BenQ 2730Z FREESYNC ™ 144hz monitor.
BenQ XL2730Z 27" FREESYNC 144Hz Gaming Widescreen LED Monitor - Black/Red @ £499.99 inc VAT
Features:-
- Crisp 27-inch, 2560 x 1440 visuals combined with fast 144Hz refresh rate, 1ms response time, made smooth by AMD FREESYNC™ technology
Specification:-
- Screen Size: 27" (69cm)
- Resolution: 2560x1440 WQHD
- Panel: TN
- Response Time: 1ms
- Refresh Rate: 144Hz
- Brightness: 350cd/m
- Contrast ratio: 1000:1 (100,000,000:1 DCR)
- Connectivity: 1x Dual Link DVI, 1x HDMI 2.0, 1x HDMI 1.4, 1x DisplayPort 1.20 (Display Cable and USB cables included)
- USB 3.0 Hub
- FreeSync Enabled
- Dimensions (HxWxD mm): 557.4x663.7x226.0
- Weight: 8kg
- Height adjust stand with pivot, swivel and tilt
- Full Specification:
http://gaming.benq.com/gaming-monitor/xl2730z/specification/#skip
- Warranty: 2yr
Only £499.99 inc VAT.
ORDER NOW
After finally getting my hands on a driver that enabled 144 Hz and FREESYNC ™ I’m able to write this review.
As we all know the price we pay for high refresh rate monitors has been that sometime it’s hard to maintain a stable fps in many situations and gamers were left with a choice Enable Vsync and get stuttering and latency issues or disable Vsync and risk tearing. FREESYNC ™ technology aims to fix that for us and this model is BenQ’s offering to the recently release FREESYNC ™ range.
The XL2730Z boasts an impressive list of features among its specifications many of which that we are familiar with when we look back through the XL Gaming Range from BenQ it’s worth noting with AMD supporting FREESYNC ™ NVidia’s 3d support is not a feature of this monitor. The backlight uses DC power rather than PWM so it has flicker free technology along with its 1 ms grey to grey matt finish anti-glare screen and 8 bit colour.
So a quick over view of the components it comes with.
The Base it comes with is well designed I feel it doesn't look as nice as the Swift stand but it certainly does the job and leaves me in no doubt that it fits its function completely. Height and angle adjustable to make it comfortable for any user.
As it was replacing one of my existing monitors I was putting it on a Vesa dual monitor stand. Good news the monitor is very light (8KG) and has the standard 100 x 100 Vesa mounts so it was a straight swap for the XL2420T.
As you can see whilst being a larger size it’s not that imposing for anyone considering swapping from 24” to 27”
The Monitor supports HDMI, HDMI 2.0, DVI-D and DP 1.2a+ with a USB 3.0 hub and headphone and microphone ports on the side.
The buttons unlike the 2420T the operational buttons on the side of the monitor are not touch sensitive this is nice whilst aesthetically the 2420T buttons were a pain and actually made me not want to play around with settings.
The menus are obvious and easy to go through you have
Button 1 Black Equaliser, Also UP
Button 2 Blur Reduction, Also Down
Button 3Picture mode, Also Enter/Select
Button 4 Menu, Also Back
Button 5 Exit
Black equaliser is much of the same and works as described like it has on previous models.
Blur reduction I have discovered that blur reduction technology disables FREESYNC. The option completely vanishes from your driver so it renders the feature pretty pointless as the main reason you will be investing in this monitor is surely the FREESYNC. However for arguments sake BenQ have invested some time into developing the Blur reduction technology and it does make a difference under testing as it has on the previous models which it was offered on.
Obviously with this offering FREESYNC ™ it doesn’t offer the 3D functionality (Nvidia 3D Vision) that previous models have.
Picture mode is a quick select for the usual Pre-set options
- FPS 1
- FPS 2
- RTS
- Gamer 1
- Gamer 2
- Gamer 3
- Movie
- Standard
The Panel in the monitor is very similar to the TN panel used in the Swift
Using the monitor.
Fired it up and it’s a bit bright off the bat something I was prepared for as ALL BenQ’s 120Hz or above offerings are a bit bright. So whacked the brightness down to 30 tuned the colours a little bit and we’re off. R94 B96 G98 Gamma 5 and tweaked the colour vibrance a bit.
