The BenQ EW2420: Too good to be true?

I'm sure if you attempted to quantify what you are saying (i.e. by measuring the black depth of your BL2400PT) you would find that your disappointment is not unfounded. The variability in backbleed bleedthrough is a signficant issue for these monitors as much as any other of their size. It is also an issue that plagues higher end monitors from the likes of Dell and HP, too (recent case in point - http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=18257027&postcount=1). Although the panels in the BL2400PT theoretically allow very good contrast (the EW2420 we tested exceeded the 3000:1 specification) this is unobtainable if the backlight is leaking excessive levels of light through. Such a condition does nullify the main advantage of a panel of this type. It seems that the variability in both panels and the monitors themselves from BenQ's latest batch (this includes the XL2410T as well) is inexcusably bad and one can only hope things improve.
 
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Mine was manufactured in September 2010. The hunch I have was that BenQ dropped the 'exact gamma values' because there was a lot of variation between panels. Although it would be useful to set exact values (such as 2.2) this variation meant that a lot of monitors had actual gamma values that were some way off what was set. They therefore seem to have simplified the scale from "low" to "high" - unfortunately that means having a play and seeing what works for you. If none of the settings work for you then it may be that the hardware control of gamma on your particular unit is a bit poor and the only way to correct this could be through software. It is possible to use the Windows 7 calibration tool (if you don't own a colorimeter) to adjust the gamma - just bear in mind that games and movie applications tend to use their own settings or misinterpret the ICC profile and it is often better to set things as much as possible on the hardware itself. I'm sorry about that - I hope BenQ get their act together to be honest.
 
Ubersturmfuhrer said:
Woohoo!! I bought this monitor for a 129 euros because it was the last one on the shop. Average price for EW2420 in Finland is somewhere around 240-280 euros so I am quite glad.

First impression: Damn, I can't believe how grey and dim my laptop monitor looks next to this :D

I still have to wait for weekend to get the most out of this monitor. It's now connected with VGA to laptop that supports only 1280x800 resolution. I guess I should wait for my new pc before calibrating this thing?
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So, have you had a chance to try out this monitor with a "proper" (aka desktop) computer, with a DVI cable? If so, what did you think of it?
 
Hi All,

I am a keen amateur photographer and have been looking for a 24" widescreen monitor for some time. I decided on the HP LP2475W mainly because of its very good reviews and normally very good HP support. After having tried two units both of which had a terrible green/pink tint a have finally given up with them and am looking for something better.

I decided to purchase a EW2420 as a stop gap solution until I find something better. Boy am I glad that I did. This is by far the best monitor I have ever used and that it no exaggeration! I don't appear to have any of the faults mentioned by some here.

My Unit has no dead or bright pixels, almost no backlight bleed and no trace of LED flicker at the bottom of the screen.

I does suffer from slight gamma shift as I move my head around but this is relatively minor and only saw it because I was actually looking for it. It is also not height adjustable but I will probably fix that by buying a vesa stand. It's slightly too high at the moment to suit my varifocal specs.

I like the semi glossy screen which is much better than the rather murky affairs that plague most up market monitors. I cannot believe that this monitor only cost £170 inc. VAT. An absolute bargain if you get a good one.

Mine was manufactured in November 2010 and made in China. The Gamma settings are 1 to 5 rather than actual values. The default settings were also not bad apart from brightness settings which were set far too high.

I currently have a photograph of my house set as my desktop background and it really is like looking at it through a window. The colours are very accurate and I certainly have no complaints. I don't play games or watch movies so response times are never going to be an issue with me.
 
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Scotch Whisky said:
I decided to purchase a EW2420 as a stop gap solution until I find something better. Boy am I glad that I did. This is by far the best monitor I have ever used and that it no exaggeration! I don't appear to have any of the faults mentioned by some here.
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It sounds like your monitor is similar to my 4 year old PVA monitor.
I find that the VA panel gives more lush colours, while my IPS monitor gives washed out look.

Your review reinforces the fact that the EW2420 is a good monitor. It is the QC which lets it down.
 
sunama said:
It sounds like your monitor is similar to my 4 year old PVA monitor.
I find that the VA panel gives more lush colours, while my IPS monitor gives washed out look.

Your review reinforces the fact that the EW2420 is a good monitor. It is the QC which lets it down.
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My old monitor is an NEC 1980FXi. I pretty good IPS monitor but that also gives a washed out look. Great for office work but not really suitable for photographic applications.
 
Scotch Whisky said:
My old monitor is an NEC 1980FXi. I pretty good IPS monitor but that also gives a washed out look. Great for office work but not really suitable for photographic applications.
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Absolutely bang on what I said earlier in this thread.

