November 2022, it is now on sale for £2,599 / $3489.
Although it is referred to as a 27-inch monitor, technically, the Eizo ColorEdge CG2700X is a 26.9-inch (68.4 cm) screen and it has a viewable area of 596.2 x 335.3 mm. Its native resolution is 3840 x 2160 (4K) and its pixel pitch is 0.155 x 0.155 mm, which is good news for videographers working in 4K.
The Eizo ColorEdge CG2700X is also a 10-bit display which means its capable of showing up to 1.07 billion colours and colour gradations should be smooth.
According to Eizo, the CG2700X can reproduce 99% of the Adobe RGB colourspace that’s widely used in photography, and 98% of the DCI-P3 standard used in digital cinema. The screen also supports BT.2020 for broadcasting, HLG (hybrid log-gamma) and PQ (perceptual quantization) curves for displaying and editing HDR (high dynamic range) content. In fact, there are 9 display modes (User, BT.2020, BT.709, DCI-P3, PQ_DCI-P3, HLG_BT.2100, AdobeRGB, sRGB, Calibration (CAL), SYNC_SIGNAL), all of which are customisable.
With colour accuracy in mind, the Eizo ColorEdge CG2700X has a calibration system built-in. The hardware is integrated into the monitor and works with Eizo’s ColorNavigator 7 software which is free to download.
The monitor comes with a height-adjustable stand which allows the screen to be rotated though 90° to enable portrait orientation images to been seen at a larger size than when the screen is in landscape orientation.
The Eizo ColorEdge CG2700X has a depth of features including the ability for it to be used as part of a network with administrator control and colour matching. This might suit a busy studio environment with several workstations however, I have tested the ColorEdge CG2700X as a standalone monitor for this review.
It took only a couple of minutes from opening the box to viewing my images on the Eizo ColorEdge CG2700X. That’s because it comes with the stand attached and once you’ve positioned it on your desk, there are only two cables to connect – the power and the USB-C cable.
Conveniently, there’s a handle on the back of the monitor which makes it easy to extract it from its packaging and move it into position.
If should you wish to use an alternative mounting method, or one of Eizo’s optional arms or stands, the CG2700X can be removed quickly and easily from the supplied stand (and reattached again) without the need for any tools.
The supplied stand has a height adjustment range of 155 mm and the screen can be tilted up through 35° or down through 5°. It only takes a few seconds to set the screen to the right height and angle.
There are four USB-A ports on a side edge of the back of the monitor, which are fairly easy to access and could be useful for connecting accessories. The power connection, main switch and the other ports (HDMI, display, USB-X, LAN and USB-B) are on the bottom edge of the back of the screen. Initially, these seem harder to access, but help is at hand in the form of the rotating mount of the stand. This enables the screen to be rotated clockwise through 90° and it means that you can have a better view of the connection ports.
A row of touch-sensitive buttons on the bottom right of the front of the CG2700X, below the viewing area enable the screen to be turned on and off, and gives access to the control menu.
While the monitor’s buttons are responsive and the menu is easy to use, I prefer to use the ColorNavigator 7 software to adjust the settings as the interface is clearer. This software is also used to calibrate the screen and it only takes a couple of minutes to run through the whole process. Helpfully, you can set the software to calibrate the screen automatically at a time that’s routinely convenient.
Eizo supplies a magnetic hood that fits around the ColorEdge CG2700X when it’s in landscape orientation. This hood doesn’t require any assembly and attaches easily. This and the matt surface of the screen helps minimise glare and ensure a clear view of the image or video on the display.
Thanks to its 4K (3840 x 2160) resolution and 0.155 x 0.155 mm pixel pitch, there’s an excellent level of detail visible in images and video viewed on the Eizo ColorEdge CG2700X. Images look crisp and natural.
Colours also look great and it’s nice to find that the calibration system automatically calibrates the screen for each of the available colourspaces. It means you don’t have to recalibrate if you need to switch between them. After you start the calibration system running, a whirring sound indicates that the calibrator is moving into position at the top of the screen and you’ll see a series of different coloured rectangles appear beneath it as it goes through the process.
I used the Eizo ColorEdge CG2700X alongside a newly calibrated 2019 iMac and while the differences between the viewing experiences of the two screens are subtle, the images look better on the CG2700X. The colours are a little more natural and the dynamic range looks wider with more gradual tonal transitions.
I can imagine a few occasions when the ability to switch the screen from landscape to portrait orientation would be useful, but it’s not something you want to do on an image by image basis. The main issue is that you have to rotate the display so that the image shows in the correct orientation, but the another problem is that you find yourself having to nod your head up and down to take the whole image in – or move further away. The 16:9 aspect ratio of the screen isn’t the native ratio of most camera sensors, so you still need to size the image appropriately to view it in upright orientation, and you’ll have to rearrange any software control panels to fit above or below the preview.
The Eizo ColorEdge CG2700X has a nice combination of resolution and size. A 27-inch monitor provides the space you want for viewing your images and video while still having room for tool palettes and control panels. It doesn’t have quite the same impact as a 32-inch monitor but it’s also easier to fit on a desk. Meanwhile, its 4K resolution ensures that there’s plenty of detail visible and images look sharp where they should.
Eizo’s calibration system is easy to understand and use, and the fact that it’s permanently connected means that you’re unlikely to go too long between checks so the screen should always give its best performance. In addition, the ColorNavigator 7 software is well thought, giving plenty of control to those who want it.
Eizo monitors have a strong reputation and they command a high price, but the ColorEdge CG2700X comes with a 5-year guarantee and good customer support.