Installed the new driver and after a reboot I was greeted with.
At the bottom of the page we see the new option
and importantly 144hz enabled
So first up to test the higher end of the settings I fired up Counterstrike Global Offensive, Whilst not particularly taxing on the GPU it is the game that 144hz gaming was pretty much made for. The professional and serious gamers that follow CSGO were the ones still using CRT’s to maintain high refresh rates and low latencies. So a game that I can consistently maintain an FPS above 144 is perfect for the first outing for FREESYNC ™. Whilst with Vsync enabled I’ve lost a couple of frames per second, the game feels smooth and responsive so I ran around the map trying to find places and moments where the fps may drop and even when it did the monitor maintained a smooth and responsive feel. So Far so Good. It’s worth noting my original 120hz monitor from BenQ didn’t boast flicker free and black equaliser and both of these features seem to be working very well Dark spots on CSGO have always been a pain and you can easily tell the differences in the shading without cranking the Black equaliser up all the way.
Anyway with CSGO not being the best colours and most taxing game it was never really going to give me any problems and I’m pleased to report it didn’t and I happily used it for several hours without issue.
So onto more taxing games. Dying light with all the settings I need operates a nice 75-100 fps depending on the zone. Instantly the game feels more responsive a quick climb up to the top of a tower and spin round no tearing at all.
Battle field for a game that’s familiar with drops in frame rate again no tearing and when the drops occurred the responsiveness remained and I was able to continue focusing on whats important rather than concerning myself with skips judders or latency issues.
Finally Metro Last Light
Cranked this game up to max everything and the fps on a single 290 drops below 40fps and FREESYNC ™ becomes ineffectual in fact it’s fair to say that it looked and performed better with Vsync disabled. The range on the BenQ XL2730Z is 40-144hz so it comes as no surprise that this happened I just wanted to create the problem to confirm it.
Tweak the settings down and the FREESYNC ™ kicks back in as soon as the fps goes above 40.
This may seem like useless information but in first person shooters you are going to want to optimise the settings to maintain fps above 40 at all times to get the benefit of FREESYNC. Of course for most of you considering the BenQ or the Acer will be more than willing to sacrifice Graphical quality for more FPS as you’ve purchased a 144 Hz gaming monitor not a 4K or an IPS panel.
To conclude then I like the monitor the 1440p brought exactly what I’ve been waiting for a worthwhile step up in resolution whilst not losing features I’ve grown accustomed to on previous BenQ offerings. IS it perfect? No. Of course TN panels have their issues with colours but I feel the XL2730Z has enough positives to ignore the lack of IPS panel. Right now there are no high refresh low latency IPS Panels that offer FREESYNC ™ and when there are you can expect them to cost a lot more than the price tag of the BenQ and probably the Swift. Without FREESYNC ™ the only thing that would put me off this monitor is the price considering Acer are offering out the same panel for less with and without FREESYNC . With FREESYNC however the monitor redeems itself a bit Still the more expensive of the offerings as of now but I’ve grown to like BenQ and I have never had a problem in the 5-6 years of using their monitors and this type of purchase is all about that. You’re not buying a £500 monitor to change it again in 6 months it’s not a GPU or a CPU we’re probably not going to see GPU performance that makes 144 Hz 4k gaming a thing for the average user for some time so this will most likely be as good as it gets in terms of refresh rate and resolution.
The question I suppose you’re all wondering though is can I live without FREESYNC? I sadly have to give Gibbo the monitor back so he can send it off to media for them to review AMD were kind enough to allow me to have a play with it before we send it off to where it has to go. That of course sucks I’ve tasted the good stuff and I am most certainly considering making this a permanent fixture in my Rig. The only thing holding me back is the impending offerings from AMD and Nvidia. If Nvidia don’t write FREESYNC into their drivers which at present they are not obliged to do. Then this £500 monitor is a purchase that pretty much determines which GPU I’ve got to buy for the next 3 years and that’s a shame. I don’t like being tied to a specific brand I like to go with the flow and the next 18 months could prove very interesting (I know every 18 months could be interesting) but this is a real issue for once. The previous offering was irrelevant I could swap between gpu’s and my monitors wouldn’t care. Regardless of concerns about an investment Freesync works well and AMD just need to work on the crossfire compatibility and this monitor will be a no brainer for anyone serious about high frequency gaming.
