EASE G24I28 Gaming Monitor Review

EASETEC has released its own brand EASE in the local market, starting with the monitors. They have sent us an EASE G24I28 monitor for review. G is the series identifier, 24 means the monitor size, I stands for IPS, and 28 may be referring to the 280Hz refresh rate. This is a Fast IPS Gaming monitor aimed at eSports and competitive gaming with its massive 280Hz refresh rate and 23.8” display size though it is still an entry-level monitor in the 1080P category.

Please keep in mind that there are specialized tools and software to actually test the given display for accurate data and representation. This includes specialized cameras to record the frames at a very high speed so that slow-motion playback can be viewed to identify ghosting, tearing, or any related aspect.

This would be particularly helpful when comparing two or more displays. Similarly, there is calibration and gamut range identification hardware. Cutting it short, the real testing of the monitor involves more time and investment.

We will be giving an overview of the specifications, design, and our experience-based result after using the monitor for some time since we don’t have specialized equipment for the testing.

Specifications

A few corrections: There is no VGA port on this monitor. The VESA size is 75x75mm. There is no USB-C port on this monitor.

Packaging and Unboxing

The monitor is shipped inside a colorful box finished in blue and black color.

The phrase “Full HD/HDMI/VGA“ caught our attention. This is a 1080P resolution monitor. It has HDMI ports as well but it does not have a VGA port. Maybe they missed out on the Display Port (DP) as this monitor has 2 DP ports.

There is a sticker listing the salient features of the monitor like:

• HDR 400 Support
• Overdrive Support
• Flicker Free
• Low Blue Light
• 1ms MPRT Response Time

Opening the box would reveal the two white color Styrofoam pads facing each other. Slide them out.

The top pad has insets and contains cables and a stand with the base.

The panel is placed inside another Styrofoam pad.

Contents

The following is included in the box:

• 1x EASE G24I28 Monitor
• 1x DisplayPort Cable
• 1x Power Cable
• 1x Base with Stand

Looks and Design

The EASE G24I28 is a 1080P (QHD) 280Hz refresh rate, gaming monitor. This is an IPS panel based on an RGB sub-pixel layout. Given that the panel is IPS, the viewing angles are good on it reaching up to 178°. The panel size is 23.8” with an aspect ratio of 16:9.

Let’s start with the design of the monitor.

The very first thing that you would need to do is to attach the stand and the base to the monitor. The above picture shows the stand with a metal clip on the top. This metal clip slides on the monitor’s housing which we will cover shortly.

The above picture shows the base of the monitor. It is made of plastic material and is finished in black color. There is a protruded area that sits inside the stand during the installation.

The above picture shows the bottom view of the base. There are circular-shaped anti-slip pads. The triangular area has two lockers that automatically catch the tabs on the stand for a firm installation.

The above picture shows the area on the housing of the monitor on which the stand is to be installed. EASETEC has sent us the used unit for testing hence the scratches are visible along with the visible marks coming from the previous installation/removal. This gives us an idea of the average build quality as well. The cutouts and the locker tabs are designed such as the stand slides on these channels. The push button is used during the removal of the stand. Pressing it will release the lock and the stand can be slided out.

The above picture shows the stand attached to the monitor. In the next step, align the base with the stand and insert it into the empty slot at the base of the stand. You will hear a nice click indicating that the base is attached to the stand. The unit is now ready for use.

The above picture shows the fully assembled and ready monitor. This is a basic design without any glimmer or style added to it. The design of the base synchronizes with the monitor well. The monitor was a bit tilted towards the left which was fixed later on as the base was out of sync with the stand.

This panel is 24” IPS type with a 1920×1080 resolution. The screen size is 23.8”. The typical brightness is 350 cd/m² (TYP). This is a good enough brightness level on this size monitor. This panel has a contrast ratio of 1000:1. Typically the IPS panels don’t have dark blacks and the edges of the display reflect that quite well.

The panel’s backlight is LED and it seems like there is no anti-glare coating on the panel so it will somewhat reflect under the conditions. Keep that in mind when doing the lighting of the room. The color saturation is 100% sRGB.

This would mean we don’t have over-saturated colors and this is exactly what this panel has. The out-of-the-box colors are good with enough gamut. This is an 8-bit color display with a response time of 1ms MPRT. Keep in mind that this panel does not have GTG but MPRT.

The monitor features a basic HDR400 and supports VESA mounting as well. The monitor has a built-in power board and the power consumption is 42W (Typical). The voltage range is 100~240V.

Before moving further, here are the unique features of the monitor:

• HDR400
• Low Blue Light
• Overdrive
• AMD FreeSync
• Flicker Free
• 75×75 VESA Mount

However, being a basic design, this monitor has:

• No Swivel
• No Pivot
• No Height Adjustment

This is definitely a drawback but the value of the monitor is coming from somewhere else not from the ergonomics. Ergonomically wise, this monitor lacks a lot.

The only provision here is the Tilt adjustment.

