Gaming Performance

As you surely know, FreeSync is to AMD what G-Sync is to Nvidia - a technology that gets rid of screen tearing and stuttering by actively syncing the in-game framerate with the monitor refresh rate. The Eizo Foris FS2735 offers not one, but two FreeSync ranges - one spans from 30-90 Hz and the default one ranges from 56-144 Hz. Unless your graphics card can't maintain more than 56 FPS in those games you usually play, you should use the 56-144 Hz FreeSync range. You switch between them in the administrator menu, which I wrote about in the OSD section of this review. When combined with an AMD graphics card that can deliver 100 or more FPS at 1440p resolution - that would be the RX Vega - the Eizo Foris FS2735 offers terrific gaming performance. The FreeSync implementation is flawless, and the resulting smoothness of gameplay is simply impressive. For gamers who are using AMD's graphics cards, the Foris FS2735 offers one of the very best gaming experiences at 1440p resolution assuming you don't feel the need to go above 27" in screen size.

Response Time and Overdrive

Much like every other IPS-type gaming monitor, the Eizo Foris FS2735 has a 4 ms GtG response time. The panel uses the overdrive technology to make the pixel transitions faster, and you will find the option under "Overdrive" in the OSD (Color > Advanced Settings). Overdrive has a grand total of three settings - Off, Standard, and Enhanced.


I extensively tested all of them by using the so-called pursuit camera method, developed by the good people of Blur Busters, namely Mark D. Rejhon. The idea of the procedure is to use a standard DSLR camera to capture the motion blur exactly as your eyes see it. That's achieved by mounting a camera on to a smooth slider, setting the camera exposure to four times the length of the monitor refresh rate, and loading the Ghosting Test Pattern with the Pursuit Camera Sync Track invented by Mark Rejhon of Blur Busters. The camera has to then be slid sideways at the same speed as the on-screen motion. The sync track is there to tell you if you're moving the camera too fast or too slow or if it shakes too much. The procedure takes some practice and getting used to, but it yields great results and lets us examine the differences between various overdrive settings at various monitor refresh rates.

I made a series of photos at refresh rates of 60, 100, 120, and 144 Hz, at all three available overdrive settings. Let's take a look at the results to figure out what the ideal overdrive setting would be. To properly spot the differences between various overdrive settings, I strongly urge you click on the picture to see it at its full resolution.



A couple of things are very apparent. If for some reason you plan to use the Foris FS2735 at 60, 100, or 120 Hz, you should have the overdrive set to "Standard". Setting it to "Enhanced" introduces quite a lot of overshoot, especially at 60 and 100 Hz, and there's plenty of trailing visible when no overdrive is used. On the other hand, if the monitor is set to 144 Hz, which should be the case for most of its users (that's why you're buying a 144 Hz screen, aren't you?), you should set the overdrive to "Enhanced" to get the sharpest moving visuals possible.

Input Lag

To measure a monitor's input lag, I use a high-speed camera and a modified gaming mouse. Here's a detailed explanation of my testing procedure. It's important that you're aware of it or you won't interpret the results properly.

I start by connecting a modified gaming mouse - the Logitech G9x - to my PC. The mouse has a blue LED connected directly to its primary button, and it instantly lights up after the button is pressed. The USB sample rate is set to 1,000 Hz via the Logitech Gaming Software. Then, I mount the Nikon 1 J5, a mirrorless camera capable of recording video in 1,200 FPS, in front of the monitor. After that, I run Counter Strike: Global Offensive and load a custom map (Map_Flood, made by a member of the Blur Busters community) consisting of nothing but a huge white square suspended in a black void. The camera is set up in a way that has it record the entire screen.

Every video setting in CS:GO is either switched to the lowest-possible setting or turned off, and a console command, "fps_max 0", is used to turn off the built-in FPS limiter to get as many frames per second as possible. The purpose of that is to remove the input lag caused by the game engine from the equation. My system is equipped with an overclocked Core i7-6700K and a GTX 1080 Ti, so it has no trouble hitting 2,000 FPS in that scenario. Vertical Sync and G-Sync/FreeSync are also turned off because we don't want anything delaying the drawing of the frames - our goal is to have the first frame reaching the screen as fast as the monitor itself lets it, rather than limiting it by various syncing methods. You're probably wondering how much additional input lag can be introduced when G-Sync or FreeSync is used, which is undoubtedly something every user of a monitor that supports it will use - that's why you're buying it in the first place. I tested several different G-Sync and FreeSync monitors extensively with G-Sync/FreeSync on and off and found out that G-Sync/FreeSync introduces an additional 2 ms of input lag on average.

