Eizo’s New DCI 4K ColorEdge Monitor Is Made for HDR Video and Very High-End Photography
Eizo has long been celebrated for its professional-grade, color-accurate monitors. Its displays are among the best options in the industry for professional photographers and videographers. The company’s latest flagship DCI 4K display, the 30.5-inch ColorEdge CG3100X, promises to fit into a professional HDR workflow.
As Eizo explains, “high brightness is crucial in modern editing and post-production workflows to support HDR and ensure consistent display of colors and highlights in video content.” To that end, the CG3100X has a maximum brightness of 500 cd/m² (nits), up from 350 nits in the previous CG319X model. The new display promises a contrast ratio of 1800:1, ensuring that black levels stay black. It is worth noting that while 500 nits technically meets HDR400 specifications, 500 nits is not especially bright, and some color-accurate monitors, like Apple’s Pro Display XDR, for example, can sustain brightness as high as 1,000 nits despite having an IPS LCD panel.
“The CG3100X further ensures professionals can reliably create and edit in HDR by supporting the hybrid log-gamma (HLG) transfer function for broadcasts and the perceptual quantization (PQ) curve. These optimized gamma curves render images to appear truer to how the human eye perceives the real world compared to SDR (standard dynamic range),” Eizo continues.
While this, and other features like the monitor’s built-in broadcast and cinema presets, are built with professional video editing and post-production applications in mind, Eizo maintains that the CG3100X is designed for professional photographers, too. It is the company’s newest and largest display for pro photography, and can display 99% of the DCI-P3 standard and 97% of Adobe RGB. Users can swap between different color spaces with a button on the front of the monitor.
The 10-bit display can show more than one billion colors simultaneously, 64 times more colors than are possible with an 8-bit panel. The GC3100X also has a 3D LUT (look-up table) that adjusts colors on an RGB cubic table. Using Eizo’s proprietary ColorNavigator 7 software, which is the company’s color management and calibration software for its ColorEdge monitors, users can fine-tune their display and also emulate specific video content color properties using a 3D LUT file.
Speaking of calibration, the display has built-in calibration sensor tech that works through ColorNavigator 7, eliminating the need to use third-party calibration devices.
The ColorEdge CG3100X is Eizo’s second ColorEdge model to support Fixed Rate Link (FRL), following the Prominence CG1. FRL enables the display to receive 12-bit signals over HDMI, which can be crucial for certain video transport and workflow requirements.
As for ports, the ColorEdge CG3100X has four USB Type-A downstream ports and a headphone port on its left side. On the monitor’s rear, there are HDMI, DisplayPort, USB Type-C (upstream), LAN, and USB Type-B (upstream) ports. The DisplayPort and HDMI inputs support DCI 4K resolution at 60p 4:4:4 10-bit and 12-bit, respectively. The USB-C port ensures easy connection with many laptops and creative workstations. The USB-C port can simultaneously handle video display and send up to 94 watts of power.
The Eizo ColorEdge CG3100X boasts many other features designed for professional workflows, including AI-based estimation algorithms that can detect temperature changes and keep the monitor stable at all times, a very swift three-minute warmup period, on-screen marker functions, out-of-gamut warnings, clipping warnings for excessively bright content, a verified factory report in the monitor’s box, and Eizo’s generous five-year warranty.
The Eizo ColorEdge CG3100X is expected to begin shipping shortly, although pricing information is not yet available. As a professional-grade monitor, it will undoubtedly be an expensive option. The ColorEdge CG319X is just under $6,000, for example.
Image credits: Eizo
