IPS monitors with an extra inch – Eizo Flexscan EV3895 vs LG 38WN95C

By Faryad On Feb 16, 2021

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The Eizo EV3895 is a luxurious ultrawide, especially for business users. They will find all kinds of interesting extras with this screen, such as the extensive KVM switch and docking features, long warranty and low energy consumption. In addition, the image quality is good. For the average consumer, the feature set is somewhat sparse and, like other 38″ screens, the EV3895 requires a considerable investment.

Pros

Built-in kvm functionality
Good color reproduction
Low energy consumption in operation
Long warranty

Cons

No HDR or FreeSync
Bandwidth USB-C limits docking functionality
High price

38″ screens are much more expensive than smaller ultrawides, but potentially very interesting for those looking for a luxury (semi-)business ultrawide. With 3840×1600 pixels on a diagonal of 37.5″ (monitor manufacturers like to round up), it offers a screen of this size not only has a lot of space in width, but also in height. This is especially nice during web browsing or word processing, because you don’t have to scroll as quickly. Other ultrawide monitors only offer 1200 or 1440 pixels in height, even 49″ superwides like the Philips 498P9 reviewed earlierhowever, have so many pixels on a small surface that you have to use image scaling to still be able to read the screen comfortably, so that the workspace decreases again. This is not the case with 38″ screens. The pixel density at 110ppi is almost the same as that of a 34″ or 49″ model. The relatively gentle curve of the 2300R forms a nice middle ground between flat panels and very curved ones.

Where there are several panel manufacturers active in the market for smaller and larger formats that supply both IPS and VA-type panels, manufacturers of a 38″ ultrawide can only contact LG Display for an IPS panel. As a result, 38″ screens are available in the store is less numerous, but for those with deep pockets, there is certainly something to choose from. A good example is the comparison we make in this review between the Eizo Flexscan EV3895 and the LG 38WN95C. Both 38″ screens have a panel with very similar properties. Although the suggested retail prices are quite different – 1813 euros in the case of the Eizo, 1399 euros for the LG – you now pay about the same for both screens, around 1500 euros according to the data in our Pricewatch. The two are currently difficult to obtain. However, apart from the panel used, the manufacturers have made very different choices, so that it has become two different monitors. You can see which one is the best choice for whom in this video.

Handyman

Logically, LG has been active in the 38″ segment for longer than other manufacturers, as it can purchase the panels from its own subsidiary. The manufacturer currently has three 38″ screens in its range. In addition to the 38WN95C, these are the 38GN950B and 38GL950G-B . The latter two have LG’s gaming design with RGB lighting, a refresh rate of up to 160Hz and, in the case of the 38GL950G-B, an Nvidia G-sync scaler. The design of the 38WN95C is very different and based on LG’s business line. Don’t be fooled: despite the subdued appearance, this screen also has a high 144Hz refresh rate and FreeSync (from 48Hz) for gaming, plus a relatively good HDR for a monitor.

With the uniform white back and the round, silver-grey base, the 38WN95C screen will not look out of place next to a Macbook or other Apple device. Except for the semicircular bottom of the base, the entire screen is made of plastic. The downside to the sleek design is the way in which the cables are concealed, or rather: not concealed. All ports are located to the right of the leg and protrude perpendicularly from the screen. The dainty base also doesn’t have a good solution for hiding the cords. That disturbs the beautiful design. You will also have to make room behind your desk for the rather bulky external power supply unit.

In addition to two HDMI and one DisplayPort, the LG 38WN95C also has a Thunderbolt connection. This is ideal for business users, because the fast connection provides image, USB and power. If you connect a suitable laptop using the supplied cable, you can use the screen at maximum resolution and refresh rate, with the two USB 3.0 ports on the back of the screen also working at full speed and the laptop is charged simultaneously with a maximum of 94W. That’s enough for the vast majority of non-gaming laptops.

The 38WN95C can also be used with a laptop without Thunderbolt but with DisplayPort Alternate Mode support over USB-C. In our experience, you may need a different cable than the one supplied. If it is a somewhat older laptop whose video chip cannot yet handle DisplayPort 1.4, the refresh rate will also remain at a maximum of 75Hz. If you want to use the 38WN95C’s built-in USB hub on a PC without Thunderbolt, you’ll also need to plug a USB-C cable into the Thunderbolt port. This screen does not have a ‘classic’ USB-B upstream port.

