The BenQ XL2730Z is one of top-rated monitors here at XSReviews, boasting a winning combination of a high refresh rate, an expansive resolution and a plethora of extra features. BenQ just announced its successor, the XL2735Z, and they’re releasing it under the Zowie gaming brand they acquired late last year.

Interestingly, there’s very little information about the XL2735Z available — not even a photo; the one above is of the XL2730Z. BenQ jumped 10 digits for the successor to the XL2720Z to get to the XL2730Z, so a jump of only five numbers suggests a somewhat smaller upgrade this time around. BenQ’s press release also seems to suggest that not much has changed in the new model:

The new ZOWIE XL2735 will be on display for the first time ever during DreamHack Summer @ the ZOWIE booth. As numbers and specs do not tell the whole story, join us for a first-hand experience with the new monitor to see the difference for yourself.

The XL2730Z was a TN-technology monitor with a 144Hz screen and 1440p resolution, so the only possible upgrades to the core specifications would be a move to 165Hz or a switch to an IPS-style panel — both changes we’ve seen on monitors from two BenQ competitors, with the Asus PG279Q and the Acer XB270HU.

Otherwise, BenQ might incorporate some new gaming features or change up the monitor’s look while keeping the specifications the same. For example, they might include additional gaming presets or crosshair overlays.

It’ll be interesting to see what changes BenQ Zowie has in store for us. The monitors will be shown off at DreamHack Summer on the 18th of June, so we don’t have too long to wait.

What do you think of the news? Let us know in the comments below.

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Today we’re looking at a compact and (relatively) inexpensive professional monitor, the BenQ BL2205PT. It promises great adjustability, a small TN display and a good selection of ports. Let’s take a closer look, and see whether this 21.5-inch monitor is a tiny triumph or a tiny terror.

Summary and score

The BL2205PT has a very ‘washed out’ look out of the box, but after calibration things improve considerably. The TN panel compares well with lower-end IPS displays for colour accuracy, and beats them for contrast and response times. When considered with the monitor’s many helpful modes and its superb ergonomic flexibility, the BL2205PT is a solid choice for office use — just make sure you’re able to spend some time calibrating it before use.

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Features & specifications

• 21.5-inch 1920 x 1080 TN panel
• 1000:1 native contrast
• 170° / 160°‎ viewing angles
• 2ms GtG response time
• 2x 1W speakers
• DisplayPort, DVI-D, VGA inputs

Design

The BenQ BL2205PT is the smallest monitor we’ve reviewed in some time, measuring just 22 inches across the diagonal. That’s ten inches less than its bigger brother, the BL3210PT. The small size is kind of adorable, but it’s also something preferred by some users — particularly those with limited desk space.

The BL2205PT can be used in landscape or portrait mode. The latter can be helpful for any profession that requires a lot of reading or writing — programmers, writers, academics and so on.

The monitor has a fairly slim set of bezels, making them okay at forming a multi-monitor setup (although a single larger monitor might be a better idea). You can also see the cable tidy at the bottom quarter of the stand.

The back of the monitor has a carbon fibre effect pattern, with a 100 x 100 VESA mount that’s used for the stand. This must be screwed into place, so make sure you have a Phillips head screwdriver handy. The back is quite stylish with its matte black look, and wouldn’t look out of place in an office environment (even if it’s not as stylish as the super-slim ViewSonic VX2776).

There are no ports on either side of the monitor, but this does give you a better look at the stand, which boasts height adjustment, tilt, swivel and pivot. Buttons for controlling the OSD sit on the back right of the monitor, making them hard to find initially.

The bottom of the monitor has a vestigial desk mounting place, plus the usual ports. There’s power on the left (as seen below), 3.5mm in and out, then DisplayPort, DVI and VGA. Interestingly, there’s no HDMI port, although HDMI to DisplayPort cables are easy enough to find. Only a VGA cable is provided in the box, though.

So that’s the BL2205PT, a compact yet capable office monitor. Now let’s see how it compares to other monitors on the market with some benchmarks.

Benchmarks

We’ll proceed through the benchmarks, using the Spyder4Elite colourimeter to calibrate and then test the monitor.

First we have the colour gamut of the display, which is listed as 96% of sRGB and 74% of AdobeRGB (all measurements were taken on the monitor’s sRGB setting). That’s good enough for occasional photo and video work, but it’s not sufficiently good for truly professional work where 100% sRGB is really desirable.

Next we’ll have a look at how brightness, contrast and white point are affected by different brightness settings. The actual contrast ratio is misreported here, an unfortunate issue with the colourimeter used, but the trend is still worth noting. We can see at the 0% setting, the monitor is as near as truly black, and it rises only marginally to provide an excellent contrast ratio that is closely maintained from 25 to 75% brightness, and improves further at 100% brightness.

Colour accuracy is next, and the results here are excellent — better than I expected from a TN-panel monitor. All except the teal are spot-on, and the results are rather similar to (also 96% sRGB) ViewSonic monitor we looked at previously. 1.22 is a great average Delta-E value, allowing the monitor to boast extremely accurate colours.

Colour uniformity is the next point of interest, which examines how each quadrant of the monitor accurately reports colour compared to its neighbours. The upper right and upper centre quadrants of the panel have the highest Delta-E value, a pattern which is maintained from 100 down to 50%. At 50% brightness the Delta-E values are just 1.9, which again is a great result.

Luminance uniformity comes next, which examines how much brighter or dimmer each sector is. Again the top centre and top left are the standouts, appearing around 13% and 8% dimmer than their peers, almost invariant of brightness. This is a good but not excellent result.

Finally, we see the colourimeter software’s overall rating, which praises the monitor’s 96% sRGB gamut, contrast, uniformity and colour accuracy. Items singled out for disdain are the tone response and white point. Overall, the monitor is rated 4/5, a pretty good score for a TN-panel monitor and comparable to low-end IPS monitors.

Impressions

We put the BL2205PT to work over a one week review period, and of course we played a few games in that time too. Here’s our review!

Work

While we don’t have an IPS panel to work with here, the BL2205PT still has reasonably accurate colours and hits 96% of the sRGB standard. This makes it fine for amateur Photoshop efforts, or occasional professional work. Photos and video won’t look perfect and it desperately needs calibration out of the box, but afterwards things are pretty decent given its price point.

The real benefit of the BL2205PT is its adjustability. Being able to adjust the height, pivot and swivel is an ergonomic dream; this BenQ monitor is much more comfortable to use than the average office monitor. Being able to rotate the monitor 90 degrees for reading is also helpful.

Another advantage are the modes available in the OSD; you’ll find blue light reduction, reading modes and other helpful features.

These aren’t necessary for every monitor — you could reduce blue light through software like Flux, for instance — but they’re nice to have for sure.

Unfortunately, these modes are trickier to activate than on most BenQ monitors, thanks to the placement of the buttons on the back right side.

If you don’t need the better viewing angles and (generally) better colour accuracy of an IPS display, then the ergonomics and software of the BL2205PT make it a strong choice.

Games

The BL2205PT isn’t meant to be a gaming monitor, but we’d be remiss not to test it anyway. The monitor’s 1080p resolution is an easy target for most mid to high-end gaming deskops, and could also work as a bigger screen for a smaller gaming laptop. The small size of the BL2205PT means you can get the entire screen in your field of view, which can be helpful, but you’ll also be straining to make out distant opponents.

Games look decent on the monitor, but felt a bit grainy — even at a much smaller diagonal span, 1080p is recognisably more pixelated than 1440p or 4K. Colours are reasonable and input lag is low, thanks to the well-calibrated TN display.

This probably won’t be anyone’s first choice for a gaming monitor, but it still performs adequately. If you are looking for a gaming monitor, something with G-Sync or Freesync might be a better bet. A high refresh rate (120Hz or higher) is also beneficial, if your favourite game is able to hit an equally high fps count.

Wrapping up

The BL2205PT is a nice choice if you’re looking for a compact office monitor, although photo and video professionals should probably consider a 100% sRGB IPS display instead. For everyone else, there’s plenty to enjoy here – a good port selection, excellent adjustability and even decent gaming performance.

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After looking at a compact office monitor from BenQ last week, this week we’re looking at something a little more high-end: the EW2775ZH. This 27-inch monitor boasts an AMVA panel at 1080p resolution, a fancier stand and a host of helpful features. There are low blue light modes, flicker-free operation and something called ‘brightness intelligence technology’. Let’s find out if there’s a solid monitor behind all the jargon.

Summary and score

The EW2775ZH is a beautiful monitor, with a stylish thin-bezel design and a well calibrated IPS screen. This is backed with a host of eye-comfort features, including a Low Blue Light mode that obviates the need for F.Lux or similar software.

The only real issue is our review unit’s poor colour uniformity. Not hitting 100% sRGB is also a little surprising for an higher-end IPS-style display.

This leaves the EW2775ZH in an awkward position – it’s a good monitor for sure, but these flaws preclude it from a wholehearted recommendation for full-time photo and video professionals. Its contrast and colour make it nice for playing beautiful games, but its 1080p display and 60Hz refresh rate are a bit limiting. Ultimately, that makes the EW2775ZH a jack of all trades, master of none.

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Features & specifications

Design

The EW2775ZH is a thoroughly more modern-looking monitor than most of BenQ’s lineup; not surprising given it’s one of their most recent releases. That’s largely down to the extremely slim bezels around three sides of the panel, with a thicker bezel at the bottom to house the logo, lights and buttons.

The small and circular physical buttons are found on the right underside of the bottom bezel, making them relatively easy to find without looking and operate without confusion.

The monitor is quite thin as well, thanks to a white LED backlight and an external power supply. From the side the monitor is fairly impressive, although it’s not the absolute thinnest we’ve seen (ViewSonic’s VX2776 is a nice example).

The monitor’s ports are vertically centred and face directly out; there are a pair of HDMI ports, VGA, a 3.5mm jack and the AC input. The monitor’s speakers are embedded on the rear as well, on either side of the ports.

The monitor features a two part stand; the top part is screwed into the back of the monitor with a flat head screwdriver, and the wide bottom part is attached using a hand screw. This stand offers far fewer angles of adjustment than BenQ’s BL-series and XL-series stands, with only the ability to tilt back and forth, but the IPS panel should allow for sufficiently good viewing angles that this shouldn’t be a massive issue. The monitor isn’t VESA compatible, so there’s no possibility of choosing an aftermarket mount.

You can get a better shot of the OSD buttons in this shot, taken from the bottom with the stand removed. The white circle to the left of the buttons is the monitor’s power LED.

That brings our tour to the monitor’s design to an end, so let’s move onto the testing.

Benchmarks

We’re using a Spyder4Elite colourimeter to perform these tests, as usual. We’ll start with an evaluation of the monitor’s gamut, with the monitor set to sRGB mode and as neutral settings as we can manage. We see that the monitor hits 99% of sRGB, making it largely fine for professional work, if not quite at the 100% we’d like. For occasional image-makers and video editors this will be sufficient, as long as the other tests come back okay. The monitor also hits 75% of the lesser-used AdobeRGB standard, and 71% of the basically useless NTSC standard.

Here are our initial readings from the monitor, showing the brightness, white point, primaries, Delta-E values and gamma before and after calibration. The calibration is almost perfect, and there’s very low Delta-E values for white point and 50% gray. Hopefully this trend will continue in our later tests, as we begin the advanced analysis.

Next we have a look at the display gamma, which is set to 2.0 as its default setting. The gray ramp is a bit irregular, though this isn’t a massive concern.

Now we’re looking at the brightness, contrast and white point at a range of brightness settings.

Note that the Spyder4Elite is known to have issues with these brightness and contrast tests; contrast values are consistently under-reported. That means the actual numbers should be taken with a grain of salt, but the trends are still valid. (If there are any PRs reading that represent a colourimeter company, please get in touch as we’d love to source a replacement that doesn’t have these problems). 

At 0% the monitor becomes as-near-as totally black, resulting in a crazy-high contrast value. The contrast ratio is maintained at over 1000:1 throughout, increasing slightly at the higher brightness settings. This is one of the best results with this colourimeter that we’ve seen, which backs up this monitor’s higher-than-average stated 3000:1 contrast ratio.

Now we’re back to tests that our colourimeter won’t let us down! It’s the colour uniformity test next, and here’s where our first surprise emerges. At 100% brightness, the colour uniformity is quite bad, with a DeltaE value of 5.9 in the lower right quadrant. This becomes less noticeable as brightness decreases, but it’s an unfortunate result for a monitor that would otherwise be a reliable choice for graphics and video work. Other panels may not exhibit these issues, but our panel is certainly below par.

Luminance results are far better, with the top and bottom right quadrants reporting the largest variance. They’re all a fair bit dimmer than the centre, a difference of 121.2 cd/m2 to 102, 104.6 and 103.9 cd/m2. This difference is maintained throughout the brightness settings tested. This isn’t an ideal result, but it’s not awful either.

Now we come to another important test: colour accuracy. Overall the result here is excellent, with an average error value of only 1.2. Most of the colours tested are well below 1.0, with only a pair of grays and teal showing a higher error. This is to be expected for a 99% sRGB monitor, and means the vast majority of colours will appear accurately (not withstanding the colour uniformity issues highlighted earlier).

