I received my Spectrum 4K a few days ago and have been using it a fair bit, so I would like to make a short follow up on the product I actually received.
My workstation has the following specs:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5950X
GPU: ASUS RTX 3080 TUF OC
RAM: 64gb G.Skill DDR4 3200
Boot drive: 1GB Samsung 980 Pro NWME
Motherboard: MSI X570 Carbon Pro Wi-Fi
Power supply: ASUS ROG STRIX 850G
The computer should fall well within the ideal use case for a monitor such as the EVE Spectrum, I’m driving the monitor at 4K144hz with HDR using the included HDMI 2.1 cable Microsoft provides with the Xbox Series X.
I have manually adjusted the response time overdrive to 15 following the advice from Hardware Unboxed, seem to work extremely well.
The good
The monitor is quite frankly exceptional, it gets really bright with accurate color reproduction and feels really responsive, it’s a really nice product to use immediately after unpacking and updating it.
Games look stunning in 4K at high frame rates on this monitor and the responsiveness easily feels on par with my old ASUS PG279Q that uses a dedicated G-Sync module, it’s a great performer for gaming and SDR content in general. The monitor might not be fantastic for high contrast content due to the limited amount of dimming zones, but it’s still not terrible at its worst, just some backlight bleeding like what you would often see on modern non-OLED based TV’s.
The color accuracy feels good out of the box and it can totally be used without tinkering too much with it, it’s certainly among the better experiences I have had with a display being used as is. I will color calibrate it using a colorimeter after Christmas to ensure it’s as correct as possible, but for now it’s pretty good.
The best part of the monitor is hands down the design of both the monitor and stand, it’s a beautiful and well designed piece of hardware that avoids using attention seeking lights, colors and weird shapes everywhere, it’s the type of design every monitor maker should offer high end panels with and EVE Devices nailed it.
The quality of the materials also feels in line with the high-end pricing, the plastics feel good and the stand feels like something the devices team at Microsoft would have developed, the money on materials compared to the asking price seems totally justified. My only nitpick about the design is the lack of swivel in the base of the stand, but it’s not something I really need for my setup and it’s an optional accessory after all.
The packaging of the product was exceptionally well done, the cardboard used felt to be of high quality and minimal amounts of plastic was used, whoever worked on that side of the project did a fantastic job putting together such a well thought out packaging solution.
The bad
HDR simply does not work with this monitor on Windows 11, it’s a mess that will always result in the monitor getting stuck in some weird state where the image will always be discolored or monochrome after some time.
This is a problem i have seen a lot of people report and it’s still not fixed after the monitor has been shipping to customers for half a year now. When it works, the HDR experience is alright for bright scenes and you can see detail in high luminosity areas, darker areas less so.
I have also been experiencing a problem where the monitor will randomly blink to black for a few seconds before coming back, Windows does not register this as the monitor disconnecting. I’m unsure if this is a cable issue or what is going on, will be keeping an eye on this issue.
The OSD continues the trend of monitors adhering to obscure navigation concepts, it’s not intuitive that selecting items is continuing to click right and clicking the button down hides the OSD, there is no sense of selecting items when the right button has multiple functions and navigating to the left will close the OSD when it hits the root of the hierarchy, this seems like a really strange choice that no UX designer looked at.
The end
In conclusion i think the Spectrum 4K is a great monitor that is ruined by its abysmal HDR performance on Windows and other minor kinks like the OSD being unintuitive to navigate. I would not recommend this monitor to anyone unless they can fix the HDR issues on windows, buy it on shelves at a local retailer and EVE Devices significantly fix their customer services, I have little faith in the company being able to handle things like repairs in a timely manner after how I and other customers have been treated with delivery and related service inquiries over the last few months.