Ultimate office monitor

At first glance, you will get a bit of a rough start with Eizo if you compare the screen purely on specifications with what LG supplies for the same amount. HDR functionality is missing, the refresh rate of the screen only goes up to 60Hz and even FreeSync is not included. The Flexscan EV3895 is therefore clearly aimed at the business user and it is precisely in that niche that the screen does have added value compared to the 38WN95C. That starts with the five-year warranty period, which is longer than most other monitor manufacturers. The 38WN95C comes with a three-year manufacturer’s warranty.

The design of the EV3895 is well thought out, with a sturdy plastic housing that is all in one color. In our case that is white, but you can also order a black version. The graceful ‘slot’ at the back turns out to be a carrying handle to make it easier to move the bulky screen. The upright is made with different parts that extend in relation to each other. This saves space and also ensures that the screen can be adjusted quite far in height. The foot also has built-in cable management, where you can neatly hide the plugs behind a cover. Unlike the 38WN95C, you can use a standard power cable with a Euro plug, because the power supply is built-in.

The EV3895 also offers a more complete docking solution than LG’s screen. Besides decent for your laptop (84W) and four USB ports – two more than LG’s screen – the EV3895 also has a built-in Ethernet port for a wired network connection. In addition, there is a built-in KVM switch for up to three PCs. To this end, the EV3895 has two USB-B ports in addition to the USB-C port for upstream connection to other PCs. The latter two can be assigned to a particular image source via the OSD, just like the 38WN95C with two HDMI and one DisplayPort. If you then switch input via the hotkey on the control panel, the USB devices connected to the screen will also be automatically connected to that PC, so that you can continue immediately. Display the image of two or three PCs simultaneously on the big screen in picture-in- picture or picture-by-picturemode is of course also possible, where another button on the screen lets you switch the USB devices between the different screens.

Because Eizo has opted for USB-C instead of Thunderbolt and has not implemented Displayport 1.4, docking with your laptop unfortunately also has limitations. Via USB-C you can only use the USB ports on the screen at full speed if you set the screen to 30Hz. At 60Hz, the ports are limited to 480Mbit/s, or USB 2.0. This is not a problem for many peripherals, but fast storage devices are better connected elsewhere. The 38WN95C with its fast Thunderbolt connection does not suffer from this limitation.

Brighter versus darker

In the charts below, we compare the Eizo Flexscan EV3895 and LG 38WN95C with a wide range of other ultrawide monitors with different resolutions and formats. In general, these are somewhat more expensive and luxurious ones. In addition to the 49″ superwides from Samsung and Philips, you will also find competitors with 43″, 34″ and some previous 38″ screens that we tested. You can always recognize the Eizo EV3895 by a red bar, the LG 38WN95C has a blue color.

Starting with the brightness and contrast measurements, it becomes clear that LG’s screen can be a lot brighter than Eizo’s. Even with the 314cd/m² that the EV3895 manages to produce, you will come out well in most rooms by far. The minimum brightness of this screen is remarkably low. Eizo implements a special mix of dc dimming and high-frequency (so no disturbing flashing) pwm dimming on all its Flexscan screens to make this possible. With the brightness control set to ‘0’, we note a white brightness of only 0.74cd/m². That comes close to the black valueof the 38WN95C in HDR mode. We can hardly imagine that you would want to use such a low brightness. In any case, it means that you can still comfortably view the image of the EV3895 even in pitch-dark rooms, where the 38WN95C continues to emit a relatively large amount of light with a minimum brightness of 79cd/m².

The contrast of both monitors logically amounts to approximately the same value of around 900:1. That is more or less common for an IPS panel, although some alternatives note higher contrast. Screens with a VA panel offer a much higher contrast anyway. That is less important for business applications or display during the day, but when you put on a movie in the evening, for example, you can notice the higher black value of an IPS screen.

In standard mode, both monitors show off their wide color gamut, coming out at exactly the same 95.5 percent of DCI-P3 in our measurements. That is slightly more than the value recorded by wide gamut screens from the competition, they remain around 90 percent. Screens that show a smaller color range as standard are not included in the above graph. Although Eizo doesn’t mention it, the EV3895’s panel will presumably use the same nano-coating on the backlight as the 38WN95C, with LG explicitly speaking of a ‘Nano-IPS’ panel.

Both manufacturers have provided their screens with a good color adjustment out of the box, although you can really expect that given the price and positioning. We record (average) color and gray deviations as a ΔE2000 value, where a score below 3 indicates a deviation that is not visible to the naked eye. As you can see in the graphs above, this is the case on average for both screens for both colors and grayscale, with the 38WN95C doing slightly better in the first category and the EV3895 scoring better on the second test item. Looking at the partial measurements, both screens do show visible deviations in certain shades as standard, in particular yellow and bright red. A calibration can help reduce them for those who do image editing.

