Today we are taking a look at Eizo’s latest in environmentally friendly monitors, the Flexscan EV2411W. The EV2411W is the first of its kind in Eizo’s new EcoView series of monitors. The EcoView series promises environmental friendliness, improved work efficiency, and a hefty reduction in power consumption.
Features & Specifications
The EV2411W is not your standard monitor. First off, its on the large side coming in at a hefty 24 inches. This supports a native resolution of 1920×1200. This is large enough to have two applications open side by side without squishing them which can be very useful. Yet, despite its large size, the power consumption is almost mind bogglingly low due to its LED (versus CFL) backlighting.
To help out with the power consumption, the EV2411W has a feature called Auto Ecoview. Auto EcoView automatically dims or brightens the monitor based upon the brightness of the room. This not only saves power, but also reduces the stress on your eyes.
To show the power usage of the monitor, Eizo has incorporated a sort of power/environmentally friendly monitor that they call the EcoView Index. The index visually shows you, via a small bar graph, how much power the monitor is using. Turn the brightness down and the index goes up toward a little tree icon, turn it up and the index goes down. Its not incredibly accurate, but it gives people and idea of how much power the unit is using.
The rest of the general specifications can be found on Eizo’s website.
Power Consumption
This is where the good becomes even better. Right out of the box, this monitor fires up and uses about 35 watts. This alone is fairly impressive considering the average 24 inch LCD monitor uses around 60W. However, with the Auto Ecoview option enabled the power consumption drops almost in half to 19W. With a bit of further tweaking, which mainly involves turning down the monitor’s brightness to zero, I was able to dial down the power consumption to a mere 14W! That’s right, this monitor can be dialed down to use as much as a regular 14W CFL bulb. I’ll add that at this brightness level, the monitor is still more than adequately bright. It would actually be nice if it dimmed a bit further. It was still a little on the bright side when you are working in a very dark room.
As for standby power consumption, the monitor again is a winner. In standby mode, the kill a watt did not register any power usage. Eizo claims that the power consumption is around .4W. Yet, another feature of this monitor that seems to be missing from most days is that it actually has a power switch. With the power switch off, the monitor uses absolutely no power at all.
Environmental Impact
Eizo seems to have done a good job in the environmental arena. The Epeat page shows that they achieved a silver rating. Upon further looking it appears Eizo didn’t build the EV2411W with any recycled plastic or renewable/bio-based plastics. This is a bit disappointing. However, they did do quite well in every other category, and scored 14/25 optional points. I’d also like to mention that the length of this monitor’s life should be fairly high considering the LED backlighting. LEDs have significantly longer life than CFLs. Assuming the rest of the circuitry holds up, this monitor could outlast its CFL brethren by many years. Additionally, without CFLs, there is no mercury to deal with.
Final Thoughts
During the evaluation of this monitor I really fell in love with it. It was definitely a sad day when I had to pack it up and send it back. The size is great, and the resolution it provides is very useful when multitasking, not to mention great for gaming. The best part of it all is that you don’t have to pay for the size in power consumption. The LED backlighting makes this monitor incredibly efficient. The one downside is you do have to pay up front. The ~$750 price tag is about double what a normal 24″ monitor goes for. But, after seeing what it can do, I would definitely think twice about considering something else.
Comments on this entry are closed.