BenQ G2420HDBL 24" short review

akistzortzis · 11 Mar 2010 at 09:22

I got this monitor a coupld of days ago.

It is meant to replace the Philips 22" which I have had now for a couple of years. Both use a TN panel. The BenQ looks ever slightly so brighter, I did not put them side by side so this is subjective. Being it LED driven and having read the comments about how "black" the blacks are I was expecting miracles, but I was disappointed. A completely black screen is as much "grey" as is on the Philips. I could not spot any while light leaking from the sides or from the top on a completely black screen which is a good thing.

Where the monitor really suffers however, is in its vieweing angles. I am looking at it from a distance of 80cm-1m and the colours at the top of the screen are different to those towards the bottom. More annoyingly, moving my head a couple of inches up and down as I breathe, changes the hue/brightness of the perceived colours! This panel is bad. Not as bad as on my Dell laptop mind you, and not as half as bad as on the old IBM laptop. Perhaps this is where the 150 price tag for a 24" comes in. As it is 24" you will need to be sitting, very still, about 1 meter away.

Culinia · 11 Mar 2010 at 15:29

Have you tried adjusting settings?

I find the factory setting brightness too bright and the colours (RGB) not optimized at all.

Good to see that you can't spot any leaking

Also perhaps post a picutre and others can compare

?

crinkleshoes · 11 Mar 2010 at 16:08

Sounds like you got roped in to the same nomenclature problem as me.

By "LED" this monitor means that they've simply replaced the normal lighting method of TFTs with LEDs... whereas most other LED backlit monitors/tvs, when they claim LED lighting, they actually mean per-pixel backlighting... which this doesn't, it's either all on or all off.

I was hoping it would be per-pixel lol, but for the price I wasn't sure what to expect.

However, despite this, I still like the monitor... the contrast ratio is superior to my 2.5 year old hyundai 240d and I don't get this different colours top/bottom of the screen thing that you're describing.

Also, make sure you adjust the out of the box brightness/contrast/colour settings... I found them to be terrible... overbright, washed out contrast and the colours were a bit too cold for my liking (and i like them cold)... a bit of playing with the monitor's settings and CCC settings & I sorted that within 15 minutes

rpmmatt · 11 Mar 2010 at 17:10

I recently bought one of these as a second monitor, and like the OP I was slightly misled by the advertising, and I to was expecting true black background and so on. However, a £150 price tag should have warned me and I was just a bit naive.

The monitor itself on its own merits and at £150, you can't fault it. I now use the BenQ as my primary display, my old Samsung 2232BW sits along side as my second monitor now. With the 2 playing the same video side by side, the BenQ wins on several levels(bearing in mind the Samsung is a about 2 or 3 years old now. The BenQ can do genuine HD, where the Samsung can't. Out of the box, the BenQ looked a little washed out, but fiddling with the settings changed that to something a little better. Vs the Samsung, the BenQ is at least as good in game, but importantly, even if you get the same gray bleed into your black, you don't get the top and bottom bands like the Samsung, making it nice and even across the whole screen. The only thing the Samsung does better is colour, and that is only a slight difference, but you have to remember I paid a lot more for the Samsung when it was new, so I would expect it to be better.

Best thing, I find this BenQ very easy on the eye, the way its back lit seems to remove all the eye strain for me, I can sit for hours playing games, reading documents or browsing the web, I don't feel myself getting tired by staring at it.

Final verdict, you could do a lot worse for £150, I am very impressed and would recommend it for the money for anyone. I do find the 5,000,000:1 contrast ratio an outrageous claim, my Samsung is only 3000:1, and I really can't see where the other 4,700,000 has gone.

Occooler · 11 Mar 2010 at 17:55

I got one today and It's ghosting when I'm playing fifa 10.

My 40'' accoustic solutions never used to ghost!

