BenQ VW2420H Monitor Review
by Chris Heinonen on December 10, 2011 2:45 AM ESTUniformity and Gamut
When we looked at the color on the VW2420H, the dE number for the very center of the panel at 200 nits of brightness was pretty decent at right around 2.0. Unfortunately it seems that the center of the panel performs better than the rest of the panel as a whole. The center and top-middle of the display are right around 2.0 for their average dE, but the rest of the panel is closer to 3.0 or higher. For this reason if you are doing color sensitive work, you probably want to keep what you are working on in the center of the screen and use the edges of the screen for other things.
When I looked at the raw data for the uniformity values, aside from the center point the white values were much worse across the display. When we look at the brightness uniformity we can clearly see why that is. While it is a bit odd that the bottom-middle has the 2nd most accurate brightless level but the top-middle has the 2nd most accurate color dE, overall you can see the correlation between dE and brightness uniformity. As the light level changes, the color accuracy of white and everything else drifts from the calibrated values. This uniformity issue will exist with almost any panel using conventional lighting techniques.
The black level uniformity is a little bit better than the white uniformity, but since this doesn’t have the same level of effect on dE levels that white uniformity does, we are less concerned with it. The higher numbers in the corners could be due to light leakage around the edges of the display, which often happens, but the standard deviation for all the measurements is just 0.002 nits, so I’m not concerned with this at all.
The BenQ offers up a gamut that is in the sRGB colorspace and testing bore that out, showing that is occupies just over 71% of the Adobe RGB gamut as we would expect. There's nothing really surprising or different here, as if you want the full Adobe RGB gamut you’ll need to look for a different backlighting system.
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mike55 - Saturday, December 10, 2011 - link
BenQ's website says this monitor has an 8-bit panel with 24-bit interpolation. I don't understand why interpolation is used for a panel that's capable of displaying 24-bit color. Could someone explain this, please?marraco - Saturday, December 10, 2011 - link
If I need a machine to tell the color accuracy of a monitor, well, then I don’t care much about it. I’m not sensible on color accuracy.But If I read an Anandtech article about a monitor, then I buy the monitor, and text looks blurry when I scroll web pages, PDF, and word documents, then I blame the Anandtech article which said NOT A WORD about things that matter.
snuuggles - Sunday, December 11, 2011 - link
Man, I couldn't agree more. I'm not sure who these reviews are for. There are so few people that really care about color accuracy.- input lag
- 120hz
- ?? what else matters? I'm personally a little hazy on why any gamer would settle for 60hz when 120hz is just *so* much better.
Now that I think about it, my guess is that the market for people who care about quality monitors (ie, people that know anything at all about displays) and who *aren't* photographers/graphic artists must be vanishingly small, which is why the reviews seem to cater to that crowd.
cheinonen - Sunday, December 11, 2011 - link
There are people who care about color accuracy and those who care about input lag, and those who care about both. I can't venture to assume what percentage of people care about which unfortunately, though I care far more about color accuracy than input lag myself as I rarely game but do a lot of image and general work where the colors annoy me. However, I know I don't represent everyone so I try to cover everything I can.The next display up is a 120 Hz display, so there will be comments on that of course. I'm attempting to find a better way to measure the actual motion resolution on displays, but have run into a couple issues on that so far:
- The test patterns max out at 1920x1080
- The output is limited to 60 Hz
So the 120 Hz display can't take full advantage of the panel for that. I'm trying to find a way to measure that better, as motion resolution is something that is hard to really get across right now.
I'm trying to cover all the bases for reviews, and trying to clear out the backlog of monitors that are here so I can start to better select what the comments are interested in.
sulu1977 - Sunday, December 11, 2011 - link
60 Hz monitors give me eyestrain every time. My next monitor absolutely has to be 120 Hz or higher.Zan Lynx - Monday, December 12, 2011 - link
Exactly how does the refresh rate on a LCD cause eye strain for you? I can see that with a CRT it would because the low phosphor persistence on high refresh rate CRTs would cause flicker when used at a lower refresh rate.With an LCD the pixel stays set until the displays gets a refresh. It doesn't flicker. At all.
You might be seeing a 60Hz flicker of the LCD's fluorescent backlight tubes. If that is the problem, then you need to find a monitor manufacturer that uses a better backlight..
It could also be caused by your eyes being badly affected by interference patterns generated by room fluorescent lighting flicker combining with LCD backlight flicker.
In none of these cases will a 120Hz refresh LCD solve your problem except by a new display coincidentally using a different backlight.
sulu1977 - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 - link
I thought my new LED LCD laptop would finally get rid of eyestrain forever, but I was very wrong. Just passing my fingers across the screen reveals obvious flicker. Without getting into deep technical analysis, the bottom line is this:I can stare at a tree in my yard and never get eye strain/fatigue, but staring at my new 60Hz LED LCD gives me eye strain/fatigue every time.Oxford Guy - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 - link
Next-generation panels from the maker of the panels used in these BenQ monitors are being produced and are about to be produced:http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/news_archive/25.htm#au...
Some have a 5000:1 contrast ratio rating (up from 3000:1). Some are 120 Hz. They have a faster response rating of 6 ms g2g rather than 8 ms, and 12 ms overall rather than 25 ms.
The first announced panel that appears to use one of these is the Phillips 241P4QPYEB/27 and 241P4QPYES/00. The only difference between the two is the color of the frame.