Overall, the EW2775ZH impresses; only the gray ramp and colour uniformity are liabilities.

Impressions

Work & Media

This is intended to be an office monitor, so let’s examine its performance here first. Generally the most demanding tasks for monitors are ones where colour accuracy and contrast are important: colour grading and other video production, Photoshop, 3D modelling.

Here the EW2775ZH is a mixed bag, with good contrast and colour accuracy, but that disappointing colour uniformity we saw in the Benchmarks section. That means the monitor was largely well-suited for photo and video editing, but content on the lower right appeared a slightly different colour on our review unit. Every panel is different, so hopefully ours was an outlier in this regard. Not hitting 100% sRGB is also a small disappointment, although again 99% will usually be good enough.

For other kinds of work, the EW2775ZH is quite good. The 1080p resolution isn’t the most expansive, but it ensures that no scaling is needed on the 27 inch span of the monitor. The EW2775ZH’s high contrast (and its ‘Brightness Intelligence Technology’) ensure that darker areas of photos and videos are still easily visible. The Low Blue Light modes are great for avoiding eye-strain and seems to minimise disruption to your sleep schedule as well. These traits also make watching films or TV on the EW2775ZH a pretty solid proposition, although you’ll have to sit pretty close to the 27-inch screen; this is no full-size TV.

Compared to other office monitors, the EW2775ZH is a pretty strong choice — although it lacks the flexibility of BenQ’s BL-series monitors, which have much more adjusable stands including the option for portrait-mode usage.

Gaming

When it comes to gaming monitors, right now there are three desirable traits at any price point. First is resolution – the better your PC, the higher resolution you can run at a given fps, and the better the game will look as a result. 1920 x 1080 is the minimum acceptable resolution, and the EW2775ZH meets it. Next is refresh rate, with 60Hz being standard and 120Hz or higher being the premium option. Again, the EW2775ZH is right at the minimum, 60Hz. Finally we have the presence of G-Sync or FreeSync, technologies that eliminate screen tearing without introducing input lag. The EW2775ZH doesn’t have either — not surprising for an office machine.

Of course, gamers have been playing since way before higher resolutions, higher refresh rates and G-Sync. The EW2775ZH is still a perfectly fine monitor, it just lacks these modern amenities. Games still look great on this monitor, particularly colourful titles like Overwatch or Doom, and I didn’t notice any problems with input lag. I played StarCraft II, Fallout 4 and Dark Souls III as well, and was fairly impressed with how good everything looks. The EW2775ZH isn’t a gaming monitor, but it’s still fine for playing games on occasion.

Wrapping up

The EW2775ZH is a good-looking monitor in every sense of the word; it’s stylish and provides a clear, bright picture. While the monitor’s colour uniformity is sub-par and its sRGB coverage doesn’t hit 100%, its excellent colour accuracy and contrast make it a viable option for occasional Photoshop or video work. It’s also great for viewing HD films and TV shows, where the high contrast ratio makes light and dark scenes equally watchable. The EW2775ZH’s extras are up to par too, with a good selection of ports, accessible OSD buttons and a range of modes suitable for a range of activities, from reading and editing to watching videos or playing games. 7 / 10.

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This monitor may only measure 24 inches, but it’s packed to the brim with BenQ’s latest gaming features. It also operates at a high refresh rate, 144Hz, making it a good choice for fast-paced games. It’s pricey though, so let’s dig a little deeper, and see how this eSports-focused monitor measures up against the competition.

Summary and score

The XL2430 is a modern marvel, cramming a ton of helpful gaming modes and features into a good-looking and compact 24-inch display. Everything seems well considered, and if you take the time to check out the many features on offer you’ll definitely get your money’s worth.

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Features

Here are BenQ’s list of features, with explanations in parentheses when necessary.

• Motion blur reduction technology
• Fast 1ms GtG response time
• Gaming refresh optimisation management (100 / 120 / 144Hz)
• 20-level colour vibrance setting
• Black eQualizer Dynamic with automatic brightness adjustments
• Game Mode Loader (download presets made by pro gamers)
• Auto game mode setting
• Game mode to go (save settings onto a USB drive or share online)
• S Switch Arc (external controller with programmable buttons)
• Display Pilot (software for making adjustments without using the OSD)
• Angular, compact base that aligns perfectly to the desk
• Refined metallic appeal (with ergonomic handle design)
• Retractable metallic headphone hook
• Low Blue Light & flicker free technology (for eye wellness)
• Windows 8 / 8.1 compatibility (oh boy!)

Specifications

Design

The XL2430 is a pretty good-looking monitor, primarily coloured matte black but with a few red accents here and there. There’s a small BenQ logo below the panel, and a power button in the lower right corner. Further OSD controls lie above the power button, and are small and circular.

The monitor’s metal stand is made from an aluminium alloy, which BenQ claim ‘sends off a sophisticated yet mysterious metallic appeal that conjures up the majesty of the game’. I’ll let that pass without further comment.

One nice touch is the inclusion of markers along each avenue of adjustment. Take a note of these once you’re happy with your monitor’s position, and then you can quickly return to them later, e.g. when you arrive at a LAN party.

On the left side of the monitor, you’ll find easily accessible USB and headset ports, although you’ll need to run more cables to your PC to make use of them.

There’s also a handy headphone holder, which pops out when needed and hides itself away for travel.

You’ll also note the red labels for each port, which make it easier than usual to get everything plugged in quickly — although a side mounting would be preferable.

The monitor’s base has a nice red hole cut into it, through which your cables can be draped if you’re so inclined.

There’s also a small dish for the stupidly-named ‘S Switch Arc’, a small puck-shaped OSD controller. This is for rapidly flitting around the OSD, changing settings and switching modes with abandon. If you don’t see the need to keep it out, you can always use the same space for keeping keys, coins and other desk detritus.

Finally, the top of the monitor’s stand has a handle, making it easy to carry this monitor with just one hand — helpful, whether you’re making the long walk to the LAN from the car, or you just like moving your monitor around the house.

We reckon it’s a good-looking and sensibly-designed monitor, so let’s put it to the test.

Benchmarks

As usual, we’re calibrating the monitor and then testing it using the Spyder4Elite colourimeter. Before the tests are performed, the monitor is reset to its normal factory settings, contrast is set to 50, brightness is set to 120 nits (cd/m2).

After the initial calibration, we get our initial results, showing that the display reaches 99% of the sRGB standard. We can also see that the monitor hits our calibration targets almost exactly, with very low Delta-E values of 0.5 and 0.6 for White Point and 50% gray, respectively. These are promising signs for a TN-style monitor, so let’s proceed.

First up we measure the tone response, which reveals a measured display gamma of 1.9, a little too bright for our liking (this is at roughly 25% brightness, for reference). The gray ramp is a bit wonky, but nothing too out of the ordinary.

At low brightness settings (specifically, 0%), we can see that the screen gets very dim, providing a good contrast ratio. This of course disappears as we get to brighter settings, and slowly improves on the way to 100%. Note that the Spyder4Elite tends to under-read contrast ratios, so take that particular result with a pinch of salt.

Colour acccuracy is rather good for a TN-panel monitor, with an average Delta-E value of just over 2.0. That’s not the best we’ve ever seen, but it’s on par with low and medium-end IPS monitors. Combined with the 99% sRGB coverage, the XL2430 is a surprisingly decent monitor for image editing, even if it wouldn’t make the grade for professional productions.

Colour uniformity also looks good; only at 100% brightness do we see a single bad result in the upper left quadrant of 3.1; otherwise we have values between 0 and 2. This panel represents colours very uniformly.

Unfortunately, display luminance isn’t quite as good, with a fairly large offset of around 20% in the first quarant for all but the highest brightness settings. Still, these aren’t awful results by any means.

The Spyder4Elite software spits out a rating of 4 out of 5, not bad at all! Points were deducted for the overly bright gamma and luminance uniformity, but every other test revealed an excellent monitor, on par with IPS-style displays in many areas. Good job, BenQ!

Impressions

If you’ve never used a high refresh rate monitor before, you’re in for a treat. Once you switch to 144Hz mode in your display settings, you’ll immediately see a difference, even when mousing around in Windows. Everything feels more fluid and responsive. You’ll get the same impression in games as well, with the biggest benefits being felt in fast-paced and first-person games like shooters. Going back to 60Hz monitors after using this will be a challenge!

Games don’t pop as much as they would on a larger IPS-style screen, and you have to keep your face pretty close to the screen in order to see distant details — like enemy heads across the map in Counter-Strike or Battlefield. On the other hand, a smaller screen also means that there’s more room for your mouse if your desk is quite cramped.

Viewing angles are a traditional weakness of TN displays, but things have moved on a great deal since the early days. There’s a bit of colour shift at extreme angles, but otherwise things are quite good; you can certainly sit off-angle and still have a good-looking display.

The physical layout and extra gaming features of the XL2430 are sensible too. The stand is really small for a gaming monitor, so there’s more room for your keyboard and mouse. The headset hook does well to declutter your desk, the handle makes it easy to take the monitor to a LAN, and the marks along each axis of adjustment make it easy to get things set up exactly as they are at home. The USB and 3.5mm pass through ports are also handy, as they mean you can swap out peripherals without needing to reach all the way to the back of your PC. It would have been nice to have an SD card reader too, but it’s an understandable omission for a gaming monitor.

The software modes are a little more nebulous, and there are so many on offer it’s hard to know which you should pay attention to the most. Blue light reduction? Black eQualizer? Vibrance? Which of the half-dozen game modes should I use? These questions could be answered better by the literature or software, but eventually you should figure everything out and enjoy a very customisable setup.

The addition of the S Switch Arc (or the control puck, as we call it) means you can at least swap between different modes and settings quickly, instead of relying on the fiddly OSD buttons on the side of the screen (particularly as in our unit, the topmost button rarely worked, making changes a chore). That makes learning what everything does a little faster.

Unlike many gaming monitors these days, the XL2430 doesn’t come with an alternative to V-Sync like G-Sync or FreeSync. G-Sync tends to appear only on more expensive and higher resolution monitors, and so its lack of inclusion here isn’t too surprising. FreeSync would have been a nice addition though, given AMD’s relative strengths at the bottom end of the GPU market. Nividia’s FastSync works well though, assuming your card supports it and your PC is capable of high frame rates (100+) consistently.

Wrapping up

The BenQ XL2430 is a super strong choice for competitive gamers, offering a high refresh rate, a colour-accurate panel and a ton of modes and settings to check out. If you don’t mind a smaller monitor (or indeed, want something highly portable for LAN parties), then the XL2430 is an awesome choice.

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Alternatives

If you’d prefer something simpler, there are cheaper 24-inch 144Hz options on the market that might be worth investigating, most notably the FreeSync-capable ViewSonic XG2401. BenQ’s own XL2411Z and the Asus VG248QE are also worth a nose. If you want G-Sync, the AOC G2460PG is probably the monitor of choice… but if you’re getting a 144Hz monitor, then G-Sync is probably not the most important feature to have.

BenQ Zowie have announced their latest monitor today, and it’s a blinder. The XL2540 comes with a monstrous 240Hz refresh rate, which is considerably higher than other gaming monitors on the market (which tend to be 60, 120 or 144Hz). In order to make hitting that kind of frame rate achievable, the resolution is a modest 1080p — a reasonable choice for the 24.5-inch TN panel.

The XL2540 also incorporates some of the eSports technologies we first saw on the XL2735, like an adjustable shield that helps to block out distracting sights around the periphery of your monitor. It’s an interesting idea that could be ideal for a LAN environment, and you can always remove the shield if you don’t want to use it. There’s also a unique bezel which is designed to minimise reflections on the edges of the screen.

BenQ have always impressed when it comes to adjustability, and that continues with the XL2540. The monitor’s height, tilt, swivel and rotation can all be adjusted to suit your preference. There are markings on each axis too, allowing you to get back to your favourite position without the usual guesswork.

The monitor’s on-screen display remains as comprehensive as before, with options for Black eQualizer (highlights darker areas on-screen) and digital vibrance (makes everything more colourful). These are often used for Counter-Strike and other competitive games to make enemies stand out more easily, or adjust the look of the monitor. All OSD settings can be adjusted using buttons on the monitor or a dedicated control puck which rests on top of the base.

It’ll be interesting to see the difference between the XL2540 at 240Hz and other gaming monitors at 140Hz — will it be noticeably smoother? We’re expecting to get a sample in for review, so with any luck we’ll have the answer to that question soon!

In the meantime, you can check out the XL2540’s product page online for more info, or visit the Zowie booth at DreamHack Winter from November 24th to 26th to get your first hands-on look at the monitor.

What do you think of the monitor? Let us know in the comments below!

The BenQ GW2270HM is designed to be the ideal monitor for professionals, with features that keep your eyes healthy even after extended use. That includes a flicker-free backlight and a low blue light mode to ensure your sleep patterns aren’t disrupted. It’s also a good-looking monitor, with a sleek and minimalist design. Let’s take a closer look!

