Eizo FG2421 -- [Turbo240 is EIZO equivalent of lightboost]

[PinkysBrain]

Which panels can do negative voltage overdrive?

PS. maybe negative is the wrong word, lets say which panels can drive the pixels with bipolar voltages?

[PinkysBrain]

Oops, seems I just don't understand the first thing about how LCDs work :/

I see a lot of references to all LCD panels using inversion on alternating frames swapping the polarity of the voltage for each pixel ... is that true? So LCDs are not actually sample and hold? In that case I don't see why you would ever need overdrive space "below black" though. Wouldn't you always use higher magnitude values for overdrive? (Only needing overdrive space at the highest magnitudes.)

[ENiKS]

Can you please compare Turbo240 to ULMB? I wanted to get FG2421 for testing, but EIZO probably got scared that it might be compared to GSYNC and said it can only be tested in their facility against another 120Hz gaming monitor.

[Gregix]

Doest Eizo suffer from same as Benq crosstalk bug on screen? I mean - it is visible only on Benq or it is related to strobing?

[Chief Blur Buster]

Doest Eizo suffer from same as Benq crosstalk bug on screen? I mean - it is visible only on Benq or it is related to strobing?

No, it doesn't suffer it. It is very good. The ghosting intensity is relatively uniform throughout the whole screen, compared to the V1 of XL2420Z. Once you let it warm up for 30-45minutes, the strobe crosstalk is better than most LightBoost monitors and the Z-Series, despite the minor double-strobe (tiny 0.4ms double strobe between refreshes) causing an ultra-faint ghost trailing at a very short distance behind the image. In most gameplay, it is not noticeable at all. LightBoost on some monitors actually has a bit more strobe crosstalk. The slow VA transitions can be really slow for dark greys, but it gets much better when the panel is warmed up to a warm temperature (VA LCDs are very temperature sensitive).

That said, the EIZO persistence is not adjustable like for LightBoost (10%, 50%, 100%) or for BENQ Blur Reduction (V2 firmware with Strobe Utility) so the motion clarity is roughly similar to LightBoost=60%, but much brighter than LightBoost, and much more colorful. The main thing is the VA quirks (dark grey nonuniformities), but that is compensated by the massively bigger contrast ratio (5000:1 contrast ratio) even in strobe mode. The FG2421 remains my favourite solo-gaming monitor at the moment, and I played a very enjoyable game of Bioshock Infinite on it. However, for FPS gaming, the Z-Series is much lower latency which can be important for elite competitive gamers, at the tradeoff of a TN panel.

If you want the world's most flexible strobe backlight the V2 version of Z-Series is a winner in my books if color quality is not important. If you want nearly IPS color quality with the benefits of strobing (best available strobed color quality), the EIZO FG2421 is the winner, being the only non-TN official 120Hz monitor. Then there's also GSYNC, which benefits fluidity of fluctuating frame rates.

[Chief Blur Buster]

Can you please compare Turbo240 to ULMB? I wanted to get FG2421 for testing, but EIZO probably got scared that it might be compared to GSYNC and said it can only be tested in their facility against another 120Hz gaming monitor.

This will be done at some point in the future, with a strobe-backlight shootout on Blur Busters.

[MonarchX]

This monitor is supposed to be PWM-free at brightness setting of 20+, but does that apply to Turbo 240Hz mode? From what I understand, light strobing cannot occur without PWM, can it?

[Alamar]

This monitor unfortunately has dithering (only 6bit) too unlike ips. I don't know how it looks on this one but on a newer plasmas it also adds much to flickering and might mess dark shades effect despite good black but someone who had it should tell.
I hope soon there will be even better va monitors, like for me still it is no close to crt quality gameplay.