A lot of people praise IPS panels, but from what I've seen, I'm not impressed.

My IPS panel displays text like nothing I've seen before - absolutely pin-sharp. But for everything else, my VA and CRT monitors pee on it from a great height.
 
i'm still getting problems calibrating this monitor for the PS3

i can't fault the pc i used a spyder express and the colours are so flawless, just i can't recreate anywhere near it on the ps3 or dvd xbox etc etc

any recomendations as to what i can do?
 
Hey all, just got an EW2420 (to complement my G245H, never could decide which would be better). Couple quick Qs:

- When setting resolution to 1400 x 1050 (actually any 4:3 res's above 1280x1024), the screen decides to switch to 1680 x 1050 (on aspect setting). Any reason why, and any way around it? I'd like to play a game in 4:3 @ 1400 x 1050 (or 1440 x 1080) and the screen's scuppering my ability to do so.

- Any way to get rid of the annoying "Suggested Monitor Resolution" message everytime something other than 1920 x 1080 is output? And is the menu button lag normal (press one, takes a second to move left / right).


Other quick thoughts - the semi-gloss isn't as glossy as I'd have thought. More glossy-matte than matty-gloss. But I am comparing this to the reflectathon of the G245H (one of the few downsides to the monitor). Anyone ever made a glass-cover with anti glare coating to these things like my old CTX CRT? It's got the glassy feel of the G245H but with enough anti-glare coating to make it as reflection free as the EW2420, but without the matte feel of the 2420. Anyway...

Anyone who isn't noticing ghosting is crazy. Everything from scrolling text to moving windows to (god forbid) gaming just goes blurry everytime it's moved. Ok, 8ms etc, even with AMA on, it's not gonna be great. But I'd suggest anyone even thinking of gaming goes for a different monitor, unless you *really* dont care about streaking colours and montion blur and feeling like you're in a short dizzy spell every time you move left/right.

Colour's good though. Much better than the G245H at default, though after setting up the G245H only the lack of colour shift and the black depth make it any better than the G245H. I'd say the better response time would more than make up for it on any good TN, glossy or otherwise.

Also got mine from ****** in the UK, @£170 (£140 after reclaiming VAT, it's for work, see :D ). Box said Nov 2010 production, however the box had very clearly been re-opened, then re-sealed with official looking BenQ tape. The contents/screen were also obviously used - tears to the wrapping, specs of paint on the un-sealed power cable, and the VGA cable was still connected to the monitor :confused: Either ****** are selling returns as New items, or BenQ have a weird way of re-packaging things. Possibly it's a BenQ refurbished model (again, ****** just shipping it out with their regular stock) or... possibly... I found this:

http://forums.ncix.com/forums/?mode...69836&pagenumber=1&product_id=55964&subpage=1

"All units in stock with us and suppliers are now tested and are problem free. Looks as thought it was an issue with a portion of the first production run as subsequent production runs have been problem free. "

That's from an NCIX sales rep on their site. Which suggests, possibly, BenQ are aware of the complaints, and actually checked every damn one of their monitors to weed out any problematic ones. The official BenQ tape re-sealing my box may back this up (suggesting it was BenQ who used it, not anyone else). Add that to the Nov manufacture date, and the fact that the panel does indeed seem problem free, seems to give hope to anyone buying now that they won't get a dodgy one.

So yeah, no ripplyness, no chocolate fingers, no green/blue tints, just a lot of ghosting (compared to the G245H anyway).

Still yet to configure it much, but I recon I'll end up using the G245H for any gaming, and keep this for the office work. TBH, a 24" VA @ £140 (only for us lucky VAT registered ones) isn't bad, and just for office work I figure is cheaper than most other decent looking 24" out there. So it's not all bad. Just so long as you don't game. Or read while scrolling.
 
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No - it hasn't been released yet. The panel is apparently the same as the EW2420 (possibly a new revision but maybe not even that). I wouldn't expect it to be much different regarding QC.
 
Benq EW2420

Hi guys, I'm new here but a regular on another forum on which I've just posted a mini-review of the EW2420 which I received today. This thread and the OcUK forums in general have been really helpful for me recently and I wanted to share my feedback to help any of you guys looking to make a decision on whether to buy this monitor. My thoughts on the EW2420 below - apologies in advance for the large image dimensions:



Well... wow, just... wow... what a lovely monitor!