Summary and score

The GW2270HM looks good, thanks to a sleek design and a VA panel with reasonable colour accuracy and good viewing angles. The monitor is definitely on the short side and lacks adjustability, but this can be rectified with a VESA mount. On the whole, a clear step above TN-panel competitors.

Features

Here is the manufacturer’s list of features, with explanations in parentheses when necessary.

• Everyday enjoyment for leisure and business
• Designed simply for the ultimate sophistication (sleek design)
• TUV Rheinland certified for flicker-free and low blue light
• 3000:1 native contrast ratio (thanks to VA panel)
• True 8-bit colour performance
• 178° / 178° wide viewing angles
• HDMI multimedia interface
• Windows 10 compatible (!)
• ecoFACTS label
• Energy Star Qualified

Specifications

Design

The GW2270HM is a small monitor, with a 21.5-inch AMVA panel mounted within normal-sized bezels. The 1080p resolution is what we’d like to see at this size, and the choice of a VA-type panel should allow for good viewing angles and colour reproduction — we’ll see exactly how good later.

The monitor’s on-screen display is controlled via small circular buttons on the bottom of the monitor. I find these much easier to use than buttons on the side, so I’m glad that BenQ chose this orientation for them.

There are quite a few textures on the monitor — the base has a hairline texture, there’s a glossy piano black rectangle where the stand joins the base, and plain matte black for the stand itself. The back of the monitor also has a triangular texture on the back. It’s all a bit busy; I wish BenQ would have stuck to one or two textures here.

The stand can be tilted forward or back, but there’s no option for swivelling, rotation or height adjustment. I find the monitor a little too low for my taste, so you may want to use the GW2270HM on a raised platform or use the VESA mount to switch to a taller and/or more capable stand.

You’ll find the monitor’s downwards facing ports on the back, just to the right of where the stand connects to the body of the monitor. There’s VGA, DVI and HDMI here, as well as a line-in 3.5mm connection to use the monitor’s two 1W speakers.

These speakers are the only difference that I can find between this monitor, the GW2270HM, and last year’s GW2270H; at the time of writing there is a £15 difference in price between the two models.

Benchmarks

As usual, we’re calibrating the monitor and then testing it using the Spyder4Elite colourimeter. Before the tests are performed, the monitor is reset to its normal factory settings, contrast is set to 50, brightness is set to 120 nits (cd/m2).

Upon the initial calibration, we get our first readouts from the Spyder4Elite program. The Delta-E values are pretty poor; 6.5 for white point and 1.6 for grey point.

However, colour ranges are pretty good — we have full 100% sRGB, 75% of NTSC and 78% of AdobeRGB. The first standard is by far the most important for most users, so it’s a good first step. If colour accuracy and uniformity are also good, this could end up being a strong choice for image or video editing.

The default gamma setting corresponds to Gamma 2.1. The gray ramp is a little irregular, but this shouldn’t be a massive problem.

Now we’re looking at the brightness, contrast and white point at a range of brightness settings.

Note that the Spyder4Elite is known to have issues with these brightness and contrast tests; contrast values are consistently under-reported. That means the actual numbers should be taken with a grain of salt, but the trends are still valid. (If there are any PRs reading that represent a colourimeter company, please get in touch as we’d love to source a replacement that doesn’t have these problems).

The contrast reading is stable throughout brightness settings which is nice, although as mentioned above the ratio is well below the stated 3000:1 ratio. Compared to the BenQ EW2775ZH which has the same stated ratio, the GW2270HM seems to offer less contrast.

Colour accuracy is medium to good, with an average Delta-E value of 1.75. This suggests that most image and video editing can be accomplished on this low-cost monitor, although professional productions probably wouldn’t consider this adequate.

Colour uniformity is about average for a monitor of this class; our highest Delta-E value is only 3.3 at 100% brightness. At more reasonable brightness levels, e.g. 50%, things have improved considerably. 67% seems to offer the most uniformity, so this could be a good setting to aim for.

Luminance uniformity is poor to moderate, with the centre of the screen offering noticeably higher brightness than the other quadrants. The difference depends on the brightness setting of the monitor, but is typically around 10%. That’s not really noticeable unless you’re looking for it, but it’s more than we’d hope for, particularly for a monitor of this small size.

Finally, we have the monitor rating as delivered by the Spyder4Elite software. The monitor gets average to good marks across the board, including a perfect score for its 100% sRGB gamut. The weaker points are the luminance uniformity, tone response and white point, while colour uniformity and colour accuracy are praised. Overall, a pretty decent performance that will certainly set this monitor apart from its less expensive competitors.

Impressions

Gaming on the monitor went just fine; you might struggle to see fine details on a monitor of this size, but you can easily see the whole span without turning your head — an underrated benefit. The response time is listed as 5ms GtG, and this proved adequate for everything we tried, including Civilization VI, Rainbow Six Siege and Overwatch.

We also wrote the majority of this review on the monitor, including the editing of photos in Photoshop. We faced no issues with colour accuracy, as expected from the benchmark results above, and the 1920 x 1080 resolution was sufficient for having one window on each half of the monitor (although this resolution is probably the lowest acceptable minimum these days, and 2560 x 1440 or 1920 x 1200 does feel less restrictive). 1080p looks a little grainy on 27 inch monitors, but at 21.5 inches it looks considerably sharper.

While the monitor looks good and performs well, its bottom-mounted stand lacks adjustability. Ideally the top of your monitor should be at your eye level while you’re looking straight ahead, and the GW2270HM is significantly lower than that for me. I ended up using a stack of textbooks to get it up to a comfortable level, although the 100×100 VESA mount on the back means you could also invest in a taller, more adjustable stand.

Wrapping up

The GW2270HM is a good choice if you want a small office monitor, and you don’t want the poor viewing angles and diminished colour accuracy of a TN panel display. The addition of blue light reducing modes is nice too. The monitor’s largest flaw is its lack of adjustability, so I’d recommend picking up a VESA mount for it — whether that’s a taller desk stand, a floating desk mount or a wall mount. Otherwise, there’s little to complain about here; this is a good all-around monitor.

Alternatives

AOC’s 21.5-inch 1080p IPS monitor offers similar specifications and looks at a slightly lower price, although it lacks BenQ’s blue light reduction filters. It also comes with an HDMI cable.

144Hz monitors are so 2016. Oh, your monitor can overclock to 165Hz? Yeah, whatever. 240Hz is where it’s at now. Here’s our review of the BenQ Zowie XL2540, a 25-inch esports-grade monitor.

Summary and score

The XL2540 should become the new best monitor for anyone playing fast-paced, competitive games at a high level. If your PC is powerful enough, you’ll see a definite benefit thanks to the gorgeously smooth 240Hz refresh rate. The other little touches, like the side wings, OSD controller and plethora of gaming-specific modes all add value too. This monitor won’t suit everyone due to its high price and relatively low resolution, but if you’re serious about your gaming then the XL2540 could be the most essential weapon in your arsenal.

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Features

• Native 240Hz refresh rate – smoothness evolution
• Shield helps you focus on the game
• Spot hidden enemies with Black eQualizer
• Optimise gaming precision with 20 levels of colour vibrance
• Personalise viewing angles
• Easily access settings for different scenarios
• Game modes for an enhanced gaming experience
• Minimise visual distractions

Specifications

Design

The XL2540 offers a continued evolution of BenQ / Zowie’s line of gaming monitors. As expected, we have a bright 24.5-inch TN panel surrounded by a bezel of moderate thickness. There’s no BenQ or Zowie logo on the front of the monitor, and the shape of the bezel has even been optimised to minimise distracting reflections.

In the bottom right, we have the power LED and a quintet of front-mounted OSD buttons. I love front-mounted buttons, because they make it so much easier to change settings without getting confused about what each button does — something that’s commonplace for side or rear-mounted buttons. As in keeping with the rest of the monitor, the LED can be turned off or dimmed from the OSD, and the matte black buttons are hard to spot once the monitor is turned on.

On the left and right sides of the monitor, you’ll notice a couple of rubber grommets. These conceal screwholes for the monitor’s shield, which can be attached to block out anything distracting from entering your peripheral vision. You can have these wings facing towards you at a right angle to the display, in line with the panel or pointing behind so they don’t get in the way. The only thing they disturb is access to the headphone holder and USB 3.0 ports on the left side, but it’s not a dealbreaker.

The monitor is supported by a metal stand, also matte black apart from a dull red circle cut into the centre. The stand is highly adjustable, supporting 140mm of vertical movement, 90° of pivoting, 45° of swivelling and 25° of tilt.

Better yet, your chosen height, tilt and swivel is indicated with red markings, so you can easily return to your favourite setup — ideal for feeling as comfortable on LAN as you do at home.

The base of the stand is rectangular, with a small inset circle that houses the monitor’s OSD controller. The puck-shaped controlled has five buttons with a scroll wheel, making it easy to rapidly change up your monitor’s settings when necessary. This connects to the monitor via a Mini USB port.

Speaking of ports, there are quite a few here on the back of the monitor. We have a pair of HDMI ports (one HDMI 2.0, the other HDMI 1.4), DisplayPort 1.2, DVI-DL, USB 3.0 in and a pair of 3.5mm ports for the headphone passthrough. You’ll need to use the HDMI 2.0 or DisplayPort 1.2 ports to unlock that 240Hz refresh rate that’s the unique selling point of this monitor; we used DisplayPort. All of the ports are downward facing, but the presence of legends near each port at least ensures that plugging in isn’t too challenging.

Overall, the BenQ XL2540 is a good-looking monitor with a heavy emphasis on usability. It’s not the thinnest monitor with the tiniest bezels, but that’s OK — this monitor is designed to make your in-game avatar look good, not you.

Testing

We used the XL2540 for a period of two weeks, testing it both in-game and for our usual lines of work (writing, editing and photo editing). Let’s cover gameplay now, as this is a gaming site first and foremost.

Gaming performance: is 240Hz worth it?

The biggest question we had was ‘can you actually feel a difference between 240Hz and 144Hz?’ After all, moving from 60Hz to 120Hz is a massive jump, particularly in fast-paced and competitive PC games, but 120Hz to 144Hz or 144Hz to 165Hz is fairly minimal; we’ve struggled to notice these extra hertz in a blind trial.

Happily, 240Hz is indeed a noticeable improvement over 144Hz — as long as you have a powerful enough PC to hit that 240 frames per second target. Particularly in our Counter-Strike: Global Offensive testing, we found that the higher refresh rate made it easier to lock onto rapidly-moving enemies and the game felt much more fluid. It’s the same story as moving from 60Hz to 144Hz: after you’ve tried it, it’s really hard to go back!

Having said that, there is one major drawback: hitting 240 frames per second consistently can be a challenge, particularly in newer games, even if you have a pretty monstrous PC. Our current test rig has a GTX 1080 GPU and an overclocked, water-cooled CPU,  and we were nowhere near hitting 240 fps in games like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.

It’s esports titles like CS:GO, DotA 2, League of Legends and Overwatch that these high frame rates are actually achievable, so these are where the monitor will actually provide a noticeable benefit over a standard 1080p 144Hz monitor. Indeed, we switched back to playing Deus Ex and Civilization VI on our standard 1440p 144Hz monitor, just because that extra frame-rate wasn’t really helping and we’d rather enjoy the scenery at a lower frame-rate.

Of course, this monitor is not just a single spec, so it’s worth discussing how the monitor’s other features contribute (or not) to a good gaming experience.

Other gaming considerations

Probably the biggest bonus is the OSD display, which includes myriad settings and toggles that can make you feel more comfortable and even improve your in-game performance. BenQ’s advertising can be a bit over-the-top when presenting the benefits that each of these features provides, but it’s inarguable taken together, there are some solid options here that can help out in certain games and situations.

Take the ability to lighten dark areas of the screen for example; this may well help you spot lurking enemies. Maximising your vibrance settings in-game is a common CS:GO trick used by the pros, and it’s built right into this monitor so you don’t have to go fussing with your video card’s settings. Some people worry about blue light disrupting their sleep patterns, and instead of installing f.lux you can quickly toggle this using the OSD controller or the front-facing buttons when required.

Individually these settings are all nice to have, and there are enough of them together that there’s a good chance that at least one of them will be something you make use of on a regular basis.

It’s a similar theme with the remaining features of this monitor. The wings are cool; we can definitely foresee a situation, particularly at a LAN party, where blocking out your peripheral vision would be useful. The adjustability is nice, particularly the height adjustment, and it’s easy to record exactly what settings you settle on. The carry handle is good for actually bringing your monitor to a LAN safely. There’s a good selection of ports here, so you can plug in some games consoles if you want to, or use this monitor with older PCs that don’t have DisplayPort or HDMI outputs if you really need to. All in all, BenQ have crafted a good set of gaming features and functions, and they’re a definite benefit that inspire brand loyalty.

Office work

We’ll keep this brief. 1080p is not ideal for a single-monitor setup; it’s a struggle to fit two windows side-by-side, making it difficult to multitask effectively. 1440p is really where things get good, and the relatively low density makes text blurry and images grainy as well.