[MonarchX]

FG2421 does not force 120Hz. It can run @ 120Hz, 100Hz, and even 60Hz in Turbo/light-strobing mode. I tried using 60Hz with light-strobing mode, and it was far better than any normal 60Hz LCD in terms of clarity, BUT even having consistent Turbo 60Hz and 60FPS at all times did not come close to having Turbo 120Hz (240Hz) even at sub-120FPS in terms of clarity. Having high FPS is very important with 120Hz/240Hz monitors. My EVGA GTX 780 Ti SC w/ ACX @ 1200Mhz GPU OC barely manages 100fps @ 1080p in most games I play. No system is capable of sustaining consistent 120fps @ 4x MSAA and Ultra settings @ 1080p in all games, not even a highly overclocked 4x SLI EVGA GTX 780 Ti Classified Kingpin Edition system with the fastest and highly overclocked CPU... Many older games can run @ 120fps even on a single high-end card, but there are plenty that can't. At the same time I can never go back to non-strobed 60Hz or 120Hz after experiencing LightBoost and Turbo 240Hz, but I also can't ever go back to TN/IPS/VA panels with low contrast ratio. Although, I must admit that LightBoost is noticeably clearer than Turbo 240Hz. That 0.5ms double-strobe surely reduces overall clarity, but not to a point where it wouldn't be worth it or worth less than having excellent image quality, where image just pops out of the screen.

I strongly believe that there was a decline in gaming immersion ever since LCDs became mainstream. Think about it - these days people don't even play super-fast-paced games like Quake 3/Live or UT games with a few exceptions, which still play Quake Live and many do so on CRTs!!! LCDs made it impossible to play those fast-paced games due to poor clarity and killed the whole idea of being sucked into a game due to poor black levels and contrast ratio. ONLY and ONLY Eizo Foris FG2421 is capable of delivering a similar CRT-like experience to gamers as it includes both - great picture clarity (Turbo 240Hz) and great picture depth (5000:1 Contrast Ratio, which is actually closer to 3500:1 - 4000:1). Having only one of these advantages will not cut it. We've gone backwards in display technology just to please office people who need small size, but we're finally heading back in the right direction with the release of Light-Boost technology and Eizo Foris FG2421.

AFAIK, CRTs still have the best, almost infinite, contrast ratio and motion clarity because of super-deep black levels and they don't need to run at exact Hz as your FPS to produce a clear image, except when your FPS gets cut, do they? You can run at 40fps @ 80Hz refresh rate and it would be much clearer than Light-Boost of 1ms (doesn't exist yet) at the same refresh rate and framerate.

I know Chief will disagree with me, but today's high-end plasma TV's motion is still clearer @ 60Hz than LightBoost @ 120Hz 10%. I can't explain it, but I tested VG248QE and F5350 next to each other and tracking fast-moving objects on plasma was MUCH easier, although not as easy as on a CRT.

Regarding Eizo Foris FG2421, just to make sure the OP is aware - this monitor is a lottery when it comes to its defects. It uses defective Sharp panels that did not pass quality inspection for a much more expensive ($6,000) industrial monitor, designed for 3D Satellite Imagery work. However, these defective panels are the only reason this monitor was even possible @ $650 and not $6,000. Colors are great, but 100% saturated primary and secondary colors are inaccurate. Left and right edges produce a 3-5mm strip of what seems like a "backlight bleed", but maybe a gamma issue. On certain gray levels, full-screen (gray and color) patterns bring out this issue, making it very noticeable, and the issue may seem worse than it is due to gamma shift. 100% black screen pattern does not produce any of that bleeding, which is why it isn't really a bleeding, but some unknown defect. Uniformity in general is poor. Some units also turn off randomly. Some people who look too closely notice the hatching effect, which is there, but you've got to be sitting 6 inches from the screen and obsessively inspect the image from every direction to notice that effect. There is a chance of several dead pixels. You definitely need at least ColorMunki Display or i1Display Pro colorimeter and learn how to calibrate if you want to get the most out of this monitor as the presets it comes with are rather poor. At the same time, all of these issues are easily over-compensated by great motion clarity and awesome picture depth.

[flood]

I know Chief will disagree with me, but today's high-end plasma TV's motion is still clearer @ 60Hz than LightBoost @ 120Hz 10%. I can't explain it, but I tested VG248QE and F5350 next to each other and tracking fast-moving objects on plasma was MUCH easier, although not as easy as on a CRT.

would be interesting to investigate this further with a high speed camera.
perhaps it's related to the TV's motion interpolation?