Eizo ColorEdge CS2410 review: Why pay more?

New Eizo ColorEdge CS monitors are always welcome. Designed to be affordable while still providing the quality you’d expect from Eizo, they offer a tempting entry into the world of colour-accurate monitors for people who have previously been priced out of the market. They also mean that a creative business can start thinking about kitting out the whole office, rather than a handful of desks.

What don’t you get? For a start, there’s no hood in the box. This will set you back a further £150. And you’ll need to supply your own calibrator; unlike the more expensive CG series, there’s no clever automation here, meaning you’ll need to keep Eizo’s ColorNavigator software running in the background to remind you that, for instance, 200 hours have elapsed since you last calibrated the monitor. (You can set the number of hours between calibrations yourself, with a maximum of 500.)

The good news is that this screen is very easy to calibrate. ColorNavigator knew which calibrator we plugged in and even produced an onscreen “shadow” that matched its shape, so that we knew exactly where to place it. Within a minute, the CS2410 was calibrated and ready to go.

One other key ‘omission’ to note is that this monitor isn’t designed for the Adobe RGB colour space but is instead tuned for sRGB. Consequently, it’s for professionals who output their work to the web, tablets or phones; if you need pre-press accuracy, you should choose a monitor that explicitly supports Adobe RGB. During our tests, the CS2410 covered 98% of the sRGB gamut (108% volume), but only 72% of the Adobe RGB and 76.5% of DCI-P3 colour spaces.

With that proviso ticked, you’ll see phenomenal accuracy. Our tests returned an average Delta E of 0.31 and a maximum of 0.64, so way beyond what your eyes will pick up. Essentially, this is perfect colour accuracy. It may not be the brightest screen, with a peak of 266cd/m2, but in most office environments you should be setting the brightness to around 120cd/m2 anyway, so we can’t imagine this being much of a problem.

The ColorEdge CS2410 is one of the most uniform panels we have ever tested. With an LED backlight and Eizo’s ‘digital uniformity equalizer’ (DUE) technology, there was only a tiny amount of variation across the panel. Again, this is effectively perfect, as the human eye wouldn’t spot it. Also note that, on top of the five-year warranty, you get six months where you can return the CS2410 if any subpixels are fully lit.

Eizo matches this image quality with the best onscreen display (OSD) around. Press any of the six touch-sensitive buttons on the bottom bezel and you’ll see a selection of options that change based on context. For example, initially you can quickly adjust brightness, but choosing “menu” allows you to dive deep into the fine-tuning options. Or you can flick between five colour modes, or choose a different input source. If only all monitors’ OSDs were as easy to use.

The stand is fantastically flexible, too. You can rotate it into portrait mode, easily adjust its height by 155mm, swivel it from -172° to 172° and even tilt it back by 35˚. Just because Eizo has hit a price point with the CS2410 that doesn’t mean it’s compromised on quality. Similarly, the bundled cables (DisplayPort, HDMI, USB Type-B to Type-A) are up to the same spec as much more expensive Eizo panels.

Our one criticism is its cable management. You can thread the three cables (USB, power and signal) through a detachable loop, but there’s no way to avoid them jutting out from the bottom of the screen. Things will get even messier if you use the three side-mounted USB ports, but at least they’re easy to access.

One thing to bear in mind is that this is a 24in panel with a 1,920 x 1,200 resolution, giving a pixel density of 94ppi. Compared to the now-common 27in 4K displays, this gives text a slightly grainy look, so you should make sure that you won’t miss the extra detail before taking the plunge.

However, if a 24in monitor with a 1,920 x 1,200 resolution is enough for your needs, and you don’t require Adobe RGB support, the ColorEdge CS2410 begs one obvious question: why pay more for a colour-accurate monitor?

Eizo ColorEdge CS2410 specifications