However, there are some bright points too: the colour reproduction is both uniform and good (for a TN panel), viewing angles weren’t an issue in our testing, and that built-in blue light reduction mode seems useful (if you don’t have f.lux installed).

You probably won’t be able to trick your IT department into buying one of these for you to do your spreadsheets on, but you’re not totally sacrificing your ability to do work by choosing it as your only monitor either.

Benchmarks

We performed benchmarks using, as usual, our Spyder4Elite colourimeter running software 4.5.9. The monitor was calibrated to 120 nits and 6500K colour temperature, then the benchmarks were performed.

Right off the bat, we can see that the monitor is really close to ideal right out of the box, with super low Delta-E values of 0.5 for White Point and 0.1 for 50% Gray.

The monitor’s colour gamut is also reasonable, covering 97% of sRGB. That’s not good enough for professional work, but it’s better than most TN-panel monitors on the market today. The 73% NTSC and 75% AdobeRGB ratings are similarly good if not great, but these standards are little used in comparison to sRGB.

The measured gamma was 1.8, corresponding to Gamma 3 in the monitor’s menu. The tone response matches 1.8 with little deviation which is nice, although it is a bit odd when the previous screen of the colourimeter indicates we’re sitting at 2.25. C’est la vie.

The monitor gets super dark at low brightness settings, with black measuring just 0.01 nits at 0% brightness levels. That’s good for an excellent 3160:1 contrast ratio, which dips to a more reasonable 600:1 or 660:1 contrast ratio at higher backlight settings. The Spyder4Elite typically under-reads contrast values, so we’re not too worried about this.

Colour accuracy is next on the list, and again the XL2540 impresses. The monitor records one of the lowest Delta-E (error) values we’ve seen from a TN-panel display, averaging just 1.41. The vast majority of patches sit around 1.00 or below, with only that troublesome shade of teal causing any significant problems. You could probably use this monitor for most Photoshop or video work in a pinch, although a 100% sRGB IPS display would normally be a better choice.

Some monitors have good colour accuracy in the centre of the panel, but suffer from poor accuracy in the corners. That’s not very true of the XL2540, which has relatively low Delta-E values throughout our measurement range. At a reasonable 50% brightness, the colour uniformity is at worst 1.4 in the upper left quadrant — not bad at all.

Luminance uniformity is also great, with only a 10% difference in brightness levels across different quadrants regardless of brightness settings. Overall, the XL2540 review unit we have in has a great panel with few defects.

The colourimeter provides its own rating, so we’ll display it here for good measure. We can see poor tone response (as the result of the 2.2 target and the 1.8 actuality), but by almost every other measure the monitor is a strong one indeed.

Good work, BenQ!

Wrapping up

Bottom line: if you spend most of your time in single-player or slower-paced titles, or recent games that max out the performance of your gaming rig, then getting a 240Hz monitor won’t provide much of a benefit. Save your money and pick up a 1080p 144Hz monitor instead (like BenQ’s own brilliant XL2430), or spend a little more to go up to 1440p or 4K resolution, change to an IPS panel, or both. (For example, the Acer XB271HU provides IPS, 1440p and 144Hz for a reasonable price.)

However, if your interest lies in popular esports titles, particularly shooters like Counter-Strike and Overwatch, and your PC can hit 200+ frame rates consistently, then you’ll have a ton of fun with the XL2540. We can easily see this becoming the esports monitor of choice for gaming tournaments around the world, and truly competitive players of any fast-paced title should see big improvements moving from 144Hz to 240Hz.

The blisteringly fast 240Hz refresh rate isn’t the only draw here either. It’s backed with comprehensively excellent OSD options, great adjustability and a surprisingly strong TN panel. Combined, you’ve got a truly top-notch gaming monitor. That’s why we’re happy to award the BenQ XL2540 Zowie our Editor’s Choice Award.

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How does BenQ’s entry-level 144Hz monitor stand up against the competition? Let’s take a look.

Design

The XL2411 has a slightly asymmetric design, with a chunkier bezel on the bottom right corner which houses the downward-facing buttons for the on-screen display. Apart from this, the bezels are of moderate thickness on all four sides, making this monitor less than ideal for multi-monitor setups. The lips around the screen are apparently specially designed to minimise distractions caused by reflections, although we couldn’t notice any specific difference in a blind trial.

The monitor is constructed from black matte plastic, with none of the red accents that we normally see on BenQ’s higher-end gaming gear. If you prefer a more modest design, you will appreciate this.

The monitor is supported by a highly adjustable stand, mounted on a square base. There’s a small inset area in the base, making it a good home for loose change, your keys, sandwiches and other detritus. The stand allows you to rotate the monitor into portrait mode, swivel it back and forth, and the height can be adjusted by 130mm. VESA (100×100) mounting is also a possibility.

The back of the monitor has downwards-facing ports, with DVI-DL, HDMI and VGA on offer. There’s also a power input and a 3.5mm input, which connects to a headphone port on the left side of the monitor. There are no USB ports or OSD controller as we see on more expensive BenQ monitors.

All in all, a very standard monitor that doesn’t really push the boat out when it comes to design – you could easily use this monitor in an office environment without turning heads.

Testing

We tested the XL2411 in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Torment: Tides of Numenera and Project CARS. We also wrote this review, edited some photos and carried out other journalistic work over a one week period, using it as our primary monitor.

Given its relatively low price point, we were happy with the XL2411’s performance. There was no discernible input lag, and the 144Hz mode made playing fast-paced games like Counter-Strike and Overwatch much easier. The small size of the screen meant we placed the monitor quite close when playing these games, as otherwise distant enemies were too difficult to spot. The black eQualizer setting was used to good effect, and the Low Blue Light mode proved useful outside of games.

TN-based panels are never ideal for video or photo work, but the XL2411 wasn’t too bad either. Once calibrated, it boasted relatively high colour accuracy and little colour shift was evident when viewing the monitor from the sides, above or below (although brightness was certainly affected).

We didn’t notice any significant display lag during our testing. Motion blur is controlled with a setting called AMA, which stands for Advanced Motion Accelerator. As with most BenQ monitors, we found that the middle AMA setting, ‘high’, produced better results than ‘off’ or ‘premium’. Premium resulted in some visible overshoot in some tests, while off had some noticeable motion blur.

Our final monitor settings were:

Let’s take a look at our benchmarks now, to get a more quantifiable idea of the monitor’s quality.

Benchmarks

As usual, our benchmarks are performed using a Spyder4Elite*. We’re calibrating the display to gamma 2.2, white point 6500k and 120 nits of brightness.

*We’ll be upgrading to an X-Rite i1Display Pro when our budget allows; this is all we have at the moment so please be understanding.

First up are colour gamuts; the monitor hits 98% of sRGB, 72% of NTSC and 76% of AdobeRGB. This is great but not outstanding for a TN-panel monitor, and combined with good colour accuracy means that the monitor can be used for non-critical photography and video work.

We also have some initial measurements before our advanced testing begins, including a relatively low Delta-E values for white point and 50% gray. We can also see that we missed out 120 nits target by a small margin, with the display being a little too bright.

We used the gamma-3 setting, which on this occasion corresponded to a display gamma of 1.9. The gray ramp is relatively even, too.

The XL2411 never gets to that elusive completely black measurement, although it gets close, and white point remains pretty close to dead-on at 6400 and 6500K. The contrast ratios read between 620:1 and 760:1, with better contrast being achieved at higher settings. n.b. Our colourimeter consistently under-reads brightness, so this isn’t a poor result by any means.

Next up is colour accuracy. We have decent but not great results throughout, with that teal shade proving troublesome once again. The average of 2.48 is not quite as good as the more high-end XL2540 we tested earlier this month, but it’s still decent for a TN-panel monitor.

Colour uniformity is also important, and the XL2411 again delivers a solid result. At anything less than 100% brightness, uniformity is very good with Delta-E values of less than 1.0 on average.

Luminance uniformity is a little worse but still decent, with the bottom right quadrant appearing a little dimmer (~12%) than its contemporaries.

We’ll conclude with the Spyder4Elite’s monitor rating:

So apart from the weird gamma results, it’s a pretty decent selection across the board with no major flaws. This wouldn’t be a great result for an IPS display aimed at photographers, but for a TN panel aimed at gamers it’s pretty good!

Wrapping up

The BenQ XL2411 is a solid choice at £240, especially for players of esports titles like Counter-Strike, Dota 2 and League of Legends that will benefit from the high refresh rate. There are relatively few added features here, but that also keeps the price low. All in all, not the most exciting monitor that we’ve ever reviewed, but it doesn’t seem to possess any obvious weaknesses either — not a bad choice overall. Let us know what you think below!

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This 1080p gaming monitor from BenQ has it all: a 31.5-inch display with 1800R curvature, a high refresh rate of 144Hz and a VA panel that boasts high contrast, good colour accuracy and decent viewing angles too. It’s not the highest resolution panel in the world, but that makes it a lot easier to hit its high refresh rate. It’s a strong set of specs, but how does it perform in the real world? Let’s put it to the test!

Design

The EX3200R is a stylish monitor with medium-size bezels and a noticeably curved display. The curvature provides a more immersive experience, fitting the screen more easily into your peripheral vision, and in turn making it a little worse for multiple viewers. This is nice for films, but really shines in games from a first-person viewpoint, like shooters, racing games or simulations. The high refresh rate, 144Hz, also benefits these games, making for a convincing combination.

Unlike most other curved monitors, the EX3200R has a traditional 16:9 aspect ratio instead of a cinematic 21:9. That means a bit less desktop real estate, but it fits more conveniently on desks and it’s easier on your GPU too. It also means that you don’t need to seek out special 21:9 content; anything made for TV will fit your monitor just fine. 21:9 support is also missing in many games, even recent titles, so you avoid that particular pitfall too.

The matte black bezel around the EX3200R is nothing special in terms of looks, but the shiny triangular metal stand provides a touch of class and modernity. This stand can be tilted up or down, but no other adjustability is possible (although it’s not likely you’d want to use this monitor in portrait mode!).

The back of the monitor has a nice subtle texture to it, and the three video input ports are downward facing in the centre. These are quite annoying to access without leaning over the monitor awkwardly; for that reason alone I’d recommend using a full-size DisplayPort connection rather than a harder-to-connect Mini DisplayPort cable; HDMI is also available but lacks support for the high refresh rate. I’d much rather see side-mounted ports on a monitor this size, but it’s a minor quibble at best.

All in all, it’s a good-looking monitor that escapes the traditional red-LED-infused gamer look for something altogether classier. The design choices make sense, and I’m looking forward to testing.

Impressions

I used the EX3200R as our main monitor for gaming, image editing and writing for a period of two weeks. I’ll go into the benchmarks later, but for now I’ll share my impressions.

For games, the EX3200R is a winner. The strong contrast levels of the VA panel are great for games set in inky blackness, and the curvature really adds to the immersion. I played Resident Evil 7 and got thoroughly frightened while trudging through that dark and fetid house of horrors. However, in quieter sections I did notice the screen looked quite grainy, due to the low pixel density. That makes the game easier to render, but if you have the horsepower to spare then a 1440p or 4K monitor will provide a considerable upgrade to visual fidelity.

It was a similar story with work tasks. The 1080p resolution feels a little confining when keeping multiple windows on screen at once, particularly if you’re used to higher resolutions. Normally on a curved display you get the benefit of that extra horizontal resolution, but of course that isn’t a factor here due to the standard 16:9 aspect ratio. In addition, the curved screen looks a little weird for web pages and particularly spreadsheets. You can get used to that, though.

Another point of contention was the on screen-display (the OSD) and its seven buttons. These are mounted on the bottom of the monitor, and fairly close to the middle of the monitor. I consistently found myself reaching to change the brightness or mode, and ending up hitting the power switch or the change inputs button, both of which turned off the monitor for a good ten seconds at a time — frustrating. The legends on the front of the monitor could certainly stand to be more noticeable to fix this problem, but front-mounted buttons are the better solution.

The high refresh rate was a great bonus that I didn’t expect to find on this monitor. It made fast-paced games like Counter-Strike much easier to play. Input lag also felt low, and the AMA High setting prevented motion blur without noticeable overshoot. Our final monitor settings were:

Benchmarks

I performed our benchmarks with a Spyder4Elite*. As usual, we will calibrate the display to gamma 2.2, white point 6500k and 120 nits of brightness before doing our tests.

*I’ll be upgrading to an X-Rite i1Display Pro when our budget allows; this is all we have at the moment so please be understanding.

I’ll start with a look at the monitor’s colour gamut, which shows 95% sRGB (on standard mode), 72% NTSC and 74% AdobeRGB. That’s perfectly fine for a monitor that isn’t designed for critical image or video work, but it should slightly negatively influence our colour accuracy tests later on in this section.

Next comes a few measurements, showing how close the monitor was to calibrated out of the box. We can see very low Delta-E (error) values for white point and 50% gray. Out of the box, contrast ratios were decent, but after calibration black levels were very low — awesome.

Next we’re looking at the display’s gamma curves. These are given as ‘gamma 1’, ‘gamma 2’, etc., so this shows what gamma levels they actually correspond to. Gamma 3 is our preferred setting of gamma 2.2; you can see the full results below. Note that the curves are almost all perfect, off only by 0.01 at most.

