BenQ XL2720T Gaming Monitor Reviewed
by Chris Heinonen on June 17, 2013 4:35 PM ESTLooking at the white uniformity of the BenQ XL2720T, we see a large drop-off in the upper left, and another drop on the right side that isn’t quite as drastic. I like to see everything stay within 5% of the center value ideally, which means 180-220 nits if the center is at 200 nits, but this one measurement drops down to 167 nits and is clearly darker. The right side only drops down to 172 nits, but that is still fairly low. Most of the display stays within that 5% threshold, but on the edges it has an issue.
With the black uniformity, we see some bright corners on the left side, and the surrounding numbers are much lower than they are, and with an all-black screen it is quite easy to tell the difference. The center actually has the highest black level of anywhere other than that one bright corner.
The contrast uniformity on the display varies by a lot. The center comes in at 795:1 (not quite the 820:1 we measured earlier, but the black reading changing by as little as 0.001 nits can influence this highly), but the rest of the monitor swings from as low as 754:1 to as high as 946:1. With contrast ratio higher is going to be better, but looking at the chart really shows that the overall uniformity of the white and black levels on the BenQ isn’t ideal.
The grayscale uniformity shows this as well. The center is still quite good, coming in at a dE2000 of 0.92. The reason for the higher value here than on the calibration page is that uniformity testing uses 0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, and 100% values, not 0-100% in 5% increments. Since the 0% value is the highest, it has added weight here, but doing uniformity testing with all 21 values would be unreasonably time consuming to do. We see that the dE2000 rises up to 3.46 in that hot-spot on the left side of the screen, and has a few other areas above 2.0 as well. Most of the screen is still good, and as I said these numbers might be lower if I measured 21 points per location, but that’s still a large difference on the display.
With the colorchecker uniformity, we see the same issues, only worse. Since the colorchecker starts with a higher error than the grayscale, we see that many points on the screen have managed to rise above 3.0, which is considered not visible to the human eye when in motion. We also see that corners are measuring really well, while the center of the screen is further off. This is a bit strange, but overall the uniformity isn’t as strong as with other displays.
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blackoctagon - Friday, June 21, 2013 - link
Thank you for the clarificationDraconian - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Why do they make these gaming monitors so big? 1080p at 27"? The pixel size is huge.Make a 23" version and I'd be interested in it.
birru - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
They make 24" versions too, the XL2420T and XL2420TX.chizow - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
The original 1080p 120Hz models were 23", too small, especially for 3D. I upgraded to a 27" 1080p and the pixel size is fine, small price to pay for the huge increase in screen size.mdrejhon - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
I just noticed charts being posted for LightBoost measurements.Good for you AT -- much needed tests.
Which drivers did you use? People reported better LightBoost color quality from nVidia 320.18 drivers than older drivers -- so we're curious which driver you tested with.
cheinonen - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
I used the most recent drivers from NVIDIA. I'd have to double-check the version, but I try to keep them up-to-date as much as possible.mdrejhon - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link
Good news. The easy LightBoost system tray just came out.http://www.blurbusters.com/easy-lightboost-toastyx...
-- It works great on surround 120Hz setups;
-- It allows you to turn ON/OFF LightBoost via an easy hotkey.
-- It also allows you to adjust LightBoost percentage settings.
qiplayer - Sunday, November 3, 2013 - link
This is a gaming monitor please review it as that. There are thousands of monitors that are good for else and a few 27 that are good for gaming. If I and others are here it's probably to know about that.qiplayer - Sunday, November 3, 2013 - link
So 1ms response time and 22ms of imput lag ... it appears you are not the only one that has no idea of what performance it should have. To make a comparison 22ms is also a good ping, but ping isn't interferring with the coordination hand-eyes. A good input lag would be less than 10ms.It is relevant and you notice it in game when you turn fast from one side to the other, the image turns later than what you do with the mouse. About expensiveness I own a rig worth about 5-6000$, and I'm looking for 3 120hz screens. Too bad there aren't any 2500x1600 one's. The problem isn't about money but about stuff that works, like a cpu overclocked that it doesn't bottleneck 3titans. And by reading reviews of 10, 1or 2 have sense, for example there are people that test a 1000$gpu on a 1280x720 monitor and all kind of such staff
Going back to the imput lag, my monitor has one of 18 seconds and 60hz. So I'm disappointed because when they go down with pixel responsiveness and double the hz it would only have sense to work much also on the input lag. This is needed when making 2 kills in a second and not wanting to be killed from the 3rd player ;)