The above pictures show the range of Tilt movement that this monitor supports. Its range is -5°~+20° approximately. The tilt range without height adjustment is still restricted in our opinion. The overall thickness of the monitor makes it a non-slim outlook but that is understandable.

Though the EASETEC is claiming it to be a frameless design, this monitor has a thin bezel and then there is a black color border across the screen which further reduces the actual screen area.

There is a matt black finish on this monitor. We have mentioned several times that this is a basic design, and it reflects on the back as well. There are no aggressive or bold looks here. The housing is made of plastic material. There is a raised or protruded area above the base which houses the connectivity ports, power board, and speakers.

This monitor features 2x3W speakers.

We have buttons for the OSD. There is no joystick on this monitor and we are back with the old-school layout which is understandable given the pricing of the unit. These buttons are hard pressed and make a loud click when pressed.

There is an info label on the base of the unit. It has the Serial No of the unit. It is mentioned that this device is suited for family and office use. Home would be a better word instead of family.

Connectivity

This monitor has got some rich connectivity options for the users. These include:

• 2x HDMI 2.0 ports
• 2x Display Port ports
• 1x Audio Jack
• 1x Power Port

These ports are located inside the base of the monitor on the backside and installed vertically. The connectivity options are actually good in this price range.

The front side of the monitor has labels for the OSD buttons.

• M is used to access the main menu and to select the current highlighted setting.
• ˂ is used to traverse the settings downward
• > is used to traverse the settings upward
• E is used to exit the current setting and the main menu
• Power button toggle

The midsection of the base has EASE branding on it.

EASETEC has provided one DisplayPort cable with the monitor.

There is a power adapter cable as well.

OSD Menu

We will show the main menu listings from the OSD. It is not that convenient to use the buttons to play around with the menu settings. The absence of a user manual is another disadvantage.

This is the main interface. On the left, we have the main options and on the right, there are related settings against each of these modes. DP2 is selected as an input source as we connected the DP cable to this port. Note the refresh rate on the top right listing.

The brightness and contrast settings are listed here.

The color settings are listed here including the Gamma which is at 2.2 at the moment with the default picture mode being the Standard one.

The following are the pre-defined picture modes:

• Standard
• Photo
• Movie
• Game
• FPS
• RTS

Picture Quality settings contain some important options. One, in particular, is the Response Time. Another one is the Super Resolution.

If you are used to the word “Overdrive” then this is the setting for you. We have:

• Off
• High
• Medium
• Low

You would need to play with the refresh rate and relevant Response Time setting if experiencing ghosting during the gameplay.

The Aspect ratio can be set from this menu.

The OSD menu provides settings like where the menu will appear on the screen, its time out, language, etc.

The Other menu is also very important. The user can turn on the AMD FreeSync (Adaptive Sync) from this menu as well as turn on/off the MPRT. The HDR option is also off by default. This is understandable as the user will have to decide which option to use for a better experience.

Performance

Now, it is time to discuss the performance of the display as seen by our eyes and our experience after using this monitor for some time.

The EASE G24I28 is a whopping 280Hz refresh rate panel with 1ms MPR response time and 8-bit display colors. It is using 100% sRGB saturation. This would mean, we have bright, vivid but not over-saturated colors which are good indeed.

The out-of-the-box colors are very good and we don’t think any further calibration is needed. But that is us saying it, your mileage based on your requirement would vary. In a darker room, the brightness is good enough to provide the same detail.

The EASE has done a good job with the factory calibration. Speaking of brightness, this display has a 350 nits level of brightness which is adequate to cover the needs.

There is no sRGB preset profile and the Standard profile seems to be covering it. The brightness level on the default is set at 80% and this is still bright enough for the majority of the tasks.

The monitor has an HDR400 display with no dedicated HDR hardware. Turning the HDR on did not do us any good as we tried a few titles to play with HDR on. Unlike the experience on GIGABYTE G27Q P where the HDR was overshot, this is not the case with this panel.

You may want to try it out and see how it goes. When it comes to response time, the overdrive feature is quite handy. EASE has implemented Overdrive by using the name Response Time. We have Off, High, Middle, and Low settings in that menu.

We have used Blur Busters UFO Motion Test at 280Hz refresh rate and checked for each overdrive value against all the refresh rates. By default, without Overdrive, this panel has minimalistic ghosting which will only appear in the gray background and even that is slight for which one would need to pay close attention.

If you are not experiencing ghosting during actual gaming then leave the Response Time off. During our testing, the High option produce inverse ghosting but the Middle and low were working fine. We have used Off and Low settings most of the time. This would also depend upon the title you are playing and the refresh rate.

We did not play with any other refresh rate on this monitor. The blacks are not that deep on this panel which is understandable as it has a contrast ratio of 1000:1 but whites are adequately balanced. But this is not affecting the overall brilliance of this panel.

Please keep in mind that HDR, MPRT, and Freesync are disabled by default. You can either choose to turn on the Freesync or the MPRT. For those who don’t know much about these, the MPRT will simply implement the highest possible refresh rate on the panel and would keep it there implying that we can’t use a variable refresh rate which is why Freesync will not work with the MPRT and vice versa.