This is the grey ramp for our chosen gamma setting; it’s a little off but not ridiculously so.

Colour uniformity comes next. We can see quite poor results in the upper corners, which is quite disappointing. However, the rest of the screen seems pretty good.

Next up is the luminance uniformity test, which shows much better results with a maximum variance of about 10% in the upper centre quadrant, which is dimmer than its neighbours.

Colour accuracy is not going to be perfect thanks to that missing slice of sRGB, and we can see that represented in the teal 1F outlier below. However, elsewhere results are very good, and the average of 1.27 is a pretty good score for a non-IPS panel.

Here’s the Spyder’s own rating, just for fun.

I’d say that this is a pretty strong monitor, despite its gray ramp and colour uniformity flaws. Colour accuracy is the test that I personally put the most stock into, and a good result here means a lot. Again, these results aren’t perfect, but for a gaming and office-work-focused monitor they’re not bad either.

Wrapping up

All in all, I’m pretty happy with the EX3200R. It’s probably the biggest 1080p gaming monitor (i.e. not a TV) on the market, and combined with its curvature it provides an immersive experience. The high refresh rate makes it ideal for racing or shooter games, and a strong contrast ratio helps for dark games or watching shows set at night.

However, it’s not a good choice for multi-tasking, thanks to its low resolution. You’d be better off with either a 21:9 ultra-widescreen or a 1440p monitor for most tasks. Gamers who have invested in high-end PCs will also have an excess of horsepower, making higher resolution screens (e.g. 1440p or 4K) a better choice overall.

Recommended for…

• Gamers with low-end or mid-range PCs
• Gamers who like first-person shooters, racing games or sims
• Movie and TV fans looking for an immersive experience

There are better options for…

• Anyone looking to split-screen their work
• Media fans who’ve invested time into locating 21:9 content
• Gamers with high-end PCs capable of running 1440p / 144Hz

Thanks for checking out the review; if you’re interested in the monitor you can find the latest Amazon prices listed below. Peace!

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Today we review BenQ’s latest eye care monitor, the EW3270ZL. This massive 32-inch monitor is aimed at a professional audience, with a generous 2560 x 1440 resolution, a wide-gamut 100% sRGB panel and the full spectrum of BenQ’s health-conscious features: a flicker-free display, a blue light reduction mode and an adaptive brightness function. Let’s get right into the review, starting with the design!

Design

The EW3270ZL is a sturdy but attractive monitor, a 32-inch panel mounted in a frame that’s skinny on the top and the sides, a little thicker on the bottom. The BenQ logo sits atop a little sensor that helps to adjust the brightness based on the ambient light.

On the bottom right corner of the EW3270ZL, there are six buttons on the underside and one on the front — this special one is for ‘Bright Intelligence’, the monitor’s automatic brightness adjustment.

The monitor’s stand extends down and back, before doubling forward and widening to about two thirds the width of the monitor to provide some much-needed stability. The design only allows for twenty degrees of tilt adjustment; there is no rotation, height adjustment or swivel. There’s no VESA mount either, unfortunately.

The stand is made from plastic, and while it doesn’t look as nice as a metal stand, it doesn’t detract from the monitor’s design. And honestly, who’s going to be looking at the stand when you have a 32-inch panel to stare at instead?

The back of the monitor is where all the ports are located, helpfully pointing straight out to make plugging in easy. There are two HDMI ports, a full-size and mini DisplayPort and two 3.5mm ports that allow for headphones to be passed through. There is no VGA or DVI, which may be an issue for users of older hardware. Finally, there is also a port for the power cable, which connects to relatively small power brick.

That’s each part of the monitor covered, so let’s move onto our first-hand impressions and then the benchmarks.

Testing

We used this monitor for photo editing, gaming and Netflix binge-watching for a period of one week. Over that time, we played games like Torment: Tides of Numenera and Counter-Strike and watched House of Cards (Season 5) and the criminally underappreciated Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories.

The big draw of this monitor is its sheer size. At 32 inches, it dominates a desk, with its 2560 x 1440 resolution providing a decent amount of screen real estate without scaling. The contrast and colour reproduction is excellent here, and the generous viewing angles mean that the lack of adjustability isn’t a massive concern — although I do admit to placing the monitor on a small riser to keep it at a comfortable height. As the benchmark results will show, the monitor is quite capable of colour-sensitive work, although there are certainly (more expensive) monitors which prove more suitable for high-end professional use.

BenQ like to add value with various features; most of their monitors these days come with flicker-free backlights and blue light reducing modes that aim to reduce eye strain and sleep cycle disruption. Outside of a scientific study it’s impossible to determine whether these features work as promised or just provide a placebo effect, but either way it’s nice to have them. The newer addition to BenQ’s offering is Bright Intelligence, the feature that automatically adjusts the monitor’s backlight to your ambient light levels. This feature makes sense — your phone does this, so why not your computer too? — and seemed to work well in our testing. Having said that, I’m not convinced that these will be must-have features in our next monitor acquisition.

Finally, gaming. There’s good news and bad news here. The bad news is that the EW3270ZL isn’t ideal for gaming. Its massive screen and great colours certainly make Civilization VI’s world map pop, but users with only moderately powerful PCs will miss the inclusion of advanced VSync technologies like G-Sync or FreeSync when running at the (relatively) demanding resolution of 2560 x 1440. More importantly, the monitor operates at only 60Hz, making it unsuitable for fast-paced games like Counter-Strike, Overwatch or PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. The good news is that if you don’t play fast-paced games and your PC is up to the 1440p challenge, the EW3270ZL is still a great-looking monitor for gaming.

Benchmarks

In order to give a good quantitative evaluation of the EW3270ZL, we calibrated it using a colourimeter and then tested its contrast, colour, uniformity and more.

You can download the ICC (.ICM) color profile below. There are no guarantees that this will be helpful to you, but in lieu of doing your own calibration, it might be better than nothing.

BenQ EW3270ZL-2

Initial Calibration Results

Before testing, the monitor was set to 120 nits brightness and 6500K colours. sRGB mode was used, with brightness at 30 and contrast at 50. Gamma cannot be set manually in the sRGB mode. The monitor was calibrated using the Spyder4Elite colourimeter, which has some flaws but is the most advanced testing equipment we have at present — an upgrade to a X-Rite i1Display Pro is planned.

The initial Delta-E values are very low (which is good), with white point off by 0.3 and 50% Gray off by only 0.1. Gamma is also pretty close to the target, at 2.19 before calibration and 2.24 afterwards.

Gamut coverage

The initial tests show that the display does hit 100% of the sRGB gamut as expected, along with 79% of AdobeRGB and 75% of NTSC. That makes it suitable for professional photo work for the vast majority of the world, although those working to the highest standards or producing NTSC broadcasts may need to seek a more expensive monitor with a wider gamut.

Brightness and Contrast at Different Brightness Settings

Contrast consistently under-reads on the Spyder4Elite — one of the reasons we are looking at a replacement — so we should look more at the trend than the figures. The contrast remains good throughout the range; a little lower at lower brightness settings and a little higher at full brightness. At a comfortable 50% level, we’re at 1000:1, which translates almost perfectly into BenQ’s claimed 3000:1 contrast ratio.

Gamma, Tone Response and Gray Ramp

In sRGB mode, the gamma is set permanently to 2.2, and as you can see it matches the tone response curve exactly. The gray ramp is also reasonable, with a standard shape and no massive detours along the way.

Colour Accuracy

Colour accuracy is always an area of extreme interest, and for the EW3270ZL it is very good news indeed. The monitor is just barely above an error value of 1, at 1.17 to be precise. That’s an excellent result, and backs up our claim that the monitor should suit photo professionals in most circumstances. You can see only two shades have significantly high error values; the darkest black of 6E and the teal shade of 1F.

Colour Uniformity

We now turn our attention to how colour is reproduced across the display. Ideally, there should be little difference in how a colour is represented on one side of the monitor compared to the other, but lower-end displays often fail to accomplish this. For the EW3270ZL, we see only moderately good results, with Delta-E values of 3.4 in the lower left quadrant at 100% brightness. At a more common 50% brightness setting, this is reduced to just 1.8, which is still not great but is certainly workable.

Brightness Uniformity

Another area where displays can fall from a uniform ideal is in brightness; ideally we want to have a consistently bright display from one corner to another, rather than darker or lighter sections. Here the EW3270ZL is unfortunately a bit worse, with almost 20% differences in brightness at the 100% brightness setting.

The upper corner quadrants are the worst offenders, reading much dimmer than their counterparts in the bottom and centre. Unfortunately, this trend continues at 50% brightness, with the upper left reading at 22.7 nits compared to figures between 25 and 27 nits elsewhere. This isn’t a dealbreaker, but it is a point of weakness for the EW3270ZL.

Monitor Rating

Finally, we’ll show Datacolor’s Spyder4Elite monitor rating screen which tallies up how the monitor did in the various tests. Luminance uniformity is the only major disappointment, and even this receives a passing 3 / 5 grade. Everything else gets a strong 4.0, 4.5 or 5.0 rating: gamut, tone response, white point, contrast, colour uniformity and colour accuracy.

Ultimately, it’s a good show for the EW3270ZL; this monitor certainly passes monitor for personal and professional use, even if upper crust photo or video editors might prefer a monitor with better luminance uniformity and a wider gamut.

Wrapping up

The EW3270ZL is an enjoyable expansive monitor, with a great big 32-inch 1440p screen married to a surprisingly slender design. The AMVA+ panel used provides good colour accuracy, viewing angles and contrast, while the litany of added features provide protection from flickers, blue lights and all manner of other display-based irritants.

The only real flaw we found was the lack of a VESA mount and poor adjustability options — if this is important to you, then take a look at the 4K BenQ BL3201PT we reviewed earlier!

For office or photo work, this is a big, bold and beautiful choice indeed.

This IPS monitor for creatives boasts 100% sRGB and Rec.709 coverage and a modern thin bezel design, but we’re more excited about its built-in USB-C dock. A single cable carries video, audio, four USB peripherals and power for your laptop — awesome! Here’s our review of the BenQ PD2710Qc.

Design

The PD2710Qc has a modern design, with slim and dark bezels on all four sides of the 27-inch 8-bit panel. The monitor has a resolution of 2560 x 1440, with a quoted 1000:1 contrast ratio, 350 cd/㎡ peak brightness and 5 ms GtG response time. 1080p monitors at this size look a little grainy, and 4K monitors require scaling in Windows, so 1440p is a reasonable middle-ground choice.

The screen is suspended above a flat base, which slopes downwards gently to allow laptops to rest at a comfortable typing position. The base easily accommodates 13-inch and smaller laptops, while 14 and 15-inch laptops can still be used but may overhang slightly depending on their dimensions.

Buttons to control the OSD are on the back of the monitor, with their positions indicated through subtle lines on the front. The stand of the monitor is quite adjustable, capable of rotating into portrait mode, tilting and being raised or lowered as required. A hole in the back of the stand allows cables to be routed more cleanly.

The base of the monitor requires its own separate power supply, but adds considerable utility. A USB-C port is used to connect to a laptop, providing video, audio, power and USB connections. This provides access to four USB 3.0 ports, an ethernet port and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The idea here is that you can attach all of your peripherals to the monitor’s base, so you can hook up just one USB-C cable to get everything connected in one fell swoop.

The back of the monitor itself has the usual video connectors, allowing use of the screen without requiring USB-C. There’s a full selection of ports, too: HDMI 1.4, DisplayPort 1.2 and MiniDisplayPort 1.2, all of which can provide the full 1440p resolution. There’s also a second full-size DisplayPort connector that supports MST technology, allowing you to daisy-chain multiple displays together while only using a single output — pretty sweet!

The PD2710Qc is a stylish monitor with all of the ports and features that we’d hope to see on something aimed at designers. Let’s see how it holds up in testing.

Testing

In order to give the monitor a fair shake, we’ll be examining its performance using our normal suite of benchmarks using the Spyder4Elite colourimeter. To begin, we calibrated the monitor to 120 nits brightness, which corresponded to a brightness setting of 33, contrast of 50 and gamma setting 3 (default). sRGB mode was engaged, and all other features were left at their default settings.

You can download the ICC / ICM file below, although each monitor is different and this may not produce a better result than the factory settings.

BenQ PD2710Qc-1

The monitor was calibrated using the Spyder4Elite colourimeter, which has some flaws but is the most advanced testing equipment we have at present — an upgrade to a X-Rite i1Display Pro is planned.

Initial calibration results

After our initial calibration, we’re pretty much on target — a little dimmer than hoped, but white points are almost perfect and ΔE (error) values are impeccable too. The gamma is a little bit off, at 2.24 instead of 2.2, but it is at least improved from its 2.3 starting position. These are great initial findings, so hopefully that’s a sign of things to come.

Gamut coverage

Ironically, the PD2710Qc isn’t able to hit 100% sRGB coverage in its sRGB mode, according to our colourimeter, hitting just 98% instead — close enough.

