BenQ E2200HD and E2400HD - 1080P FullHD LCDs

BenQ E2400HD Specifications

Déjà vu. Given the price, it should come as no surprise that this is also a 24" LCD with a TN panel. Once again, that means viewing angles are worse than other panel technologies, but with less input lag compared to S-PVA panels. The only difference other than price, size, and weight is power requirements, but that goes along with the larger backlight and panel.

The on-screen display (OSD) for the E2400HD is virtually the same as the E2200HD, with one or two minor differences. However, while most of the options are the same, the resulting functionality is different. Specifically, support for non-native resolutions was substantially better on the E2200HD for whatever reason. Perhaps the E2400HD we received didn't come with the latest firmware installed. Anyway, you get the same brightness, contrast, aspect ratio, color correction, and several preset viewing settings. Again we found that using the "Standard" viewing mode and "Normal" color gave the most pleasing experience, and we avoided using dynamic contrast. Let's look at the OSD menus.

All of the OSD functionality is the same, with only two changes we noticed. First, the E2200HD has a setting where you can enable/disable AMA (Advanced Motion Accelerator). AMA is supposed to improve pixel response times by overdriving state changes, resulting in a 2ms GTG (Grey to Grey) response time. We didn't notice any significant difference, but perhaps our eyes are just too old/slow [Ed: Go easy on him - he just turned 35 last week…]. The other change is in the scaling options, where the E2400HD offers "Full", "16:9", and "4:3" as well as the ability to enable an overscan mode on certain resolutions. Here is a summary of our resolution testing results for all three inputs:

Clearly there are some differences in how the two LCDs handle non-native resolutions, and the E2200HD is by far superior. Native resolution worked without difficulty, naturally, but on the HDMI input quite a few of the resolutions were stretched horizontally. All the 16:10 AR resolutions would either fill the whole LCD or else overscan in the horizontal dimension -- so the left and right parts of the display weren't visible. Several other resolutions had an incorrect aspect ratio, for example 1280x1024 used a 4:3 ratio instead of 5:4, regardless of the choice of video input. On our DVI input, 1600x1200 failed to work properly on at least one system, with static and a message on the display indicating that the signal was out of range. Finally, quite a few resolutions didn't allow any changes to the aspect ratio setting, defaulting to filling the whole screen -- although that's not as bad as some of the other issues we encountered.

What's somewhat odd is that resolution support is dependent upon more than the LCD panel and scaler, and there were other systems where we encountered different resolution issues. For example, a couple laptops refused to support higher resolutions using HDMI. We're hesitant to blame BenQ on issues like that, but using the same test systems we did feel the E2200HD was the better option for resolution support.

Outside of resolution support problems, the built-in resolution scaler works well, just like the E2200HD. Again, results are better for resolutions that are at least 33% lower than the native resolution -- so 1440x900 and lower look decent. Overall, the VGA input offered the best support for non-native resolutions, but that's the least desirable input choice for signal quality. Whatever the cause, BenQ should look into applying some of the firmware microcode from the E2200HD to the E2400HD.