The BenQ EW2420: Too good to be true?

Eiji said:
I got the EW2420 a few days ago. Here is my short take on it. I have it hooked up to my PC with a DVI cable.

I have been fiddling about with the settings and came up with these although the screen is still "too blue" for my liking, I can't seem to get close to 6500k, I don't have any calibration devices:

--> Brightness 10
--> Contrast 70
--> Sharpness 3
--> Gamma 2.2
--> AMA 'On'
--> Color (Red) 82
--> Color (Green) 75
--> Color (Blue) 75

I am sending mine back because the backlight(?) is uneven near the bottom so I can always see a dark shadowy patches even when I am browsing the internet. I can also see the LED ripple on solid colours across the bottom of the screen but it doesn't bother me like the black patches do.

Response times are slower than the TN panels I have observed but wow, the contrast ratio is great!

Anyone else got the dark shadowy patches on their EW2420?
Click to expand...

Some people who just received the BL2400 (same panel inside) seem to have experienced this too http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18206667&page=2. Somebody has 'mass ordered' them and will be able to give a proportion of those affected. I would certainly RMA it. I seem to have got really lucky with my unit.
 
The only 'preset' I use is Standard mode. I really feel for you though - this variation in individual units is really not good. Not entirely unexpected for budget monitors, but not good nonetheless.
 
It's a mixture of things. It's usually in the way things are put together - like when you buy a particular type of sandwhich from a shop and they put more of one type of filling in than usual. Okay that was quite a poor analogy but with these budget models, particularly the 'thin' LED backlit models, things can be sandwhiched together a bit badly sometimes. It sure makes reviewing monitors difficult when you know you might be saying things that don't apply to other people's panels of the same type. I do try to point this out as much as possible in reviews, but generally if things are too dissimilar it's RMA time.
 
That's excellent! You don't need to check for excess backlight bleed if you aren't having problems, but curiosity is a powerful thing ;). You should check for it using the settings that you are comfortable using - so 10% brightness in your case.

AMA (Advanced Motion Acceleration) is an 'overdrive' feature that speeds up the grey to grey transition time considerably. What this means is that when a pixel shifts from one shade ('grey') to another shade ('grey') it occurs more rapidly than it would with AMA disabled. The 'high contrast' transitions between very light and very dark, and vice-versa, are still relatively slow on any *VA panel and no kind of 'acceleration' can do much to improve this. That's what can cause 'black ghosting' or at least more noticeable trailing in dark scenes lit up by artificial lights vs. light scenes.
 
It seems BenQ has a habbit of pushing out small amounts of new monitors before they are ready for full-scale release. The XL2410, EW2410 and related monitors were only supposed to be ready at the end of November/early December in the UK. Hopefully things should smooth out shortly.
 
Truth in what? Truth that his particular panel had problems? Yes. True that the ISO response time is rated at 25ms? Yes - that's what causes what is referred to throghout this thread and my review as 'black ghosting'. Actually if you consider ISO response times of those super fast TN panels in some pretty bad case scenarios they don't seem too great either. The review and this thread gives a much broader picture of what to expect. That is the best you can do short of purchasing the monitor with the mindset of exercising your rights under DSR to return it.
 
I would just like to reassure people that the variability in EW2420 panel has not gone unnoticed. This has just been posted over on my website to summarise the issue and bring it to the attention of those who would otherwise have missed the balanced view offered by this thread.
 
Well I hope it's a goodun. If they were using it as a display model I would think it would be. I paid about the same for my one brand new and it's a fantastic unit - very, very lucky I know.
 
You could test them out individually and can return them for any reason, under DSR, within a week. It complicates your job that you are considering three screens purchased at the same time, though. I would be wary of inter-panel variation as mentioned here.
 
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