Nixeus NX-VUE27 27" Monitor: High Resolution for the Masses
by Chris Heinonen on September 20, 2012 6:10 PM ESTConclusion: Works Well, but Definitely Cuts Corners
As I mentioned in the opening, I didn’t want to recommend the import 27” monitors as I worried about their warranty and support issues. I've never had any comments or criticisms of their performance as I haven’t used one, and from the data that Anand ran on one they seem to perform reasonably well. Since the Nixeus has a warranty and user support, the issue really comes down to performance as well as pricing.
The main concern I have is the contrast ratios. Many people, including the Imaging Science Foundation, believe that Dynamic Range is the single most important aspect of any display; if everything on the display is muted then you won’t care if the colors are accurate or not. Of course movies and games demand this more than word processing and programming do. It really is the higher black levels that cause the issue on the Nixeus compared to other displays. Unfortunately it’s also an area that IPS doesn’t help with, as it typically has higher black levels than VA-based panels.
Beyond that, I found the performance to be pretty good. The input lag is a killer for gamers, and they will need to go with the HP ZR2740w still if they want a 27”, 2560x1440 display with low input lag. The OSD is the other thing that bothers me, but since I calibrated the display for a final time I haven’t had to get back into the settings, and I imagine it will be the same for most users as well. On the whole colors are good, the screen is sharp, and the glossy coating didn't bother me with glare too much, though I do work in a basement with no natural light and recessed ceiling lights.
The workmanship of the display is very basic and utilitarian and feels nowhere near as solid as a display from HP or Dell. The glossy finish picks up fingerprints easily, the stand is stiff and hard to adjust sometimes, and the protective film is still stuck in a couple of areas for me. With the original target price of $430 I had no issue recommending the Nixeus, but with the updated online price of $500 it isn't as much of a slam-dunk. It still sells for less than the HP monitor and offers an OSD and more inputs, but the HP offers a better contrast ratio, A+ instead of A graded panel, a better stand and build quality, and can be used for gaming. These aren't small differences, and they are more forgivable for $220 difference than $150.
In the end, the performance of the Nixeus is still good, and the price is better than anything you don't buy off eBay. For doing work, including the editing, writing, and posting of this review, it does a very good job. Unlike the imported Korean panels I don't have an issue recommending the Nixeus NX-VUE27; I just wish the price had come in at the original $430 target instead of the current $500 as that would make it very easy to recommend it to everyone. That said, if you don't need DisplayPort or HDMI inputs and you're willing to risk having problems, several of the other AnandTech editors have purchased 27" Korean LCDs and are quite pleased with the results; it's a gamble, but for many online buyers it has been an acceptable risk.
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magreen - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
Especially given that there appears to be a real surplus of compute power in computers these days. The vast majority of users have no need for the compute power an i7 can deliver nor what most discrete GPUs can deliver. It's time to harness that power to finally give us resolution independent displays!peterfares - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
Windows fully supports DPI scaling since Vista. Most Microsoft programs fully support it and a few third party ones do, too. You can also try forcing high DPI mode on unsupported programs and see which ones work. Otherwise you can run them at their original pixel size or you can pixel scale them.Microsoft made a small push for higher DPI screens back during Vista's launch (along with hybrid hard drives) and it's only now when screens are finally moving up in DPI (look at the new laptops and tablets with 13" 1080p screens). Hybrid hard drives are also coming into play, though it's a bit late since SSDs are becoming big and cheap enough to completely replace them. Vista was just far ahead of its time.
cosmotic - Friday, September 21, 2012 - link
"vista was just far ahead of its time"Yeah, *thats* what vista was.
Malphas - Monday, September 24, 2012 - link
Actually it was, try Vista again today and you'll find it a near identical experience to Windows 7. The reason it was so awful at the time was due to underpowered hardware (made worse by the Vista Ready scheme Microsoft stupidly went along with to appease OEMs), incompatible hardware and software, buggy third party drivers, software that didn't play nice with UAC, etc. The actual OS itself is sound and again only cosmetically different from Windows 7, which received near universal praise.Penti - Friday, September 21, 2012 - link
Readyboost is still horrible and should die, seriously just give me an mSATA SSD + HDD if cheap storage is needed instead of 5400 rpm drives and small sub 64GB SSDs for caching. It's worse then a fast HDD. DPI-scaling is by no means an nice and clean way of scaling elements in Windows, not even all Microsoft apps support it. Though it's standard to have it scale on OEM-PCs since a long time now. Metro still scales horrible though.madmilk - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
It supports it in basically the same way the retina Macbook does (assuming Vista-style scaling): show natively high-res apps at full resolution, and scale up the rest.The difference is, Microsoft hasn't gone out and made noise about it, so pretty much everyone's apps are just using ugly scaling.
Sabresiberian - Friday, September 21, 2012 - link
"Resolution" has been perverted since LCDs came out. It used to be tied to pixel density. So, correctly speaking cell phones already have higher resolutions than monitors.;)
jeremyshaw - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
Hello,I've noticed you mentioned HDMI 1.4 support in the specifications list. Does that mean an AMD GCN or Intel Ivy Bridge (do the Ivy Bridge drivers support that, yet?) can output, via a HDMI output, a 2560x**** image at 60Hz?
peterfares - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
It's been stated that this display supports those resolutions over HDMI as long as you have a device capable of sourcing it. I don't know what can source it, if anything, yet.atotroadkill - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
From what I can find on the web, if you are using the CPU's embedded GPU for the HDMI output then no - only displayport can.To power 2560x1440 over HDMI you may need a descrete Nvidia 600 series card.