review!
Hi all, first post and sorry it has to be a slightly negative one!
I got the non-LED version deilvered 2 days ago, and Ive sent it back today
heres a simple review and reasons why I returned!
First off:
Like many of you I was trawling through the net for reviews on monitors upto £170 budget and thought 24” would be nice! as ive just had to make way for nursery so had to move PC into bedroom and thought it was good excuse to bin the 24” crt tv in that room and convince my wife that a nice 24” lcd with a tv tuner would be awesome!. I don’t do a lot of reviews and I`m not super technie or uptodate anymore, not since having 2 kids in last 5 yrs. So my review wont be super techinvally accurate, its just my opinions etc. This is only my second LCD as my Acer 19” has served my very well for many a years worth of Call of Duty 2, 4, and World at war and lots of movies/TV etc.
First Impressions:
Big box! Was getting excited. Not the most high quality packaging as I unpacked but hey its just a box I guess. Had been opend and resealed by Benq
As they swap over the power leads for a uk one, so dont worry about that.
First impression once out of box was that it does look great and holy shizzney its big!! Nice!1, I got a little concerned however at how light it was, much lighter than my 19” acer!! Anyways, comes with VGA lead already plugged in, the stand and usual cd and instructions.
Unit clips into stand very easily and feels very sturdy once in. again once sat there it looks a lovely monitor indeed
Switching on and using:
Plugged in, hooked up to PC with DVI lead (not supplied) switched on
Greeted by purple boot screen with Benq logo in white, not to impressed with colour over screen and nearly burnt my retinas out with the default settings!
Flicks to my desktop (Win 7). Looked ok to start , colours where quite vibrant and clear. I then set about with settings and calibration.
After some hours I got it looking kind of how I wanted it, but just couldn’t get a good mix without colours looking slightly washed out.
I thought id try a bit of Cod4 and watch a HD tv rip and see how it went…..
Again the washed out colours showed in CoD 4, had to put brightness right down in game, but looked good playing at that res on this screen, not noticable ghosting
At all and once brightness down it was all good.
Then I went to watch a movie and HD tv ripp!. This is when I first noticed the backlight bleed across the top of the screen, brightest in middle then fading out toward
Each side. Now I know this is par for course with TN lcd panels and it happens, even my Acer has it very very slightly, but on my Acer a little adjustment with settings
Almost makes it disappear.
Not so here, not for me. Watching any movie or video on fullscreen you get distracted by the washed out light bleed band across the top!, damn!
Spent another few hours reading up and doing anything to minimize the bleed.
Other this is that the usual DVD, tv and video files just don’t look good on this screen at that resolution! Everything looked grainy and slighty pixelated (going back to my Acer later the same videos looked great.) maybe this is just one of down sides to a very large screen? Which doesn’t make sense as I watch same videos on my 37” plasma and they look stunning when stretched to fit fullscreen.
On closer look at the actual unit I started to notice just how..well `cheap` it was built. Its very light as mentioned. Althought it appears to look nice its actually very no frills. The plastic bevel on front it flimsy and you can easily see the silver surround of the LCD panel and the bezel moves a lot with the slightest touch. I checked my Acer and cheapy Lenovo lcd at work and both screen have very solid build and you cant even pull the bevel away at all, also both these older monitors have little, to absolutely no backlight bleed! So it is possible and indeed the Acer and Lenovo really show up just how cheaply built the BenQ appears. Half tempted to look for a Lenovo gaming lcd!! Don’t think they exist.
Anyways….it was decision time. I know this is only £150 for a 24” and I know BLB happens, Im not super fussy but I cant put up with the bleed and bad colours when watching HD movies that should really look nothing short of stunning! Right?. There’s no guarantee a more expensive monitor will not have BLB either!. I know this goes against the general reviews and maybe the LED version doesn’t have these issues?
I guess its just a matter of luck and picking a better made unit from different manufacturer?. Maybe I just got the one in a thousand unit that was put together a bit crap!, but a simple google shows plenty of people with same monitor with much worse Backlight bleed, mine was JUST at the top, some ive seen have it on all sides, rest of my panel was fine and it’s a shame as I would have played around more to get colours better and kept the monitor otherwise.
I sent the unit back under DSR and I’m back to looking again… nightmare! Hope this is useful in some way and would appreciate feedback, especially from anyone people
Bought a model that had minimal to no backlight bleed? Do LED backlights have less bleeding?!
just as a note: I also bought a Winpauge USB TV stick, which is pretty awesome, easy to setup and works great through WMC