Brightness and contrast at different brightness settings

In terms of brightness, the PD2710Qc is able to get pretty close to its 350 cd/m2 reading, hitting 330.7 at 100% brightness. However, it’s unlikely you’ll need anywhere near this amount of brightness unless you’re in a very well lit environment; we found settings between 35 and 75% to be more comfortable.

The Spyder4Elite consistently overstates black levels and thereby understates contrast ratios, but based on past results*, I’m happy to state that the monitor is capable of reaching its promised 1000:1 static contrast ratio.

This is a standard figure for an IPS panel, and should be enough for image editing purposes (although movie watchers or gamers might prefer a VA panel which can offer double or triple the level of contrast.

*Normally the contrast ratio is underestimated by a factor of between 2.75:1 and 3:1. For example, the Predator Z1 monitor we tested earlier has a stated contrast ratio of 3000:1, and our tests showed 1060:1 on average. This is a known issue with the Spyder4Elite colourimeter we’re using; we’re currently raising funds to replace this with a better but more expensive model.

Gamma, tone response and grey ramp

The gamma is read at 2.28 on gamma setting 3, a little off the 2.2 ideal that we were aiming for. The grey ramp looks quite normal, with reasonable temperature throughout the range.

Colour accuracy

Colour accuracy is always an important test, and that goes double for a monitor that is intended for use by photographers, image editors and other colour-sensitive workers. Here the PD2710Qc shows strong results, with an average ΔE value of 1.25 — excellent. Teal 1F again is the troublemaker, with most other shades sitting well below that 1.0 target.

Colour uniformity

Colour uniformity is also important, and here things are also good but not great. We see ΔE values that deviate considerably in the left side, particularly in the lower right. However, this does improve at more realistic brightness levels, moving to a level that isn’t likely to be noticed by eye.

Luminance uniformity

Luminance uniformity is also reasonable, showing a maximum deviation of around 11%, this time in the upper left and upper right quadrants.

Monitor rating

Finally, we have our monitor rating, as determined by the Spyder4Elite software. I generally put more stock in colour uniformity, but otherwise tend to agree with these, and that holds true for today’s BenQ monitor. We have good results in gamut, contrast, colour uniformity and colour accuracy, with the lower points coming in luminance uniformity and white point.

Overall, it’s a strong result that indicates this monitor should be fine for image-sensitive work.

Impressions

Now let’s move onto our first-hand use of the monitor. This is a little different for each monitor we review, and in this article we want to talk about the suitability of the docking station, the monitor’s use in colour-sensitive work and gaming performance (after all, this is XSReviews!).

Docking station

The most important thing to know about the docking station is that it’s an entirely separate piece of electronics to the monitor itself. That means the monitor and the dock each require their own power supply to function — a standard power cable for the monitor and a circular plug for the dock. You also need to connect the dock to the monitor with a DisplayPort cable (provided) if you want to use USB-C for video. So to connect your single USB-C cable to your laptop for video, audio and USB, you need three more cables working in the background.

USB-C can also provide power, but you’re limited to 60W. That’s more than enough for smaller, more power-efficient laptops and MacBooks, but the XPS 15 9560 we’re using can draw up to 130W. That meant that the laptop drained its battery a little more slowly, but it still drained it all the same. We ended up plugging in the laptop’s original power cable to ensure we remained at 100%, which again adds to the number of cables in use.

With good cable routing though, most of your cables can be hidden behind the base itself and you do get a reasonable dock experience. The four USB 3.0 ports are more than enough to connect all of your usual peripherals — mouse, keyboard, gamepad, SD card reader and so on — and the ethernet port allows rapid network access too. We faced no performance issues in our testing, and plugging in just a USB-C cable (and maybe power too) is certainly a time-saver compared to plugging in USB, video, audio and power each time.

Professional use

The PD2710Qc is designed for professional use, and in our testing (and in our benchmarks), the monitor was more than up to the task. The monitor’s excellent colour accuracy and uniformity ensures that photos will look as intended, as will support for full sRGB and Rec.709 (high-definition TV) gamuts.

Pictures on the monitor appeared crisp and natural, with the 1440p resolution making it easier to colour-grade 1080p footage with room for controls. That same resolution also doesn’t require any scaling in Windows or Mac, which ensures the monitor will look good with a wide range of applications, web pages and assets.

The monitor also comes with a number of helpful modes, including a CAD/CAM mode, an animation mode and a darkroom mode. These all seemed relatively helpful, although if you are used to working without these modes you may find it preferable to continue with what you’re comfortable with. In any case, it’s nice to have the option — a sentiment shared with the inclusion of the low blue light mode, which removes the need for warming modes in flux and recent versions of Windows 10.

In terms of adjustability, the PD2710Qc also appeals. You can easily use the monitor as a standalone device in landscape or portrait orientations, or fit your laptop below the screen to double up. Height adjustment is particularly welcomed — it is nice to be able to accommodate people both tall and short with the same monitor. Having a laptop open on the stand does limit your range of motion somewhat, so you may have to close the laptop or temporarily remove it if you’re switching from landscape to portrait mode, or moving the monitor to its lowest height setting.

Gaming performance

We tested the monitor in a number of games, including Pillars of Eternity and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. The 60Hz refresh rate and 5ms response time means this monitor isn’t an ideal choice for fast-paced games like CS. (We’d recommend an IPS monitor at 144Hz if you want to get good performance for both professional and gaming uses.) However, slower-paced games like Divinity: Original Sin 2 and Pillars of Eternity don’t share this restriction, allowing you to admire the detailed landscapes and bold colours of these games at 1440p. This isn’t our first choice for a gaming monitor, but it can certainly do the job in slower genres if called upon!

Wrapping up

The PD2710Qc is a stylish monitor, tuned for professional use with all of the modes, features and adjustability you could ask for. While you can spend less and get an equally good screen (or even a 4K model), the inclusion of these extras and the USB-C laptop dock make this BenQ monitor a fine choice.

Links

You can find the BenQ PD2710Qc on Amazon via the links below.

Shop on Amazon.com > Shop on Amazon.co.uk >

Today we’re looking at not a designer monitor, but a monitor for designers: the PD2700Q. It comes with a 27-inch 10-bit IPS panel with a 2560 by 1440 resolution, at a reasonable £330 price point. Let’s put it to the test and see how it performs!

Design

The PD2700Q is a simple but stylish monitor wrought from matte black plastic, with moderately sized bezels. The rectangular stand is slightly textured, but the monitor otherwise lacks stylistic adornment. The on-screen display is controlled by buttons on the rear; their position is indicated by small white markings on the bottom-right side of the bezel.

Turning the monitor around, you can see the stand that gives this monitor its excellent adjustability. The monitor can be adjusted 130 millimetres up or down, you can tilt 5 degrees back or 20 degrees forward, swivel 45 degrees in either direction or rotate 90 degrees for portrait use (you’ll need the maximum height setting for this, of course). The monitor stand has blue trim in two areas: the hole for cable routing and the headphone hanger near the top. It’s the same stand that BenQ uses on its ZOWIE gaming monitors, and it works just as well for sensible spreadsheets as it does mad fragging.

The PD2700Q is well-equipped when it comes to ports, with mini and full-sized DisplayPort, HDMI and three USB ports (two for peripherals, one to connect to your PC). There’s also a 3.5mm audio input if you’d prefer to use headphones over the the tiny 1W speakers built into this model.

That just about covers the design, so let’s move onto testing.

Testing

We used the PD2700Q for a week’s time, mostly comparing its performance to the PD2710Qc that we reviewed earlier. The two models are neighbours in terms of their model numbers, but use different panels: the 2710Qc has an 8-bit AH-IPS panel from LG, while the 2700Q uses a 10-bit AHVA IPS panel from AU Optronics. Will that make a big difference? Let’s find out.

In order to give the monitor a fair shake, we’ll be examining its performance using our normal suite of benchmarks using the Spyder4Elite colourimeter. To begin, we calibrated the monitor to 120 nits brightness, which corresponded to a brightness setting of 30, contrast of 50 and gamma setting 3 (default). Rec 709 mode was enabled, and all other settings were left at their defaults.

You can download the ICC / ICM file below, although each monitor is different and this may not produce a better result than the factory settings.

BenQ PD2700Q .ICM

The monitor was calibrated using the Spyder4Elite colourimeter, which has some flaws but is the most advanced testing equipment we have at present — an upgrade to a X-Rite i1Display Pro is planned.

Initial calibration results

After our initial calibration, we’re pretty much on target — a little brighter than the 120 nits we’re shooting for, but white points are perfect and ΔE (error) values are insanely low as well. The gamma is a little bit off, at 2.25 instead of 2.2, but it is at least improved from its 2.47 starting position. These are strong initial findings, so hopefully that’s a sign of things to come.

Gamut coverage

The PD2700Q manages to hit 100% of the sRGB gamut, as predicted, and does decently well in the less-used AdobeRGB and NTSC gamuts as well.

Brightness and contrast at different brightness settings

In terms of brightness, the PD2710Qc manages to hit nearly 300 nits at 100% brightness. However, it’s unlikely you’ll need anywhere near this amount of brightness unless you’re in a very well lit environment; we found settings below 50% to be much more comfortable.

The Spyder4Elite consistently overstates black levels and thereby understates contrast ratios, but based on past results*, I’m happy to state that the monitor is capable of reaching its promised 1000:1 static contrast ratio.

This is a standard figure for an IPS panel, and should be enough for image editing purposes (although movie watchers or gamers might prefer a VA panel which can offer double or triple the level of contrast.

*Normally the contrast ratio is underestimated by a factor of between 2.75:1 and 3:1. For example, the Predator Z1 monitor we tested earlier has a stated contrast ratio of 3000:1, and our tests showed 1060:1 on average. This is a known issue with the Spyder4Elite colourimeter we’re using; we’re currently raising funds to replace this with a better but more expensive model.

Gamma, tone response and grey ramp

The gamma is read at 2.5 on gamma setting 3, a little off the 2.2 ideal that we were aiming for! The grey ramp looks quite normal, with reasonable temperature throughout the range.

Colour accuracy

Colour accuracy is always an important test, and that goes double for a monitor that is intended for use by photographers, image editors and other colour-sensitive workers. Here the PD2710Qc shows excellent results throughout, with an average ΔE value of below 1.00 — impressive. Teal 1F again is the troublemaker at nearly 4.00, but most most other shades are sitting well below that 1.0 target.

Colour uniformity

Colour uniformity is also important, and the PD2700Q impresses here as well. We see ΔE values of around 2.0 at most, and this improves considerably to 1.3 as brightness is reduced to more realistic levels.

Luminance uniformity

Luminance uniformity is reasonable, showing the highest brightness in the centre and lower figures on the left and right sides. That’s a little odd, but nothing too worrying.

Monitor rating

Finally, we have our monitor rating, as determined by the Spyder4Elite software. I generally put more stock in colour uniformity, but otherwise tend to agree with these, and that holds true for today’s BenQ monitor. We have good results in gamut, contrast, colour uniformity and colour accuracy, with the lower points coming in tone response and luminance uniformity.

Overall, it’s a strong result that indicates this monitor should be fine for image-sensitive work. It’s even better than the PD2710Qc, although there’s not much in it.

Impressions

We’ll divide our impressions into two categories: professional use (the intended target market) and gaming (our personal favourite computer-based activity). Let’s get started.

Professional use

The PD2700Q is designed for professional use, and in our testing (and in our benchmarks), the monitor was more than up to the task. The monitor’s excellent colour accuracy and uniformity ensures that photos will look as intended, as will support for full sRGB and Rec.709 (high-definition TV) gamuts.

Pictures on the monitor appeared crisp and natural, with the 1440p resolution making it easier to colour-grade 1080p footage with room for controls. That same resolution also doesn’t require any scaling in Windows or Mac, which ensures the monitor will look good with a wide range of applications, web pages and assets.

The monitor also comes with a number of helpful modes, including a CAD/CAM mode, an animation mode and a darkroom mode. These all seemed relatively helpful, although if you are used to working without these modes you may find it preferable to continue with what you’re comfortable with. In any case, it’s nice to have the option — a sentiment shared with the inclusion of the low blue light mode, which removes the need for warming modes in flux and recent versions of Windows 10.

In terms of adjustability, the PD2700Q also appeals. Height adjustment is particularly welcomed, given the differing statures of the human race, but you can also tilt, swivel and rotate to your heart’s desire. Each adjustment you make is maintained as well, with no shake or play to be found.

Gaming performance

We tested the monitor in a number of games, including Call of Duty: World War II and American Truck Simulator. The 60Hz refresh rate and 4ms response time means this monitor isn’t an ideal choice for fast-paced games like Call of Duty, Counter-Strike or PUBG. (For a more balanced pick, we’d recommend trying a 144Hz IPS monitor.) However, slower-paced games like Divinity: Original Sin 2 and American Truck Simulator aren’t hampered by a standard 60Hz refresh rate. That gives you a nice chance to enjoy the rolling landscapes with vibrant colours and the added detail of 1440p. This isn’t a gaming monitor, but that doesn’t make it a bad choice for some games!

