Not a lot people know about Eizo in the film world, but they’re a really big deal in other image critical industries like medical imaging.

More people in the film world should know about them because they make great displays that are built to last (5 year warranties). Their recent 4K desktop release, the Eizo 3237, solves a major issue that a lot of Mac Pro users have… the fact that there aren’t many good, inexpensive 4K monitoring choices out there.

For instance, I happen to think the Sharp monitor they sell on the Apple store is terrible… and the lack of quality 4K panels is what is really hurting the adoption of 4K, in my opinion.

Stuff just doesn’t look that good on a bad panel, no matter how good the resolution is.

Trust in 4K displays is so bad that quite a few people have told me they’d buy the iMac for $2500 and just use it in Target Display Mode for the Mac Pro (unfortunately, you can’t do this due to limitations in the Thunderbolt spec) because of how nice the display is on it.

The good news is that Eizo makes good stuff, and the recently released EV-3237 monitor is a fantastic, affordable (about $1900) 31” UHD panel that will give you a ton of screen real estate as a primary display for FCPX, Resolve, Motion, or Logic.

In my opinion, if you need a quality UHD Monitor for your Mac Pro, the Eizo 3237 is pretty much the way to go right now.

It’s a 100% SRGB accurate (which is roughly the same color space as REC 709), it accepts Displayport and HDMI, and unlike most of the cheaper 4K panels I’ve seen, it looks awesome with a little tweaking.

And while I wouldn’t recommend it for color critical work like I would the Eizo CG-277 (which I’m a huge fan of but isn’t 4K), if you have a CG-277, you can get the two to match pretty closely, giving you the benefits of 4K display for your primary desktop, and a completely color accurate second monitor that you can safely color correct without a Video I/O box because both montors will plug directly into the mac through HDMI or a Displayport to mini displayport cable (which will plug into a thunderbolt port). In fact, the EV 3237 has nicer blacks at first glance (they reason the CG-277’s are slightly brighter is to insure accuracy across the whole panel… which is why you use it for color correction).

Full disclosure, on the panel I got there were a couple small glitches… I had some weirdness running it on Yosemite initially, and there was an issue with the displayport connection (some weird blurryness on the right hand side of the monitor), but everything ran perfectly once I used the HDMI input running either directly into the Mac Pro or through an HDMI to displayport adaptor.

Also, the EcoView/Brightness settings were an initial cause for confusion (I couldn’t adjust the brightness at first), although once I figured out how it worked, I actually really liked how it was implemented (I feel like this happens to me a lot).

Anyway, FCPWORKS is an Eizo reseller, and if you decide to buy one, we certainly wouldn’t mind if you got it through us. And if you do get one through us, we’re happy to walk you through setup or calibration (for the CG-277) if you run into any issues. At FCPWORKS, we only sell the products we use ourselves… and I’m currently typing this blog from my EV-3237 connected to a Mac Pro with FCPX in the background. It’s the first sub $2,000 4K display I’ve seen that I’ve actually wanted to own.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sam Mestman, FCPWORKS.

This blog post contains the personal musings of FCPWORKS’ Workflow Architect, Sam Mestman. Sam’s also a regular writer for fcp.co and MovieMaker Magazine, teaches post workflow at RED’s REDucation classes, and is the founder and CEO of We Make Movies, a film collective in Los Angeles and Toronto which is dedicated to making the movie industry not suck. If you’ve got any FCP X questions or need some help putting together a system, drop him an email at workflow@fcpworks.com and you can follow him on Facebook or Twitter at @FCPWORKS.

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