Fine sRGB mode

Even if you set the correct color profile in Windows, applications often default to a screen that can only display the sRGB color space, so colors can look oversaturated when using a screen with a wider color range. A built-in sRGB mode can solve this problem. Both LG and Eizo have such a stand built in, and it works well with both manufacturers. The primary colors are neatly reduced to the prescribed points and the brightness remains adjustable for the end user. Certainly the latter is not common.

Also in sRGB mode, both screens deliver good, but not excellent color reproduction. The EV3895 has slightly lower deviations across the board than the 38WN95C, but the average ΔE2000 values for colors and grayscale on both monitors average back below 3.

HDR with good colors, but moderate contrast

As mentioned, only the LG 38WN95C supports hdr, so the Eizo EV3895 is missing in the next section. LG’s screen is equipped with a VESA DisplayHDR600 certification, which promises a relatively good HDR for monitor concepts. We have already seen that the color range is wide, and the screen also achieves a high peak brightness of well over 600cd/m² in our measurements, as promised.

LG has added a simple edge-lit local dimming backlight to boost the contrast, which works nicely when comparing a white and a completely black image, as in the first contrast test above. In more realistic practical conditions, the backlight works much too coarsely to contribute to the contrast. In the checkerboard measurement, we arrive at 919:1, the native contrast of this panel. That’s pretty low for a good HDR. The competition also generally does not have good local dimming, but sometimes it does have a higher-contrast VA panel.

As far as the color reproduction in HDR is concerned, the 38WN95C does very well, just like the earlier 38GN950-B, by the way. Even if we include the brightness of the signal in the calculation, which generally entails strongly increased deviations, the screen records very low color deviations.

Viewing angles and uniformity

The viewing angles of both IPS panels are better than average, when we look at all the screens we tested, but in this comparison they are no more than average. After all, the necessary competitors also build in an IPS panel, where we see that the two 34″ screens with 3440×1440 pixels – and remarkably enough also the two older 38″ monitors from Dell and HP – do better.

A larger screen is more difficult to illuminate evenly, but both samples deliver a fairly uniform white rendering, even in this more expensive test field. The black uniformity of our test model of the Eizo Flexscan EV3895 is significantly less good, with some backlight bleeding in particular at the bottom left. The 38WN95C scores very well on this point.

Despite the rather business-like design, you should definitely take LG’s 38WN95C seriously as a gaming monitor, as we see when we look at the response times. They are very fast across the board and more than fast enough for the 144Hz refresh rate, although LG’s previous ‘gaming’ offering at 38″ narrowly surpasses it. The 38GN950 offers a higher maximum refresh rate, notes slightly faster response times and has less overshoot.

The Eizo EV3895 is definitely not a gaming monitor, but the manufacturer has added an overdrive button that allows you to speed up the screen’s response times. That is simply a matter of ‘on’ or ‘off’, where you can choose from about four positions with most consumer screens (including the 38WN95C). Fortunately, one setting of the EV3895 is well hit. Overall, the screen is slightly slower than the LG 38WN95C, but this screen also achieves fairly fast response times, without high overshoot or undershoot.

One of the spearheads of a good business monitor is low energy consumption. Eizo understood that well. Of course, the EV3895 consumes significantly more than the average screen in our test file, but in relation to the large screen area it is one of the most energy-efficient screens we’ve seen so far. In standby and switched off, the EV3895 does note a fairly high stand-by consumption, just like the 38WN95C. This will be related to the extensive docking functionality of both monitors.

Conclusion

If you are looking for a super deluxe ultrawide for your (home) office, a 38″ model is a potentially interesting choice because of the large work surface. Eizo has attempted to build the ideal business ultrawide around the wide, subtly curved IPS panel, which is based on our test results, has been quite successful. The screen offers some unique features that may be particularly relevant for the business user, for example the extensive KVM switch and docking features, long warranty and low energy consumption. The rest of the feature set, however, is a bit sparse, missing much-seen options such as HDR and FreeSync that could have made the monitor more suitable for entertainment, so in combination with the high price, it’s not the best deal.

The LG 38WN95C shows off an extensive arsenal of possibilities. The manufacturer seems to have wanted to make a kind of ideal all-rounder – a sleekly designed monitor with Thunderbolt that would not look out of place in the office, but secretly also lends itself very well to gaming and other entertainment. This makes it very suitable for those who want to use the monitor for private purposes as well as for work. However, LG already had an excellent 38″ monitor in the form of the 38GN950, which achieves very similar results across the board and scores even better for gaming. Moreover, that screen is now a few hundred euros cheaper. If you need connectivity or if you don’t like the gaming design of the 38GN950, the 38WN95C is still the right screen.