Wrapping up

The PD2700Q is a sensible monitor for creative workers, combining a solid colour-accurate IPS panel with stand-out adjustability and helpful specialist modes. If you’d prefer a similar monitor (albeit with an 8-bit panel) but with a USB-C docking station built in, check out the BenQ PD2710Qc.

Links

You can purchase the BenQ PD2700Q via the link(s) below:

See the BenQ PD2700Q on Amazon

Today we’re looking at a designer monitor from BenQ, the PD3200Q. This is a 32-inch monitor with a resolution of 2560×1440, so you’re going to have a lot of screen real estate to play with, without needing to use any scaling in Windows or macOS. BenQ try to add a lot of value to their monitors through helpful modes and features, and the PD3200Q is no different in this respect. We’ll include a look at these elements throughout the review. For now, let’s get started!

Specifications

Design & Features

The PD3200Q boasts a stylish and modern design, with modest 2-centimetre bezels surrounding the 10-bit VA panel. This monitor is able to hit 100% of the sRGB and Rec. 709 colour spaces. The monitor lacks needless ornamentation, with a subtle QHD logo in the bottom centre and a white LED power button in the bottom right.

Rather than having OSD controls on the back or side, the PD3200Q has touch-sensitive lights on the bezel itself. This makes it easier to adjust settings, as there’s never any doubt what a given button press will do.

The PD3200Q also has a great stand, with a strong metal body and reams of adjustability — you can rotate the screen 90 degrees to use in portrait mode, adjust the height up and down through 130mm, and of course tilt and swivel to your heart’s content. This gives you a ton of flexibility when it comes to making your monitor suit you and your environment.

On the right side of the PD3200Q we can find all of the video ports. You get full size and mini DisplayPort, HDMI and DVI.

Also on the right-hand side, tucked just behind the screen, there are four useful ports for creatives: two USB ports, an SD card slot and a headphone jack.

To get these ports working, you’ll need to plug in the USB 3.0 upstream cable into the bottom of the monitor. There are actually two upstream ports available, allowing you to control two different PCs with one set of peripherals. In this way, the monitor acts like a KVM switch. There are also two additional USB ports here, allowing you to plug in four USB devices at once.

Finally, there’s a micro USB port that allows you to connect the ‘Hotkey Puck’, which allows you to quickly switch between different modes if you don’t want to use the touch button controls. You can even use the DualView feature to see the same image in two screen modes simultaneously, which might be handy for colour-sensitive work: photo editing, colour grading, CAD/CAM or animation.

Benchmarks

In order to test this monitor’s capabilities, we used an i1Display Pro colourimeter and DisplayCAL software.

First, we calibrated the monitor, using the following settings to achieve 120 nits of brightness:

• Brightness: 26
• Contrast: 50
• Gamma: 2.2
• Colour temperature: Normal
• Picture mode: Standard

Next, we performed a standard suite of tests, checking gamut coverage, colour accuracy and other metrics. Here’s what we found.

ICM file

Here’s the .ICC / .ICM file produced by the DisplayCAL software; feel free to use it for your own PD3200Q. The usual disclaimers apply; panels vary and this may not produce an improved result.

• BenQ PD3200Q

Gamut coverage

First of all, we’ll discuss gamut coverage. The PD3200Q claims to hit the 100% sRGB gamut, and we see that it does indeed cover that space completely. Furthermore, the monitor hits a good amount of the Adobe RGB and DCI P3 gamuts as well, at 75.1% and 80.5% respectively. (Using the Spyder4Elite colourimeter, we also measured 76% NTSC coverage.) This is sufficient for most colour-sensitive work, and should suit most professional / creative usage.

You can see the 100% coverage in the chart below; you can see that the measured percentage is actually 99.7% which is within the margin of error.

Colour accuracy

Colour accuracy is also important for a display intended for creatives, and you can see that the PD3200Q does excellently here as well. The average Delta-E value is 0.43; anything below 1.00 is great so 0.43 is a very impressive result indeed. As usual, the teal patch provides the largest error value (1.69).

Screen uniformity

Colour accuracy and gamut coverage are great, but uniformity is also a requirement for professional use. We can see that things are pretty good overall, but there are some imperfections marked by the yellow bordered squares below — specifically, the right hand side of our monitor appears to be a little dimmer than the centre and left.

The ten zones on the right are about 6-7% less bright, measuring around 110 nits compared to 120 nits elsewhere. That’s tolerable, if not perfect; in DisplayCAL these quadrants are labelled as ‘nominal tolerance passed’ rather than ‘recommended tolerance passed’. However, contrast deviation is excellent throughout the panel, usually measuring around 1-4%.

Impressions

We used the PD3200Q for ten days, playing games, watching TV and (occasionally) getting stuff done. Here are our impressions.

Creative

For image editing and video production, the PD3200Q is pretty good — the 1440p resolution gives you enough space to work without requiring any scaling in Windows or Mac, and the wide span of the screen makes it easy to spot minute details without straining your eyes. However, 2160p (aka 4K) may be a better shout for video production, particularly if you’re shooting or publishing in 4K.

Apart from the not-quite-4K resolution, things are excellent — the colour accuracy is spot-on, viewing angles are excellent, and the many modes on offer can be handy for specialised tasks like producing 3D models or producing the most colour-sensitive media. The addition of the KVM switch is also nice, allowing you to control two PCs with a single keyboard and mouse. Likewise, the integrated SD card reader is a big quality-of-life upgrade for anyone that frequently needs to dump photos and videos onto their PC.

Gaming

Civilization VI is fun on such a big screen, as you gaze across the rolling expanse of your burgeoning empire and think about which of your new neighbours will next feel your wrath. RPGs are also good, particularly those set in vibrant locales such as Diablo III and Divinity: Original Sin 2.

You’ll need a reasonably fast computer in order to play most games on 2560 x 1440 at 60Hz at high graphical settings, but it’s less of a challenge than 4K gaming. However, fans of faster-paced games (like Counter-Strike, above) will be better accommodated by a monitor with a fast refresh rate, at least 144Hz.

Media

Likewise, films and TV shows look great with nice contrast and beautiful colours; this TV-sized monitor doesn’t disappoint when it comes to media (although of course fancy OLED TVs will look a little nicer). If you can find it, 4K content also looks noticeably better than 1080p thanks to the in-between 1440p resolution.

Wrapping Up

The PD3200Q is a nice monitor that can pull double duty as a sensible choice for creatives and a good-looking showpiece for fans of (slower-paced) video games or cinema. The essentials are extremely sound, thanks to the colour-accurate, beautiful VA panel, and the extras are great too, with plenty of nice-to-have modes, rare features and thoughtful customisation options.

The only question is this: should you go for a 4K model instead? 1440p at 32 inches is extremely readable, but you might feel you’ve missed a trick by not making the jump to the next big video resolution. The BenQ PD3200U has almost all of the same features, plus 4K, at £750 — and it feels a lot more future-proof. Still, that premium price makes the £425 PD3200Q feel like a bargain. One more option is the cheaper EW3270ZL, which loses the special features and adjustability, but costs £75 less at just £350. Whichever you choose, you’re likely to be pretty happy!

Today, we’re looking at one of the most affordable HDR-capable monitors, the £329 EL2870U from BenQ. As well as having better looking pixels, this 28-inch monitor also promises more of them, thanks to its 4K Ultra HD resolution. It sounds like a winning combination, but have BenQ made too many sacrifices to hit this low price point? Let’s find out in our full review.

Specs & Features

Design

The EL2870U boasts thicker bezels than most, with matte black plastic measuring nearly an inch thick on all four sides. The monitor has a prominent chin, with an ambient light sensor in the centre and an HDR button on the far right side.

You can find the other buttons on the underside of the monitor, with five short buttons for adjusting menu options and a longer power button at the far right side. Once the OSD appears, the position and function of each button is marked, making it easy to set various options.

The monitor sits on a two-part stand, combining a wide front portion with a slimmer central stand. The stand allows the display to be tilted forward or back, but doesn’t allow for swivelling, rotation or height adjustment; for this you’ll need to affix your own stand or mount to the VESA port on the rear.

You’ll find the monitor’s ports facing downwards on the back of the monitor. We have two HDMI 2.0 ports, one DisplayPort 1.4 port, a 3.5mm passthrough and a power input. There are no USB ports to be found.

Testing

We tested the EL2870U for one week, using it as our primary monitor for gaming, writing, photo editing and other tasks. Here’s how we got on.

Setting up HDR

Out of the box, HDR doesn’t feel well-supported on Windows 10. Our test rig, MANTAMACHINE, immediately recognised the display as being HDR-capable when connected over DisplayPort to its GTX 1080, and I could easily enable HDR mode in Display Settings.

However, enabling HDR immediately made the screen significantly dimmer without any noticeable upside. Even watching HDR videos on YouTube, I found disabling HDR produced a better-looking picture! Obviously, there’s something wrong here.

The forthcoming Spring Creator’s Update promises better HDR support, so I enrolled in the Insider Preview and updated to build 17120.1 (rs4_release). After this, the monitor started to look a little better, with non-HDR elements becoming less dim.

Happily, with the latest Windows 10 update installed, you can at least boost the brightness of non-HDR content. It would be great if HDR could be enabled just when HDR content is detected, and otherwise be turned off; consoles work like this so why can’t Windows?

Unfortunately, while HDR is enabled at the OS level, you lose control of most of the monitor’s settings. Brightness, Contrast, Gamma, Color Temperature, Hue and Saturation are all locked away in the OSD. Instead, you can only choose between two modes: HDR and Cinema HDR.

Testing: HDR Media

With HDR enabled, the screen appears to take on an overly warm cast. Some HDR content on YouTube looks alright, with perhaps better contrast when compared against SDR versions, but the overall effect seems marginal. It feels like the monitor is hamstrung somewhat by its limited brightness and its colour accuracy.

It’s only when you download some HDR demo reels that things start to look properly exciting — scenes are brighter, colours seemingly more vibrant and so on. However, when I went back to look for more HDR content on YouTube and Netflix, convinced I had finally cracked the code and unlocked proper good-looking HDR, nothing lived up to the vibrancy of these demo reels — and anything with darker scenes suffered from a lack of detail and a ton of distracting artefacts in dark areas. Perhaps games will be a better test case for this monitor?

Testing: HDR Gaming

I installed a few HDR-capable games recommended by the PC Gaming Wiki’s excellent list: Call of Duty: World War II, which I’ve played extensively beforehand, and Forza 7, which was a new purchase.

In general, I was disappointed with the quality of the image with HDR enabled. Blacks were reproduced as dark greys, and thanks to the warm cast of the screen they often turned into dark red tones, like a dim maroon.

It was hard to see large differences between the picture with HDR enabled in each game’s settings. Some light sources appeared a little brighter and colours seemed a little different, but the effect was marginal at best. However, the overall warm cast of the screen meant that scenes often looked better with HDR disabled — not a great result. Eventually, I disabled HDR for gaming on the monitor.

Testing: Non-HDR gaming

With HDR disabled, the monitor produced a better picture with reasonably accurate colours, average contrast and a nicely sharp image at 4K. I didn’t experience any noticeable input lag either. For a TN panel at a shade over £300, it was a very impressive showing.

Our test rig‘s GTX 1080 was able to maintain 60 frames per second throughout, thanks to the excellent optimisation and dynamic quality adjustment that Turn 10 have included in their title. For other recent titles, we might struggle a bit, so be sure that your PC is up to the challenge of 4K gaming before pulling the trigger.

Work

The earliest 4K monitors were those designed for creative professionals, particularly photographers and videographers, who could most obviously benefit from additional screen real estate. These monitors relied on IPS panels, which have traditionally cost more than TN panels, but offered better colour accuracy, viewing angles and a wider gamut — all of which are important for creatives producing colour-sensitive work. The EL2870U uses a TN panel though, so can it still be used in creative endeavours?

Well, TN panels have come a long way since the first 4K panels appeared on the scene, but they’re still not the equal of IPS in this area. There is a bit of colour shift evident when moving up and down or side to side, and the monitor’s colour gamut isn’t up to snuff as we’ll see later in the benchmarks section. This is certainly not the worst monitor for creatives, but anyone who is producing colour-sensitive work should really consider a panel that can hit 100% sRGB as the bare minimum.

The screen is also hampered by its lack of adjustability. Out of the box, you can only tilt the screen up or down; there’s no swivel, no rotation, no height adjustment. Thankfully, there is at least a VESA 100×100 mount on the back, so you can swap in a more capable stand or arm if you have one. Of course, with a weight of around five kilograms, you’ll need a reasonably beefy monitor arm if you go down that route.

Despite these flaws, the EL2870U does at least offer that 4K Ultra HD resolution, so you can choose between extremely sharp text at 200% scaling, an absurd amount of real estate at 100% scaling, or a mixture of the two at 150% (which is where we spent the most time). Of course, the usual caveats apply: some applications somehow still don’t support display scaling very well, and you will end up needing a magnifying glass to read menus or identify small UI elements. Thankfully, these experiences are getting rarer as time goes on.

Benchmarks

Before running our benchmarks, we calibrated the screen using an i1Display Pro Colourimeter and DisplayCAL software (version 3.5.1).

