If we asked you to bombard us with a wish list of features to develop the best gaming monitor on the planet, the end result would undoubtedly be a display with an astronomical price tag. This is the job monitor makers are tasked with—figuring out which features make sense, and where to draw the line. Eve, a company that crowd-developed an alternative to Microsoft's Surface, has once again put design decisions in the hands of potential buyers to come up with the Eve Spectrum, the world's first crowd-developed gaming monitor.
Spectrum (not to be confused with the cable company) is the result of more than 2,000 surveyed people saying Eve's next project after the Surface competitor should be a gaming monitor. Following the survey, Eve began the project in earnest back in March of this year. Along the way, it raised the question of what trade offs crowd developers thought made sense.
Now several months later, Eve has a list of specifications. Here is what the Spectrum gaming monitor is looking like so far:
- Size—27 inches
- Resolution—2560x1440 (Quad HD)
- Brightness—400 nits
- Local dimming—8 zones
- HDR—Yes (HDR10 and DisplayHDR 400 certified)
- Color depth—1.07 billion colors (8-bit + A-FRC)
- Refresh rate—144Hz native, 165Hz via overclocking
- Response time—1ms
- Color gamut—DCI-P3 98 percent
- Ports—1x HDMI 2.0a, 2x DisplayPort 1.4, 2x USB-C, 2x USB-A
This is also a FreeSync 2 display that is G-Sync Compatible. It ticks a lot of desirable boxes. If we're nitpicking, the 400 nits brightness is underwhelming for an HDR display—it's not going to do HDR content justice like a panel with a 1000 nits brightness would.
Overall, though, the specs look good for a gaming display. Interestingly, the panel on the Spectrum is not exactly unique—Eve told our friends at TomsHardware that Spectrum uses the same Nano IPS panel as LG's UltraGear 27GL850-B.
Using the same panel paved the way for a 1ms response time on an IPS display rather than a lower quality TN screen. It's also the same panel employed by ViewSonic's upcoming Elite XG270QC.
Part of what makes Spectrum different, though, is the use of a brighter backlight. It also uses a different polarize technique to hit a higher contrast ratio—1000:1 instead of 750:1.
This is still a work in progress—Eve has posted five different design concepts to date—though Eve is aiming for a release in the second quarter of 2020. If all goes to plan, the first prototypes will ship next month.
