- Hey, you.
Yeah, you.
There's a glaring issue
with modern gaming displays:
they all suffer from reduced vibrancy
and image sharpness due to their matte screen coatings.
And the solution?
It's been staring us right in the face.
Literally.
The solution is to just remove it.
Think about it.
Every other display in your life does this:
TVs, phones, watches.
They all have glossy screens.
Why?
Is it just because there are no light sources around them
to cause glare?
No!
It's because it just plain performs better.
Apple has known this for years,
which is why their displays are all designed
to appear as smooth and flat as possible,
even the ones that have anti-glare coatings.
But Apple's displays,
even if they were affordable
and had removable power cables,
are not exactly ideal for gaming,
leaving us with no choice,
that is, until now.
That's right.
We are finally acknowledging the Eve Spectrum gaming monitor
with glossy finish.
It looks pretty good,
but there are a few things that reflect poorly
on the company itself,
both past and present,
that we simply can't ignore.
And we're gonna talk about that
and our sponsor.
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(upbeat music)
Hey, there.
In the time between shooting and uploading this video,
Eve rebranded to Dough,
which is a name.
Usually this sort of behavior
is a company trying to separate its brand
from shady dealings
that took place in the past,
we can't say that's what's happening for sure here,
but we don't really have a ton of other guesses.
So, with that in mind,
every time I say Eve,
think Dough.
We've covered an engineering sample
matte finish Eve Spectrum early last year,
and the results were,
well, let's just say I didn't even wanna make this video.
But then we finally got our eyes
on a finished unit of the glossy version,
and I had to see what all the fuss was about.
We're gonna game on it in a second,
but right out of the gate,
before we even do that,
look at the difference in black depth
from the matte one to the glossy one.
And you can try it at different angles.
Obviously,
big difference in the reflection
of Linus looking back at me.
But, once we light them up,
assuming they're reasonably bright,
which they are,
even in a dark scene like this one,
a lot of that distraction goes away.
The reflection is more noticeable here
but it's still here in this one,
and it has like a washed out look to it,
doesn't it?
The wild thing is that a lot of my perceived difference
is not even real.
If I look closely at it,
these greens are the same,
but this one just pops more.
Like it's not like if we put a spectrophotometer
up to both of them,
they're not gonna output the same color value.
They do!
It's just, like it's sharper, you know?
In a moderately lit room,
I could see preferring the matte one,
but at either extreme,
dark or extremely bright,
this is obviously better.
Like, come over and look at it from this angle.
We've got this studio light here, right?
So if you come over here,
you're gonna see that reflection hit both
of these top left parts of the screen.
Here, yeah, you can obviously see the light.
That sucks.
But here the entire quadrant of the display is blown out.
You can't even see anything on it.
Neither's ideal.
Obviously, you wanna turn off the light if you can,
but I know which results I prefer.
Bit of a brighter scene
so reflections are going to be less of an advantage
or disadvantage either way,
but when it comes to the vibrancy in the perceived contrast:
wow.
No question.
Now, in fairness,
part of the problem is that we do have studio lights on.
So what I would like to do,
even though I know we're not really set up for it here
and this wasn't in the script,
is I'd like to see them in the dark.
That's how I would actually experience these at home.
Does this guy have an over shield and I just killed him?
Oh my God.
I'm seven and one.
These guys suck.
Am I gonna have to get a glossy monitor now?
Like what? - [Plouffe] Right?
It's a lot closer without the lights.
- Yeah, but it's still a little sharper.
The contrast difference is not as extreme
without the lights.
It's definitely sharper though.
- [Plouffe] Yeah.
- And clearly it's a good gaming display
'cause I'm eight and one right now.
I'm just in like a random quick play.
This is not good players.
I'm probably playing with children.
Oh, I died! No!
Whatever.
I'm clearly the winner.
All right. Good luck team without me.
The only difference between these two displays
is the finish.
They're both 27 inches, 4K, 144 hertz,
10 bit color,
sort of,
it's 8 bit FRC,
pretty okay,
but not true 10 bit,
and boasts 98% coverage of the DCI P3 color space
with VESA HDR 600 certification.
They've got lots of IO,
including two HDMI 2.1 ports,
and 100 Watts of charging for your connected device,
plus, display port on one of the USBC ports.
So, there's honestly not a whole lot more to ask for here.
And despite Eve apparently having to convince LG
to remove the polarizer layer,
which involve recalibrating part of its LCD assembly line,
they're both priced at a pretty competitive $800 US.
So, do you go for it?
Maybe.
But you should watch the whole video
because it's a bit more complicated.
It's absolutely tempting.
There aren't a lot of options for glossy desktop monitors,
especially if you want something gaming ready.
But I don't quite know why
when you add a matte finish,
it dulls the image.
And while the difference you see here might be minor to you,
there's no question that under the right
or even the wrong conditions,
our glossy screen looks more vibrant.
I mean, we've seen plenty of glossy panels
in gaming laptops,
but for years, display manufacturers
have been selling us matte desktop monitors
because reflections are bad and annoying,
I guess?
But then in some cases,
these same manufacturers are turning around
and selling us glossy TVs for our sunbathed living rooms.
So what gives?
My best guess is that when it comes to TVs,
the more juiced up the colors look,
the easier it is to sell,
at least to the general public.
I mean, the sales rep doesn't care if you're gonna put it
in front of a giant west facing window
or in your dimly lit basement.
But your monitor?
Well, that's likely to be something
that you spend hours working on during the day.
So, reflections are a distraction
and we want them gone.
But we're gamers.