Before benchmarking, we let the monitor warm up for several hours. We ran our tests twice, once with HDR enabled and once with HDR disabled. Here are the monitor settings that we ended up with after each calibration phase:

EL2870U ICC / ICM download

Here are ICM files produced by the DisplayCAL software, which you may find useful or may make your display worse — no guarantees:

Next, we performed our usual suite of tests, checking gamut coverage, colour accuracy and other metrics. Here’s what we discovered.

Luminance and contrast

With HDR disabled, the monitor seems to hit its targets well. We saw measured luminance of 116.5, just a little below our 120 nits target. Compared with black luminance of 0.14 nits, that’s good for a contrast ratio of 832:1. That’s reasonable for a TN display, and if we went for a higher brightness setting we should get pretty close to the monitor’s 1000:1 specification.

However, with HDR enabled, luminance and contrast quickly goes to hell. Luminance is measured at 153 nits, with black luminance at 0.371 nits, for an appalling contrast ratio of 413:1.

White point

With HDR disabled, our white point was measured at 6474K, fairly close to our 6500K target. You can see the graph below.

White balance is also affected with HDR enabled, rising to 6974K with an assumed target of 7000K.

Gamma

We want a gamma of 2.2, as this is the standard used almost everywhere, but our measured gamma curve is a little above where it should be. You can see it below; the open circles are the 2.2 curve and the coloured circles represent the measured gamma, which is a little closer to 2.3. This indicates a slightly more contrast-y image, which is not necessarily a bad thing for gaming.

Gamut coverage

Next, we have gamut coverage. This shows us how much of a particular colour space the monitor can accurately hit, which is a good indicator of the monitor’s worth for professional and creative uses. We can see we only hit 92.4% of the common sRGB space, meaning that this monitor won’t be too useful in colour-sensitive work. The Adobe RGB and DCI P3 percentages are also middling to poor, at 67.3% and 71.2%, respectively.

With HDR enabled, gamut coverage was reduced significantly… surely HDR ought to have the opposite effect? We get sRGB coverage of 87.9%, Adobe RGB coverage of 64.9% and DCI P3 coverage of just 66.5%.

Colour accuracy

Colour accuracy comes next. TN panels aren’t famed for their colour accuracy, but an HDR-capable display might do better than average. Indeed, that seems to be the case, with a nice average Delta-E value of 0.88, where 1.00 is a generally imperceptible deviation from ideal. We see the usual two outliers in the bottom right of the image below, which are teal at 3.362 and dark grey at 1.959.

With HDR enabled, things improve slightly, with a Delta-E value of just 0.55 — pretty awesome!

Screen uniformity

Screen uniformity is a measure of how much a screen changes from area to area. We’re doing a quick test of nine quadrants to see how the monitor changes in brightness and contrast. With HDR disabled, we get a nice result, with minimal changes in brightness or contrast between different quadrants. This is one of the best results we’ve had since moving to the new colourimeter — cool!

Thankfully, HDR doesn’t affect screen uniformity; we got almost identical results with HDR enabled.

Benchmark summary

The EL2870U shows good results for a TN panel with HDR disabled, including excellent screen uniformity, strong colour accuracy, a reasonable ~2.3 gamma and a slightly sub-par contrast ratio of 832:1. The gamut coverage is a little lacklustre at 92% sRGB, but otherwise things are pretty respectable for a budget 4K monitor.

When HDR is enabled, things become worse, with brighter blacks and darker whites — isn’t that the opposite of what should happen? However, colour accuracy did slightly improve once HDR was enabled in our testing.

Wrapping up

The EL2870U is a weird one. This monitor offers 4K and HDR at a very convincingly low price point, but its HDR performance added little more than hassle in our testing. It’s certainly possible that HDR will be better supported (and more widely available) in the future, but for the moment this monitor’s best qualities are distinct from its HDR capabilities — we had the most fun during this review just gaming in 4K with HDR disabled. If you’re an HDR fiend, we’d recommend looking elsewhere.

The BenQ EX3501R brings HDR gaming to ultra-wide monitors, along with a catalogue of desirable specifications for both home and office use such as a 35-inch span, 1440p ultra-wide resolution and USB-C connectivity. We’ve got one in to review, so let’s see if its titanic 35-inch span justifies that £639 price tag.

Specs & Features

Design

The EX3501R dominates a desk thanks to its 35-inch span, while its 1800R curvature provides a rather immersive experience — particularly if you’ve got your head nice and close to the screen!

The monitor has medium-sized bezels on the top and sides, with a larger chin that sports an ambient light sensor, a BenQ logo and no other visible lights or other distractions.

On the underside of the monitor, you can see the wide array of ports on offer: DisplayPort 1.4 (use this if you can), two HDMI 2.0 ports, a USB-C port, two USB 3.0 ports, a USB 3.0 upstream port and a headphone jack. You can also make out the buttons, which appear towards the right side of the monitor in normal use. The power button is longer than its peers, which makes it a bit easier to avoid accidentally turning the monitor off when you’re looking to instead change a setting.

The back of the monitor has a nice silver colour scheme, which is reflected in the silver-coloured plastic stand. This stand is a V shape, with the two legs sitting just wide enough apart to fit a tenkeyless keyboard in (those are the keyboards without number pads). The stand includes 60mm of height adjustment and 25˚ of tilting, but sadly no swivelling or rotation.

Testing

We used the BenQ EX3501R for a period of four weeks, testing it almost non-stop while writing articles, editing photos, watching videos and playing games. Here are our impressions.

Gaming

Gaming on an ultra-wide monitor is a pretty awesome experience, particularly one that is as wide as the 35-inch EX3501R.

The game world takes centre stage, with most UI elements appearing out of the way on either side, as you can see in the World of Tanks screenshot below. That makes it a little harder to quickly check the minimap, but makes the actual game feel a lot more immersive.

This also works well in strategy games and other third-person titles, where the wide screen can really provide a sense of scale and grandeur that can be hard to find on standard 16:9 displays.

Of course, not all games support 21:9 well or at all, and sometimes you’ll get an experience that really lacks immersion, such as a game that runs at 16:9 with black bars on either side, stretches to fill the screen or has interface elements hidden. 21:9 game support is continuing to grow, but it’s still worth mentioning in 2018.

Obviously, running games at an ultra-wide resolution will be more challenging for your graphics card and processor, because you’ll have more pixels to put on screen. However, if you make the naive calculations, the EX3501R isn’t that demanding compared to a standard 2560 x 1440 monitor running at the more common 144Hz refresh rate, so you won’t need to worry about not being able to ‘max out’ the capabilities of the EX3501R.

However, for gaming, the 100Hz refresh rate can feel a little limiting if you’re used to a higher refresh rate monitor. Our daily driver is an Acer XB271HU which can run at 144Hz and overclock to 165Hz, and the difference in responsiveness is certainly noticeable despite both monitors coming with a quoted 4ms response time.

However, I don’t wish to sound ungrateful here; 100Hz is still significantly better than a standard 60Hz display, and I don’t feel I’m at an insurmountable disadvantage from those missing 44 frames per second. It would have been nice to see an option to overclock to 120Hz, which is found in the similar Acer Z35P.

It’s also nice to see FreeSync support, which should help the minority of PC gamers that choose to use AMD graphics card and also can’t quite run their games at a full 60 to 100 frames per second.

Productivity

After using both 2560 x 1080 and 3440 x 1440 monitors, I really have to say that 1440p should be the minimum resolution for all ultra-wide monitors over 27 inches, as it makes a big difference to productivity — you can have three smaller windows on screen at once, or two larger windows, without feeling cramped.

The strong contrast ratio and colour reproduction of the monitor also make it a nice choice for image or video work, although some minor imperfections that we’ll cover later (such as uniformity) ensure that this won’t be a professional editor’s number one choice.

BenQ’s OSD with bottom-mounted buttons is easy to use, and the various eye health features are nice to have as usual. The monitor is also reasonably stylish, with medium-sized bezels and no annoying lights whatsoever, which makes it a good choice for modern homes and offices. Finally, the inclusion of USB-C is very handy for modern laptops and mobiles, letting you to get multiple uses out of a single cable — awesome.

Media

Finding HDR content on PC remains surprisingly difficult, at least compared to games consoles or TV dongles that seem better supported by video content owners (presumably for piracy-dodging reasons). However, once you do find some HDR videos, you will find that the EX3501R has a little something over monitors without an HDR certification. However, it’s not quite the night-and-day experience that it can be on proper HDR10 or DolbyVision sets.

However, enabling HDR mode makes everything else look awful, even  after tweaking the HDR settings provided in the latest build of Windows 10. I ended up using the monitor almost exclusively in SDR mode, as I didn’t feel the hassle of swapping back and forth was worth the minor visual upgrade.

Benchmarks

Before running our benchmarks, we calibrated the screen using an i1Display Pro Colourimeter and DisplayCAL software (version 3.5.1).

Before benchmarking, we let the monitor warm up for several hours. We ran all of the tests with HDR disabled, as a) DisplayCAL doesn’t support HDR content anyway and b) I don’t think HDR is the best feature of this monitor.

Here are the monitor settings that we ended up with after each calibration phase:

EX3501R ICC / ICM download

Here are ICM files produced by the DisplayCAL software, which you may find useful or may make your display worse — no guarantees:

Next, we performed our usual suite of tests, checking gamut coverage, colour accuracy and other metrics. Here’s what we discovered.

Luminance and contrast

After calibration, we’d ideally want our monitor to hit our 120 nit target as closely as possible with the lowest possible black luminance, in order to provide a good contrast ratio. The EX3501R does well here, with a black luminance of 0.06 nits which means contrast that works out to around 1977:1. That’s a little below the quoted 2500:1 ratio, but given that we’re in SDR mode it’s not unexpected. Having around 2000:1 contrast should still be sufficient for darker scenes in games and video.

Color temperature

We targeted a white point of 6500K, and we can see that we are pretty close to the desired curve despite one extremely high reading at 5%, with a measured vs assumed target white point ΔE value of 0.11, where under 1.00 is recommended and 2.00 is nominal.

Gamma

Ideally, our display’s default ‘gamma 3’ setting should deliver gamma 2.2, the most common target for all kinds of monitors. The gamma curve looks good here, sitting at or just below 2.2 for the bulk of curve.

Gamut coverage

Next up is gamut coverage, which tells us how much of a given colour space our monitor can reproduce. Any monitor that is designed for creative use ought to be able to cover the most common sRGB colour space, while more advanced models should also target a good proportion of the more challenging Adobe RGB and DCI P3 colour spaces.

The BenQ monitor does well here, nailing 99.3% of sRGB, 75% of Adobe RGB and 81.5% of DCI P3. The sRGB measurement is within the margin of error for 100% coverage, so I’m happy to confirm that this monitor should be quite usable for entry-level professional photo and video editing.

Colour accuracy

Next up we have another important metric, colour accuracy. Here, anything under 1.00 is a good result, and anything under 2.5 is the sort of difference that an average user would struggle to spot. The EX3501R scores a ΔE value of 0.24 here on average, with a 99th percentile ΔE of 0.82. That’s excellent, showing that we should have no colour accuracy concerns with this monitor.

Screen uniformity

Screen uniformity is a measure of how much a screen changes from area to area, and we’re doing the full 5×5 test to get a comprehensive idea of how this monitor changes from area to area. This uses a simple traffic light colour system, with green being a near-perfect result, yellow being a nominally good result and red indicating issues.

As you can see (particularly if you click the image to enlarge), the VA panel provided here isn’t perfect, especially on the far left and right sides where the display is about 10% dimmer and colour accuracy issues begin to emerge, with ΔE values above 3. However, I didn’t notice this issue in my testing, so it may need be a dealbreaker.

Benchmark summary

The EX3501R is a strong monitor when it comes to the synthetics, with laudable colour accuracy, 100% sRGB gamut coverage, a reasonable 2000:1 contrast ratio in SDR mode and acceptable gamma and colour temperature readings. The only issue is the screen uniformity, which does show some weaknesses in the exacting ISO 14861:2015 standard. However, this is not likely to affect anything but professional colour-sensitive work, so I wouldn’t consider this a big deal for most users.

Wrapping up

So, is the EX3501R worth buying? Well, the monitor hasn’t really sold me on its HDR capabilities, with its 8-bit panel not really offering the quality of displays that support HDR10 or DolbyVision which can make HDR such a transcendent technology. Likewise, the Acer Predator Z35P provides a more fluid experience thanks to its 120Hz overclock, making the EX3501R a little underwhelming for fast-paced competitive games like Fortnite or CS:GO.

However, the EX3501R is still a solid monitor in other respects. As an SDR ultrawide monitor, it provides a suitably cinematic experience for slower-paced gaming or watching movies, with a well-calibrated screen out of the box and excellent synthetic results. The nods to eye health and productivity, such as the adjustable screen height, USB-C connectivity and automatic brightness adjust, also make good sense for an office-oriented display.

Ultimately, if you can get the EX3501R for a similar price to its non-HDR predecessor, the BenQ EX3501, I’d say absolutely go for it. However, the gaming-oriented Acer Predator Z35P is also worth checking out; you can find our Z35P review here.