The MultiSync EA275WMi ($679) is the latest addition to NEC's impressive family of business-class monitors, and it's a winner. The EA275WMi uses a 27-inch Advanced High-Performance In-Plane Switching (AH-IPS) panel to deliver extremely accurate colors, crisp grayscale, and wide viewing angles, and it offers plenty of features, including a DisplayPort output for multi-display daisy-chaining. It will cost you, but the EA275WMi is our Editors' Choice for big-screen business monitors.

Design and Features
The EA275WMi ($568.99 at Amazon) looks exactly like our top pick for extra-large-screen business monitors, the NEC MultiSync EA305WMi ( at Amazon) , only smaller. The 27-inch WQHD (2,560-by-1,440) panel resides in a matte-black cabinet that weighs 12.8 pounds and is 2.8 inches thick. Thin (0.5-inch) bezels frame the screen, which has a non-reflective, anti-glare coating. The cabinet is supported by a stand with a round base and a telescoping arm that provides tilt, swivel, height, and pivot adjustments. There are four VESA mounting holes on the back of the cabinet that allow you to hang the cabinet on a wall using an optional mounting kit.

The panel has a peak brightness of 350 cd/m², a 1,000:1 native contrast ratio, a 6-millisecond (gray-to-gray) pixel response, and a 16:9 aspect ratio. There are numerous I/O ports around back, including HDMI, DVI, and DisplayPort inputs, a DisplayPort output for connecting multiple monitors in a daisy-chain configuration, ControlSync-in and -out ports for pushing settings to up to five connected displays, an audio input, and three USB 3.0 ports (one upstream and two downstream). A USB 2.0 port and a headphone jack are mounted on the left side of the cabinet.

NEC MultiSync EA275WMi

Five touch-sensitive buttons line the right side of the bottom bezel and three additional buttons on the right-hand bezel that are used to change picture settings and turn the monitor on and off. The left side of the bottom bezel contains ambient light and human activity sensors that help reduce power consumption. The EA275WMi has a pair of 1-watt speakers that are tinny sounding and don't get very loud, but are adequate for light duty, such as playing system sounds and video calls.

Picture settings are plentiful. Along with Brightness, Contrast, and Black Level settings, there are six picture presets (Standard, Text, Movie, Gaming, Photo, and Dynamic), a Uniformity setting that compensates for deviations in white levels, Human Sensing settings that automatically put the monitor into a power-saving mode if the sensor does not sense activity, and an Auto Brightness setting that uses the ambient-light sensor to automatically adjust brightness levels based on ambient light, screen content, or both.

As with the NEC EA305WMi, the EA275WMi offers a Color Control System, with four presets that increase and decrease Red, Green, and Blue color values, a Native setting, an sRGB setting, a Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) setting, and a Programmable setting that you can use with third-party software to fine-tune gamma levels. There are two ECO Mode power-saving settings—one that can reduce power by up to 15 percent, and another that can reduce power by up to 40 percent—and a carbon-footprint meter that tracks the reduction of green-gas emissions.

NEC covers the EA275WMi with a three-year warranty on parts, labor, and backlight. Included in the box are DisplayPort, USB (upstream), and ControlSync cables, and a quick-setup guide.

Performance
With its AH-IPS panel, the EA275WMi delivered spot-on color accuracy out of the box. As illustrated on the chromaticity chart below, red, green, and blue colors, represented by the colored dots, are all perfectly aligned with their ideal CIE coordinates, represented by the boxes. Colors appeared rich and uniform in my tests images and while displaying scenes from Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron on Blu-ray.

Shadow and highlight detail was also outstanding, thanks to the panel's grayscale prowess; it aced the DisplayMate 64-Step Grayscale test, correctly reproducing every shade of gray from light to dark. As with any good IPS panel, colors remained true when viewed from an extreme side, top, or bottom angle.

See How We Test Monitors

The EA275WMi has a pixel response of 6 milliseconds (gray-to-gray), which produced minor ghosting on the Crysis 3 (PC) and Grand Theft Auto V (Sony PlayStation 4 ($499.00 at Amazon) ) gaming tests. Its 26.5-millisecond input lag (the time it takes for the monitor to react to a controller command) pales in comparison to our fastest gaming monitor, the BenQ XL2430T ($399.99 at Amazon) (9.5 milliseconds), but the EA275WMi is a business monitor and likely will not be pressed into gaming duty.

In testing, the EA275WMi consumed 52 watts of power while set to the Standard preset with ECO Mode disabled. Consumption dropped to 43 watts in ECO Mode 1 and 31 watts in ECO Mode 2. By way of comparison, the 27-inch Acer Predator XB271HK also used 52 watts in Standard mode and 40 watts in ECO mode, while the 27-inch Samsung LC27F591FDN ( at Amazon) used 22 watts of power at the Standard preset and 17 watts of power in ECO Mode.

Conclusion
You'll pay top dollar for the NEC MultiSync EA275WMi, but if your business needs include superior image performance, it is money well spent. Its AH-IPS panel delivers rich, accurate colors and excellent grayscale results, and image quality remains sharp from any angle. It is outfitted with multiple video inputs, as well as a DisplayPort output that allows you to daisy-chain multiple displays, which you can automatically configure using NEC's ControlSync utility. In addition to its stellar performance, the EA275WMi offers a USB hub, an ergonomic stand, and an abundance of picture settings. All of this earns it our Editors' Choice for big-screen business monitors. If you require more screen real estate and have lots of room on your desk, the NEC Multisync EA305WMi has a larger 30-inch screen and a bigger ($1,399) price tag. It also delivers outstanding performance and robust features, making it our top pick for extra-large-screen business displays.

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