Odds are it's dark out
when we're using our personal rigs anyway
or we've blocked out all natural light sources.
I mean, a mirror-like reflection
is certainly distracting under certain conditions,
but so is a giant diffused blob.
We asked a few people from around the office
to look at both of these displays
with a lamp shining directly on them,
and the majority actually preferred the glossy screen.
Where matte wins, however,
is in dark games, loading screens,
or anytime you're in an environment
with a little bit of reflection
or with especially distracting reflections
like constant movement in a hallway behind you.
We also did have some individuals
who just (snaps fingers)
instantly preferred the blurry reflection
because they were able to tune it out more easily.
So clearly this is not as black and white
as saying, "Go with gloss, you'll be happier,"
or, "Buy the ShortCircuit hoodie from lttstore.com.
It looks great,"
especially when we consider the source
of this glossy gaming monitor.
Eve's history is troubled at best,
but we'll talk about that later.
Let's start with the good.
We tested a Delta E average of 1.9 in SDR,
so it's very color accurate outta the box,
at least the ones they sent to reviewers,
and we reached almost 800 nits peak brightness in HDR.
So it gets plenty bright.
It also manages near complete coverage
of the most common digital color space.
Thanks to Eve's passionate community on Reddit,
the pixel response times and input leg of the display
have already been tested,
and this is on one that was sent out to the general public.
So it's even more good news there.
We found the gaming experience to be quite excellent,
which is all well and good,
but there are problems.
For starters,
the OSD is better than what we saw in our preview
but it can still be frustrating.
It only allows full access when you've got an input signal,
which can make troubleshooting an absolute nightmare.
They aren't the only ones to do this,
but it's an industry trend that needs to die yesterday
like you might,
if you missed the latest Floatplane exclusive,
where our CFO and my wife,
Yvonne,
dished on what it was like starting up the company,
among other things.
One cool thing that Eve offers is user upgradable firmware,
but then I feel like the reason for it
is that they just didn't have time to finish
before they started shipping.
We had some really weird connectivity issues
with Apple devices,
which is why we set out to update the firmware.
And as we were going through the change logs,
we found that major development
is still being done on these displays.
Also, the experience of the update could be a lot smoother.
You need to install two separate apps for the USB hub
and the scaler firmwares on your Windows 10
or Windows 11 device,
download the files,
then run the apps while you're connecting via USB-B
or USB-C.
All of that was pretty okay,
but then one of our displays got stuck on the Eve boot logo
for several minutes after processing the update
causing us to suspect that it had been bricked
before it finally gave
a second update processing notification
and came back to life.
Pretty scary.
Another issue was HDR.
I already said it gets plenty bright,
around 760 nits peak,
and it gets pretty dark too.
But with only 16 local dimming zones,
it does not provide the most compelling HDR experience.
Like, a scene like this
might look better than it would on an SDR display,
but don't expect the stars to pop against a night sky.
It doesn't have individually lit pixels like an OLED.
It is better than many other competitors
in this price range,
but Sony's new monitor,
the INZONE M9,
costs only $100 more,
and has a whopping 96 zones with similar specs otherwise.
Side note by the way,
like the Eve spectrum,
the Sony doesn't come with any display cables.
Weird trend.
Not sure if I'm a fan,
but okay.
Let's move on from gaming for a moment though.
All of that IO, color accuracy,
glossy coating,
and pixel density of 163 pixels per inch,
means this should be a pretty decent display
for design work too, right?
I mean, it's not quite as good on paper
as an Apple Studio display,
but it's also less than half the price.
Unfortunately, when we tried hooking it up
to an Intel based MacBook Air,
we got terrible results,
both with and without our firmware update.
Our max refresh rate was locked to just 30 hertz,
and it detects as a 61 inch 4k display for some reason.
It is neither of those things.
Maybe you'll have better success
with a different model of Mac,
and our USB-C display port connection worked fine
with Windows devices,
but that experience was enough for us
to throw in a,
your mileage may vary,
and all of this assumes you even get a monitor.
Yeah, we're gonna talk about that.
While it's reviewing rather well,
some buyers,
a mix of folks who backed the project initially
or bought it later on,
are complaining about not even knowing how close they are
to a shipping date.
Eve's own shipping update has a long line of people
demanding what they paid for
or a concrete update at the very least.
And some of these are from as recent
as the day before writing this script.
When the Eve V disaster struck,
their CEO said it wouldn't happen again,
but here we freaking are.
And honestly, it seems to be an overall attitude problem.
You already can't produce enough of these things
to fill your orders.
So, why do you need more press coverage?
Why are you sending this to me?
I can't help but feel a little awkward
having these review units in front of me
that I didn't pay for
when I know that there are customers
who gave Eve their actual money,
weeks or even months ago,
and probably should have gotten them in my place.
Because of these ongoing controversies around transparency
and customer service issues,
we can't exactly recommend buying one of these
unless you have a credit card
with really strong buyer protections.
In that case, I can see why you might wanna give it a try
'cause it's a pretty good display for gaming,
and personally, I hope to see it spark a trend
towards more consumer choice around screen finishes
even if you don't prefer glossy personally.
If you can't wait,
or you don't have a credit card,
then we'll have a few alternatives
for you linked down below.
But if you do get your hands on one of these,
I think you're gonna love it as much as I do
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Thanks for watching.
Are you team glossy or team matte?
Do you have any, Dough, horror stories?
Let us know in the comments,
and actually, let us know
if you had a good, Dough, experience.
We'd like to see those too.
Maybe this is just a case of some squeaky wheels
and a lot of grease?
I don't really think so,
but we'll see.