Many of our recent reviews of business monitors are professional panels with eye-catching ultra-wide displays, extended color gamut, and affordable prices. These high-end monitors have a valuable place in many offices for content creators and C-level executives. But what the business world is running into are efficient workaday models as cost-effective as NEC’s MultiSync EA271F-BK. This 27-inch monitor offers good color accuracy, virtually no bezel, and great adjustability. It’s solid for general productivity use, though for the price and screen size, the 1080p native resolution could easily be 1440p.
1080p on a big screen
The all-black EA271F-BK measures 37.8 x 50.8 x 27.9 cm (HWD), with the height increased to 51.8 cm with the stand fully extended. Including the stand, this monitor weighs 7.2 kg.
The EA271f offers ergonomic management of height, tilt, swivel, and axis control. At the base, a Susan slot facilitates side-to-side rotation. The screen mounting itself rotates 90 degrees either clockwise or anticlockwise for portrait viewing. Landscape orientation sees bezels at the edge and top appearing almost non-existent (only 1mm); this maxes the screen real estate surface and endears the screen to those given to applying two or more units in a multi-monitor array.
In the core of the EA271F-BK is an IPS display 27 inches in diagonal measurement. It carries a 1080p Native Resolution (1,920 x 1,080 pixels), 16:9 widescreen aspect.
Gone are the days of 1080p-a.k.a. full HD-as the alpha resolution, and many a business monitor now carry a 2,560 by 1,440 pixels (1440p) or 3,840 by 2,160-pixel native resolution (4K). Yet, 1080p displays are still very much the rage and highly useful, especially at the smaller screen sizes. But the larger the screen, the lower the pixel density; so, its pixel density represents a modest 82 pixels per inch (PPI). Practically speaking, a 27-inch display is just about the-larger-size-you-would-want-to-go-for-on-a-1080p-display-for-any-losing-in-image-sharpness.
On the other hand, the 27-inch Samsung CHG70 and ViewSonic VP2768 have a pixel density of 109ppi with their WQHD (2,560 x 1,440 pixels) native resolution. The Acer Predator X27, meanwhile, a highly-priced 27-inch gaming monitor, carries a native resolution of 4K with an extremely high pixel density (163ppi). They can present images a bit sharper than the EA271F-BK when standing beside each other on the screen, but they also go for proportionately more.
Resolution and PPI-wise, for the casual business user, it would most likely do just fine; however, a photographer or a graphic designer might want to think about a 1440p minimum for this size.
Old and new connection ports
In the oddball set of ports of the EA271F-BK, we find a USB hub with one USB 3.1 upstream and three USB 3.1 downstream (including a handy side-facing port), a DisplayPort, an HDMI port, a VGA port, and a DVI-D Port. These days, hardly any new monitors are found with a DVI-D port (it has kind of already been phased out by high-end video cards), while a VGA port is mostly extinct as many laptop manufacturers are giving away their analog ports. If you have an office with some aging hardware that relies on any of these legacy ports, this monitor will be a good fit or maybe the only output option at hand.
One port we’d like to see is USB Type-C, implemented as a video input from which you can charge the laptop while displaying content from it. Two related models, the NEC MultiSync EA271Q and EA271U, include a USB-C port and have a higher resolution than the EA271F-BK, but they sell for a significantly higher price ($619 and $699, respectively).
Integrated into the bottom bezel on its right edge is a line of touch controls, labeled Input, Menu, and Eco, along with an on/off button and four arrow keys for the virtual display (OSD). That is a welcome change from the line of unlabelled buttons at the bottom or even at the back that I come across on most monitors. Through the OSD, you can control a wide range of functions, including brightness, contrast, sound, and picture modes. Finally, you choose Standard, Text, Movie, Game, Photo, and Dynamic settings.
Check color and brightness.
In my testing, using a Klein K10-A colorimeter and SpectraCAL CalMAN 5 software, I measured the EA271F-BK’s luminance — luminance per unit area — at 262.4 nits (candelas per meter square). Its contrast ratio, meanwhile, tested at 802:1. These numbers are all pretty close to the NEC’s rated value (250 nits and 1,000:1, respectively).
I created the chroma chart shown here with the EA271F-BK in sRGB color mode. The area inside the triangle represents the colors produced by mixing the primary colors red, green, and blue. In contrast, the area bounded by the curve approximates the range of colors the human eye has recognizable.
NEC rated the EA271F-BK covering 95% of the sRGB spectrum, while our testing recorded a slightly better measure, covering 96.3%. Color accuracy is generally good. NEC sells a variant of this monitor for users who need higher color fidelity, the EA271F-BK-SV ($569), which adds SpectraViewII calibration software and SpectraViewII Color Calibration Kit (SVII-PRO-KIT).
The built-in speakers, two of them, of the EA271F-BK go pretty loud; however, they tend to distort when pushed too far. The video quality is also quite good, with colors being well saturated and looking real. The EA271F-BK is suitable for light gaming, but it is devoid of gaming features.
A basic bezel-less productivity monitor
The NEC MultiSync EA271F-BK fits the purpose of a general business monitor. It’s fairly well-appointed, such as with its almost bezel-less case and ergonomic adjustments aplenty that allow it to rotate to portrait mode. There are a couple of rare ports on monitors that will really come in handy for some older hardware: VGA and especially DVI-D. It’s got an IPS screen that performs well in terms of color accuracy.