This is because the AMD Freesync will vary the refresh rate from lowest to highest continuously. You can experience this by playing a game that would benefit from a variable refresh rate.

Another key note is that the 1 ms response time (basically a measurement) can only be achieved using a backlight strobe. This is not compatible with Freesync and since strobing reduces the overall brightness of the panel, the HDR will not work either with MPRT. We tested the panel with MPRT and man, the ghosting is visible in the UFO Motion Test which can’t be remedied using the overdrive.

We accessed the Advanced Display Settings, of Windows 10 and found all the support refresh rates listed there going as high as 280Hz and as low as 50Hz.

We selected the 280Hz refresh rate and applied it.

We then went to Nvidia’s control panel and the supported refresh rates were displayed with 280Hz listed as well. Also, note that the monitor’s naming string has the letter C at the start, not G.

Ever since Nvidia has opened up for cross-platform interoperability, the free sync-enabled monitors can work with Nvidia’s graphics card with FreeSync on. However, not all FreeSync protocols may work with Nvidia’s graphics cards and vice versa. This monitor is using AMD FreeSync so we were expecting it to work with Nvidia’s graphics card and it worked. But, you would need to enable the GSync Compatible option in Nvidia’s control panel. By default, the AMD FreeSync is off.

You would need to turn it On and then try if Nvidia GSync can be used enabled. The above picture shows the settings for Nvidia’s control panel to enable GSync. The monitor is compatible with the Gsync Enabled and the user can take full advantage of the variable refresh rate.

Oops! We already have a dad pixel on the panel (on the right side of the watermark logo). The power adapter provided with the monitor run hot for odd reasons.

The monitor also supports 8-bit color depth and has 178° wide viewing angles. This helps in near to accurate and consistent image rendering on the screen. This panel is not that suitable for color-related workload so keep that in mind.  Overall we have had a pleasant and satisfactory experience with the EASE G24I28 1080P 280Hz IPS panel. The provision of AMD FreeSync with Overdrive makes it more compelling.

Conclusion

The G24I28 (24 may be referring to the monitor size, I for IPS, 28 for 280Hz) is a high refresh rate (280Hz) panel standing at the resolution of 1920×1080 with a screen size of 23.8”. The company is clearly aiming this gaming monitor at the eSports and competitive gaming segments. This monitor is rated for 1ms MPRT (not GTG).

The monitor is using AMD FreeSync technology which can be used with Nvidia’s graphics cards though it is subjective. In our testing, turning the AMD Freesync on worked on both Windows 10 and Windows 11 platforms using MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio 24G and GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3070 VISION OC 8G. The user would need to enable the Nvidia GSync enabled feature in the control panel.

Since the panel is IPS, the contrast ratio is a typical 1000:1 which impacts the dark or deep blacks on the display. Despite that, EASE has done a decent job of providing deep blacks. The brightness of the unit is 350 cd/m² or roughly 350 nits. This is a good level of brightness on this panel, particularly on this size monitor.

The factory calibration is very good and the default Standard profile will serve many if not all in terms of color saturation and brightness level. There is no sRGB preset mode in the Pictures. It seems like the Standard mode is making up for it. The panel is probably using RGB sub-pixel technology. We are not sure about the OEM of the unit but they have provided quite an effective display. This panel is 100% sRGB using 8-bit. We don’t have over-saturated colors and the color gamut is decent as well.

When it comes to the response rate of the monitor, there is a provision of Overdrive (Response Time in the OSD) with 4 presets (Off, High, Middle, and Low). You would need this feature when experiencing ghosting during gaming. The overdrive addresses the ghosting issue (removing the trails) but we need to be on the look out not to over-shoot it as it would give us inverse ghosting. Since this panel has MPRT and AMD Freesync, the user has to decide which option to go with. MPRT will lock the refresh rate at the highest possible value whereas Freesync will continuously vary the rate between the lowest and the highest values. In our experience, the AMD Freesync is a better choice as we observed minimal to no ghosting on it whereas MPRT generates quite a visible ghosting.

The design of the monitor is not ergonomic. We don’t have pivot, height adjustment, and swivel functions on this panel. We can only tilt the screen in the range of -5° to +20° approximately (based on our comparison with the GIGABYTE monitor). The monitor has VESA mount support as well measuring 75x75mm. The bezel is relatively thin and the screen has a black color border as well hence the 23.8” size.

In terms of connectivity, this monitor is feature rich. We have:

• 2x HDMI 2.0 Ports
• 2x DisplayPort Port2
• 1x Audio Port
• 1x Power Port

There is no directional stick to access the OSD instead there are loud clicky buttons at the base to access the OSD and navigate through the settings.

Our gaming experience has been nothing but good on this monitor. However, there is no “one type that fit all” profile when it comes to defining the overdrive settings. This is the case with the majority of mid to high-range monitors. If you are a content creator then better look for other displays.