'Before' with the two 19" HP LP1965's (1280x1024)

sam0067.jpg


'After' with the 24" Benq EW2420 (1920x1080)

sam0078l.jpg


sam0082tg.jpg


My first job was to ditch the colour profile that Windows automatically installed and set it to sRGB IEC61966-2.1. Next I switched from 'Standard' mode to 'sRGB' on the monitors OSD and set Brightness to 100 and Constrast to 50.

The other modes - Photo, Game and Movie - are atrocious, don't bother... the last mode - Eco - just seems to dim the brightness a bit, with an onscreen message flashing up to indicate a 20% power saving.

After a few hours using my preferred settings I decided to do the Lagom Monitor Test to check how accurate it was. Surprisingly it was pretty much spot on. Gamma was good, I could see differentiation in all bars on the Contrast test, and there was only the slightest of banding in the darker portion of the gradient test. The only areas which seemed to indicate a weakness was the response time test, and the viewing angles - I'll come back to those in a sec.

TFTCentral used the 'Standard' mode during calibration which gives you more control. It allows you to adjust the individual red, green and blue levels, gamma and sharpness, along with the standard brightness and contrast. After re-reading their review, I decided to give their settings a go, downloading the ICC profile provided on their site and configuring the monitor OSD settings as per their results from calibration. The results for me were less than satisfactory... the green was far too prominent and everything was washed out. I've gone back to my sRGB mode which I think is more accurate. If I had a hardware colourimeter available things might be different.

There's no backlight bleed at all, at least not to my untrained eye.

With regard to the viewing angles, it's fine in normal use, don't worry about it. At no point have I noticed any colour shift unless I am actively looking for it by moving my head to about a 45 degree angle, in which case I start to see a slight change on the far side - only really noticeable on light backgrounds, where is gets a bit darker.

Now as for the response time, whilst the Lagom test indicated this might be quite poor, in 'real life' it's absolutely fine - and when I say fine, I mean I don't notice any ghosting or slow response. I've had a quick blast in Just Cause 2, a more sedentary cruise in Star Trek Online and a frenzied match of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 on the Oasis map this afternoon and I couldn't see any ghosting at all. This was one area I was genuinely concerned about and I'm pleased to say that it's a complete non-issue. I used to play Counter-Strike at a vaguely competitive level on my old HP monitor which had a grey-to-grey response time of 6ms. The EW2420's response time virtually the same at 8ms, so this probably explains why I can't see any difference, and it also confuses me as to why some people are reporting ghosting... surely ghosting is a non-issue until perhaps 20-30ms or more?

The depth of the blacks on this monitor is fantastic, I know what people mean when they describe them as 'inky' now.

For those of you worried about the vertial resolution of 1080 not being enough for anything other than gaming or video watching, again, I wouldn't worry about it, I certainly don't feel like it's too cramped. 1200 res monitors aren't worth the extra expense unless you can afford it.

My conclusion: I do the odd bit of photo and video editing and web design and I don't feel like this monitor will cause me any problems being a *VA panel rather than IPS. For gaming and video watching it's fantastic. For document editing and viewing two browser windows I can comfortably have them side by side using the handy Windows 7 feature. A 24" A-MVA monitor for £185? No brainer in my opinion, I can certainly recommend this.
 
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I think what seems to be general consensus now is that if you get a good monitor (with no defects), the monitor is arguably one of the best value around.

The problem is that the QC is so bad, that it is not easy to get a defect free monitor.

If Benq could sort out the QC, they could have one of the top selling monitors of 2011.

This was actually the monitor which I was going to buy, however, given the terrible QC, I begrudgingly settled for the Dell U2311.
 
sunama said:
I think what seems to be general consensus now is that if you get a good monitor (with no defects), the monitor is arguably one of the best value around.

The problem is that the QC is so bad, that it is not easy to get a defect free monitor.

If Benq could sort out the QC, they could have one of the top selling monitors of 2011.

This was actually the monitor which I was going to buy, however, given the terrible QC, I begrudgingly settled for the Dell U2311.
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I am really curious too. EW2430 is now released!

"BenQ has begun shipping its VA-LED widescreen monitor, the BenQ EW2430. "

Details: http://thetechjournal.com/tag/benq-ew2430#ixzz1Iv1PHxmA
 
As I said above. It has NOT been released. Not in the UK. It may have been 'released' to some European retailers, but we live in Britain I'm afraid. As I have also stated numerous times the panel itself is the same as the EW2420 - so there is no reason whatsoever to be overly optimistic that they will have ironed out the QC issues.

References, aside from this thread:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18245389&highlight=ew2420+username_pcm2

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=18643369&postcount=3

I am in direct contact with BenQ's 'media people' in the UK about this so I know the score.
 
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