NEC MultiSync EA305WMi Professional Monitor With ControlSync Review

Name: NEC MultiSync EA305WMi Review
Brand: NEC

by Joshua Gulick — Thursday, June 23, 2016, 11:40 AM EDT

Thirty inches is plenty of screen real estate for many tasks, but adding the second monitor (the EA275WMi in our tests) gave us even more freedom to work. Because we work so much with text, we looked at our documents in Microsoft Word and Google Docs before firing up Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. Text looked crisp in both editing programs. And Lightroom, which really benefits from extra screen space, looked great on this monitor.

NEC MultiSync EA305WMi with Adobe Lightroom

It’s worth noting that you can choose from several calibration profiles, including separate text and photo-editing profiles. Because the MDSVSENSOR3 makes such short work of calibrating, you can switch back and forth quickly and easily.

HD Video Playback and Gaming

You won’t buy the NEC MultiSync EA305WMi just to watch video on it, but the good news is that when you do kick back, it’s going to look great. We found full brightness more comfortable when watching video than it was when editing text, but thanks to ControlSync, you can change the setting on all of your monitors at once if you prefer different profiles for different tasks.

You won’t find gaming-oriented features like AMD’s FreeSync or NVIDIA’s competing G-SYNC technology onboard the NEC MultiSync EA305WMi, but there’s no reason you can’t blow off some steam after work with a game or two. The first-person shooters we fired up looked great on the EA305WMi, and while the PC's internal hardware is largely responsible for the excellent graphics, the monitor handled the games well with minimal ghosting, and bright, rich colors.

Tags: LCD, display, NEC, monitor, MultiSync

Joshua Gulick

Josh cut his teeth (and hands) on his first PC upgrade in 2000 and was instantly hooked on all things tech. He took a degree in English and tech writing with him to Computer Power User Magazine and spent years reviewing high-end workstations and gaming systems, processors, motherboards, memory and video cards. His enthusiasm for PC hardware also made him a natural fit for covering the burgeoning modding community, and he wrote CPU’s “Mad Reader Mod” cover stories from the series’ inception until becoming the publication editor for Smart Computing Magazine. A few years ago, he returned to his first love, reviewing smoking-hot PCs and components, for HotHardware. When he’s not agonizing over benchmark scores, Josh is either running (very slowly) or spending time with family.