The test is conducted by starting the video recording and pressing the left mouse button, which is bound to the in-game command "Strafe Left", after which the LED blinks and an in-game movement occurs. I repeat this procedure twenty times and then open the recorded videos in QuickTime, which has a nice option of browsing through a video frame by frame. I then find the frame where the LED first turned on and carefully look for the frame where the first glimpse of on-screen movement can be seen. The exact number of frames it took between those two events to happen is then multiplied by 0.8333 because I'm recording in 1,200 FPS (1 frame = 0.8333 ms). To get the final result, I subtract 5 ms from the calculated time because that's the average click latency of the Logitech G9x (it measures between 4-6 ms). There are a couple of other factors that slightly influence the score, such as the LED-reaction time (1 ms or less), camera lag (1 ms), and USB polling rate (1 ms), but those aren't constant, so I'm not subtracting them from the final calculated result. That's also one of the reasons why I'm doing as many as twenty measurements - the impact of the aforementioned error margins is reduced with each new sample taken.

In the end, we get the so-called button-to-pixel lag value - the time that passes from the moment you perform an action with your mouse to where said action is first registered on the screen. Anything below 16 ms (that is equal to a frame of lag at 60 Hz) can be considered gaming-grade, and such a monitor is suitable even for the most demanding gamers and eSports professionals. If input lag falls between 16-32 ms (between 1-2 frames of lag at 60 Hz), the monitor is suitable for almost everyone but the most hardcore gamers, especially if they're playing first-person shooters on a professional level. Finally, if a monitor's input lag is higher than 32 ms (over 2 frames of lag at 60 Hz), even casual gamers should be able to notice it. Will they be bothered by it? Not necessarily, but I can't recommend a screen like that for serious gaming.

Here's how the Eizo Foris FS2735 holds up in terms of input lag:



As we can see by looking at the numbers, the Eizo Foris FS2735 offers terrific gaming performance. Its minimum input lag was as low as 5.83 ms, and it permanently stayed below 16 ms. This truly is a gaming-grade monitor perfectly capable of meeting the high demands of eSports professionals.

Blur Reduction

Unlike other FreeSync monitors, the Eizo Foris FS2735 offers Blur Reduction, an ULMB-like feature that works regardless of the graphics card your PC is equipped with, as it cannot be combined with a variable refresh rate (which is fundamental to both FreeSync and G-Sync) anyway. It tries to get rid of the motion blur by having the backlight act as a strobe. Eizo's implementation of the Blur Reduction feature is quite interesting. While ULMB on other monitors is usually limited to 120 Hz, you're welcome to set the monitor's refresh rate to 144 Hz on Eizo's monitor. Just as importantly, it won't completely destroy the screen's brightness. With Blur Reduction activate, the monitor refresh rate set to 144 Hz, and brightness set to 100% in the OSD, the actual measured screen brightness is 212 nits - enough for any kind of daily use. In other words, you can keep Blur Reduction on at all times if that's what you want.

In order to activate it, assuming you have an AMD graphics card, you first have to dive into your Radeon driver and deactivate FreeSync. Although that should in theory be enough for the Blur Reduction feature to stop being grayed out in the OSD, it isn't - it won't become configurable until you manually reduce the refresh rate to 60 Hz. Then, you can turn the Blur Reduction on only to have it automatically turn off again as soon as you increase the refresh rate above 60 Hz. Eizo blames AMD for this annoying issue, claiming that their graphics driver has trouble informing the monitor about FreeSync being turned off.

Luckily, there's a workaround. If you'd like to properly use the Blur Reduction feature, simply open up the Administrator Settings OSD menu and set the Signal Format option to DisplayPort 1.2. That way, FreeSync will be turned off on a monitor level, and you'll be free to use Blur Reduction at any of the monitor's supported refresh rates (60, 100, 120, or 144 Hz).

Because of the way the Blur Reduction feature works, you should avoid using it at a refresh rate of 60 Hz. It does a much better job of removing blur at 100, 120, and 144 Hz, with the latter offering the best performance overall. These pursuit camera photos were taken at 144 Hz, by combining Blur Reduction with all three available overdrive settings. To properly spot the differences between various overdrive settings, I strongly urge you click on the picture to see it at its full resolution.



It should be noted that the Blur Reduction feature doesn't manage to completely remove perceivable motion blur, regardless of the overdrive setting - we can clearly see that by examining the photos. However, moving visuals are definitely sharper compared to not using Blur Reduction, which is why it's quite likely that some users will prefer to use this mode instead of utilizing the benefits of FreeSync, more so when we take into consideration that the Foris FS2735 manages to keep its maximum brightness above 200 nits with Blur Reduction turned on and that the feature can (and should) be combined with the full refresh rate of 144 Hz. Overdrive should be set to "Enhanced" as that results in the sharpest moving visuals.