PCM2 · 11 Mar 2010 at 18:43

Well it seems not everyone is disappointed with the monitor, but it sounds as if there are some fairly annoying issues with the BenQ G2420HDBL. I never experienced any ghosting, contrast, brightness or colour issues with the XL2370. But this is roughly double the price and slightly smaller. I guess you get what you pay for.

RizlaKing · 12 Mar 2010 at 01:13

Played loads of games since i got my benq and not a problem no ghosting and no colour variation the op describes. Settings need to be tweaked to personal preference as the standard settings are awful but no more then twenty minutes tops and i now have black that is true black and colours a lot more vivid then my old crt monitor. I am very happy with the monitor and for the price feel it is a bargain each to their own though.

akistzortzis · 12 Mar 2010 at 08:06

I did adjust brightness and contrast to 50% (brightness was 100%), I know I probably need to go through a proper setup but had no time so far.

There is a "dynamic contrast" setting, that might be able to produce darker blacks, is that what's it for? And are there any side-effects with using it?

I cannot comment on colour accuracy as I would not know how to test it. I have only played WoW on it and have detected no ghosting, but then again I have not detected ghosting on any of my other screens, save for the awful laptops.

My original disatisfaction is with the viewing angles as I described above. Any slight change of the eye level results in change of colours.

We know TN panels are not particulalry good in that area, but we also know that some TN panels are MUCH better than others. For example the IBM Thinkpad 14" was completely pathetic so much so I thought it was faulty when I first got it. The Dell 17" laptop that followed is slightly better but still in order to see what my seated wife is showing me while I am standing, I most often have to crouch to lower my eye level.

The BenQ is not as bad as the Dell laptop screen, but it is worse than the Philips in a noticeable way. If you play games you won't notice it, but if you have a static screen then you will notice it as you move your head up and down.

chockimon · 4 Dec 2010 at 12:09

Occooler said:
I got one today and It's ghosting when I'm playing fifa 10.

My 40'' accoustic solutions never used to ghost!

From my own personal experience, there's no such thing as a ghost free 24" LCD monitor when playing games like PES or FIFA. Even the 120hz LCD's have noticeable motion blur & ghosting. If it bothers you that much, then try a CRT or a smaller LCD. My Benq 19" FP19G+ was much better for playing these types of games.

Fifa & Pes are two of my fav games and after trying different resolutions I discovered that if you lower the res to 1600x900 or lower you can select 75hz as the refresh rate. This has the added bonus of reducing motion blur and ghosting. At 75hz Pes & Fifa are much improved and you can turn on AA in the Nvidia/ATI control panel to compensate for the lower resolution and you'll hardly notice the difference. Any ghosting and motion blur problems are now less noticeable.

chockimon · 4 Dec 2010 at 12:14

Got my BenQ G2420HDBL replacement and it appears to be much better with no dead pixels and while it still has visible banding, it's no where near as bad as the one I sent back, so I think this is about as good as it's going to get. I'm happy so far.

antran · 4 Dec 2010 at 12:48

I got my beng monitor for a year now, no problem at all.

EDC · 4 Dec 2010 at 21:01

It really annoys me the way monitor manufacturers ship their units, when you take into consideration all the care and attention needed to actually produce the panel, where one spec of dust is enough to ruin a panel, and they then ship out the finished monitors with some crazy, whacked-out, overblown brightness, contrast, or colour settings. On the BenQ EW2420 on a scale from 0 - 100 I had to reduce the brightness levels down to 12 -15 for it to become acceptable, ie that the monitor brightness levels didn't burn my retinas and as for the BenQ presets ... they were a joke!

chockimon · 10 Dec 2010 at 20:17

Seems like manufacturers are shipping a lot of monitors that aren't fit for use, especially when most seem to suffer from really extreme vertical banding problems. How this can be considered acceptable is beyond me. I sent my Acer 3d 120hz monitor back and I've been given a refund after the technicians agreed that the vertical banding was too extreme and therefore not fit for use.