Arthur Senior
BenQ is a new brand to me, never heard of them before. But I saw the reviews and most people were raving about this one, so I thought I would give it a shot, considering the price was good on it. I bought this monitor for use with my tablet, I use it to monitor a security camera feed, as well as surf the web, watch video's, and do a little gaming. I have a 55" 4K TV for my main computer, so I really only needed the monitor for the tablet.
PACKAGING: The package that it comes in is certainly not thrilling to look at. It has a generic look to it to re-emphasize the fact that, you did not buy a high end monitor. However, they did package the monitor up very well in the box it came in, foam on both sides, and everything that comes with it neatly tucked away in the foam as well.
WHATS INCLUDED: The box contains the monitor itself, a power cord, and a short HDMI cable. Also included, is a quick start guide, warranty sheet, and a driver disk, which also has the full product manual in PDF form.
WARRANTY: BenQ monitors come with a 3-year warranty, which is pretty good! Oddly however, they changed their policy, and you no longer have to register your product with them, in order to validate your warranty. You are however, required to keep your purchase receipt as proof of ownership, if you should ever have to use your warranty. For online shoppers, that is your invoice page, take a screenshot.
SETTING UP: Setting this monitor up is super simple, place monitor face down on the protective foam bag. Grab both pieces that make up the stand, connect them together, then screw in the built in nut, then push the stand into the monitor until it locks in place. What is great about this stand, is that it has a place to rout your cables for a neat install. Rout your power cable, and your data cable through the keepers within the stand, then plug them in. Then put the backing cover back on the stand, it only wants to go on properly one-way.
PORTS: This monitor has the standard 3-pin computer cable port for power. This monitor comes with the ancient standard VGA port, the previous standard HDMI port, and the latest standard, Display port. It also has a speaker port, and a microphone port. I have it connected up to my tablet using HDMI at 1080P 60-hertz.
SPEAKERS: Some people might not know that this monitor is a unique one, that actually comes with speakers. The built-in speakers however are pretty horrible, but this is to be expected due to the monitors size. The speakers can't be over 2-inches in diameter more then likely, which is why the sound is so weak in volume. The sound quality is terrible, the speakers do not produce quality bass, nor quality highs. The speakers pretty much just produce mid-range. Recommendation, use a pair of Edifier R1700BT bookshelf speakers, or a pair of headphones.
SCREEN: The screen is an IPS (In Plane Switching) design that measures 23.8-inches diagonally from corner to corner. Unlike a TN (Twisted Nematic) panel which suffers from poor blacks, and major color distortion when viewed at an angle, IPS panels maintain quality deep rich color, with quality blacks, and practically no viewing angles. The only drawback to an IPS display, is that it has a higher response time, and as is with this screen 8ms, and is only 60 herts refresh rate, which is why its not great for gaming.
GAMING: As an addition to the previous paragraph, this monitor would not be good for competitive gaming. A true gaming monitor should have a response time of 3ms or lower, and up to a 144 hertz refresh rate or better. The 8ms that this monitor supports, can cause you to see ghosting. And operating at only 60-herts, an action in the game, can happen quicker, then you can see it, which means, you have a higher chance of getting fragged in online play, rather then you doing the fragging.
However, having said that, if your a non-competitive gamer, and you only play single player games like Dead Effect, or simple games like Plants Vs Zombies, this monitor will actually be fine for gaming.
QUALITY: The quality that this monitor provides is pretty good for the price. While it may not be the best monitor for gaming, it does however produce rich color that actually looks really good. This monitor seems to prefer warmer tones to colors, even if I set the display to be a more cooler blue, it still is warmer then many other screens that I've used. If your looking for a monitor that provides you 100% accurate color reproduction, this may not be the one for you. If your willing to deal with the warmer tones, then this will be just fine for you.
The quality of blacks is probably one of the best I've seen on computer monitors, there is very little light leak through on the edges, its hardly noticeable at all. With a TN panel, you would see grey's instead of blacks, and there would be light leak all over the place. There are no dead pixel's that I can see, and the screen is very smooth with a matt finish, which helps reduce glare. The monitor uses a thin bezel design as well, which I like.
MENU: This monitor uses a simple menu system, with the use of 4-different buttons, to navigate. Its not the easiest, nor the most logical menu setup, that I've ever used, but it works. Whats a cool however, is that the monitor displays what each button does on screen, so you don't have to look under the monitor with a flashlight to see its icon. (Icons only display on screen when in menu) I turned off all dynamic options, both brightness, and contrast, I don't need my monitor making choices on my behalf. I set the brightness to 50% and the contrast to 70%.
EYECARE: This monitor comes with patented EyeCare technology. The company makes it seem so fancy in marketing. All it is, is there is a photocell under the monitor that senses light. When the light is low in the room, it darkens your screen. When the light is bright in the room, it razes the brightness of the screen. Basically, this EyeCare technology is best suited for those who stair at a screen all day in an office, and don't want to have headaches. You can turn this feature on/off in the menu.
BEST SUITED FOR?: In my opinion, this monitor is best for people who do office work, production work, programming, security office camera feeds, web surfing, Youtube watching, and light gaming. Additionally, this would make a great streaming monitor as well.
WHO IS THIS NOT FOR?: This monitor is not for people who are heavy gamers. Because of the naturally warmer color tones, this may not be the most accurate monitor for photo editing or video editing. However, if your not bothered by that, I still say its a good monitor for production work.
WHAT WOULD I PREFER? I'd prefer a menu layout that was more logical. I'd prefer separate volume up and down buttons, instead of having to enter the menu to change volume. It would be nice if the monitor had a Tosslink port for audio input, most computer's today have a Tosslink audio output port. I'd also prefer higher quality speakers, if your going to put speakers in your monitor, do it right. And if you had a Tosslink connection, you'd have a high resolution sample rate and frequency response, which could actually produce quality sound.
CONCLUSION: This monitor has been working out great for me. I am actually surprised at how good the quality of the screen is, for the cost. It used to be you had to spend 400 dollars or more to get an IPS monitor of this size, I'm very impressed, for the purpose I am using it for. While it may not be the best monitor, its a pretty good one for the price. Considering my usage of this monitor, I am going to give it a 5 out of 5 stars.
PS: Picture of monitor showing rainbow color, is me running the tablet in Daydream COLORS mode, which is like a screensaver. And the other picture showing me playing a game on my tablet, is the game Dead Effect.
| Standing screen display size | 23.8 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 1920x1080 |
| Max Screen Resolution | 1920x1080 Pixels |
SingingSam
