Quick Review: LG 27EA83-D AH-IPS Monitor

Specs That Matter

Display Size: 27 Inch

Panel Model: LG AH-IPS

Pixel Pitch: 0.233m

Color Depth: 8-bit + FRC (1.07B colors)

Screen Coating: Light Matte

Response Time: 5ms (g2g)

Brightness: 350 nits

Static Contrast Ratio: 1000:1

Resolution: 2560 x 1440

Backlight: GB-r LED

Refresh Rate: 60Hz

Connectivity: HDMI(1), DVI-D (1), DisplayPort (1)

Features: Wide-gamut, Picture-In-Picture and Picture-By-Picture, USB 3.0 hub, comes factory calibrated

4.5 out of 5

Rating:

+ Positives

• One of the better stands found on a LCD monitor; it has an elegant, minimalistic design with height adjust, pivot (for portrait mode), swivel, and tilt functionality. Base also has a small footprint, yet remains stable with very little wobble.
• 2560 x 1440 (WQHD) resolution provides ample desktop space and really gives an immersive feeling while watching movies and gaming.
• The 27EA83-D has been successfully overclocked from the stock refresh rate of 60Hz, to 99Hz (DVI-D) and 98Hz (DisplayPort). Great news for gamers looking for a high resolution IPS monitor with a blur-free gaming experience (though a powerful GPU with plenty of RAM will be required to play recent games at this resolution and refresh rate).
• The 27EA83-D's 8-bit (+ FRC for 10-bit) AH-IPS panel supports 100% of the sRGB color palette and 99% of Adobe RGB.
• Great image quality, accurate color representation, good black levels, and text that is sharp and clear.
• Build quality is very good. Everything fits together well with no large gaps in the casing or rough edges.
• Light matte coating (which I always prefer) that doesn't have a sparkly or dirty looking effect and reduces glare without taking a hit to image quality.
• Includes a function called Dual Link-up that gives support for two compatible components to be hooked up and viewed at the same time on a single monitor.
• The 27EA83-D comes factory calibrated from LG with very accurate colors and brightness settings out of the box, but can be further improved by your own hardware calibration.
• GB-r LED backlight in the 27EA83-D is capable of providing color gamuts as wide as CCFL backlit wide-gamut displays.
• If you decide to overclock (at your own risk), a 99Hz refresh rate will provide much smoother motion with less blur and eye strain.

- Negatives

• Menu buttons are located on the bottom; they are touch sensitive and can make navigating menus somewhat difficult and slow.
• Uses PWM for backlight dimming with a very low frequency, so beware if you are sensitive to flicker that can be caused by PWM.
• Price? A little on the expensive side (around $1,000 MSRP), but you get a LOT for the money with the 27EA83-D, especially considering the refresh rate can be ran as high as 99Hz.
• Won't give fast enough performance for hardcore and competitive FPS gamers (decent amount of input lag), but that's true of many IPS based monitors.

See PCHardwareHelp.com's complete list of IPS monitors for more options other than the LG 27EA83-D.

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