The BenQ EW2420: Too good to be true?

Can anyone who has the BenQ EW2420 so, PCM2, NCX or bigjimmyauk please if it's possible to record footage of the screen in action, like playing a first person game and putting it up on Youtube or similar?

I'm not sure if a camcorder can pick up the ghosting/trailing, but if it can, then I'd like to see with my own eyes how noticeable it is. This is the only thing stopping me from buying the monitor and it's extremely subjective so I want to make sure.

Thanks.
 
Haha... I don't know why mine was so well colour-balanced out of the box. Must have been lucky. You can go to the 'Picture' bit of the OSD, then go on 'Color' and then change 'Color Temperature' to 'User Mode'. Observe the default values (R= 88, G=88, B=84) and then set them in user mode so that blue is a little lower and perhaps red and green is raised a bit. If you want a quick fix that's a bit less confusing you might try setting the gamma mode to '2.0' instead of '2.2' - this is accessible in the picture menu.
 
I've not had a chance to test mine properly yet as still in midst of building my new PC. I did hook it up to my PS3 to check for dead pixels etc. and had a bit of a play. Initial impressions very good. I actually had a P2450H for a day, but sent it back under DSR as I wasn't that happy with it, but the EW2420 definitely works for me. Colours look great, great contrast and feels like a quality monitor. I've not had a chance to test it out on my PC yet, but happy so far. :D
 
****I am not a regular reviewer of computer hardware but thought I would share a unbiased opinion on this monitor for the people that are having difficulty deciding.****


Review of BenQ EW2420 Backlight LED Monitor

After spending some time with the monitor today i thought i'd post my findings here

Firstly i've had a real mare setting it up regarding colour,contrast and brightness and at one point today was 2 clicks away from buying a calibration tool. After 3 hours i've finally settled on what i think is best for me which is as follows

brightness 32
contrast 60
sharpness 3
gamma 2.2
red 88
green 88
blue 86
AMA on

This seemed to give me the best possible all round quality and colour for my pc and ps3.

Right onto what i think

Firstly backlight bleed, direct(face on) on the unit suffers no backlight bleed only when moving to a 70 degree angle to the left or right can i start to notice a bluish tinge to the 2 opposite corners, it's perfectly acceptable as most people do not view their monitors from obscure angles on a daily basis.

Next i went on to test the ghosting/trailing i've seen a lot of people talking about. Yes there is some ghosting to be seen especially when going from extreme white to black very quickly. The best example I found of this was by going to this webpage http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/contrast.php also opening up a second tab with googles homepage on there. Now switch to the langom test page,wait 10 seconds then switch tabs to google homepage and you will see the 15 black boxes from the langom page drift away on the google page. I timed this 5 times and made a average of the time it took for googles homepage to become white again. The average time was 2.1 seconds remember that is an extreme example of black to white transition.

Next I tested ghosting/trailing in game the games I tested today were.
Metro 2033
Splinter cell conviction
Crysis warhead
Resident evil 5
Alien Vs Predator
Killing floor
Need for speed shift

I can honestly say it is not a problem in any of the games I tested, yes it's present in a minor form but unless you are specifically looking for it then it is something that is not going to affect you in your everyday gaming sessions. Even using splinter cell convictions sonic goggles which show white,grey and black I did not notice and trailing which would inadvertently affect your gaming.

Onto the picture quality using the same games mentioned above

One word can describe my experience very well and thats WOW I have never seen any of my games look so good the colour reproduction,transition and a feel of depth to the scenes were immense at some parts, Crysis warheads greenery looked vivid and lively, right down to metro 2033's dark damp tunnels and stinking sewers . I think the reason things look so good is down to the semi gloss coating of the screen itself. I really cannot explain any more how good the quality is from this monitor especially in it's price band.

Movie and high definition playback

This was also a joy to watch blacks were deep and dark and not the usual greyish blacks I was used to from my old TN panel. My movies of choice were Terminator salvation and The matrix on blu-ray, both looked stunning using the Playstation 3 as the playback source. I actually got sidetracked from what I was doing watching Terminator it was a joy to watch the 40 minutes or so that I did. Once again colours were top notch.

My final verdict

I think at this moment in time and in this price band the BenQ EW2420 is a cracking all round monitor. And other companies definitely have to pull something special out of the bag in this price range for me to consider switching again to another brand.

Any questions then please feel free to ask and i'll answer best I can.

****Also sorry if it seemed long winded it is my first time reviewing anything!****
 
Thanks for the review it's very good to see :).

I would just like to pick up on a point you made -

"going to this webpage http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/contrast.php also opening up a second tab with googles homepage on there. Now switch to the langom test page,wait 10 seconds then switch tabs to google homepage and you will see the 15 black boxes from the langom page drift away on the google page. I timed this 5 times and made a average of the time it took for googles homepage to become white again. The average time was 2.1 seconds remember that is an extreme example of black to white transition."

I've done that several times myself and the transition is almost instantaneous. It is supposed to take this monitor 25ms for a white-black-white transition so if it's taking 2100 milliseconds to go from black-grey to white and you see afterimages that's something else (not the monitor). I can't think what exactly it could be but I don't get that on my system.

P.S. Check out the second post here http://www.pcmonitors.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=21&p=81#p81
 
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Im nearly going nuts with mine its so washed out its not right

Im actually thinking there is a fault

ive had a few friends down today and they commented on it being so washed out no matter what i do really
 
THE DOC said:
Im nearly going nuts with mine its so washed out its not right

Im actually thinking there is a fault

ive had a few friends down today and they commented on it being so washed out no matter what i do really
Click to expand...

Have you tried my settings in my review?
How is you monitor connected a poor quality connector can create a washed out image.

Start and try with brightness 40 and contrast 80 and with the reddish colour scheme, jot down the numbers and work from there, like i say took me 3 hours in total.

try using this test site http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

Naturally the screen looks bluish so if anything the red and green settings need to be higher than the blue.

Report back how your getting on here
 
ok ill go start
by the way ive connected it via
dvi to dvi

i didnt use the attached vga cable i always thought dvi was a better picture


ive tried using your settings and to be honest its truly awful
if i go to like a site its like a white screen
ie virtually no yellow and the reds are just poor
its so washed out
 
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I've just bought one (mostly because of it's semi-gloss screen and because PCM2 likes it :))

I had a benq g2420hdbl but didn't like the anti glare coating.
I had an apple cinema display 24" which developed a fault so took it back to apple. They could only give me my money back because it was discontinued.
I'm hoping this monitor is a good compromise in between the TN and the IPS panels I've had.
Will take pics and write something up when it's here.
 
PCM2 said:
Send it back as faulty as it sounds like the gamma is messed up. Try changing the gamma settings on the OSD if you haven't already.
Click to expand...

i currently have the gamma set to 2.2 i tried 2.4 but in games it was so dark

its just so dull no vibrante colours
i might just have got a bad one i did notice when i recieved it that there was an extra layer of selotape on the outer packaging like it had been opened before
 
You could send it back under DSR, claim a refund and get it from somewhere else or alternatively claim it as a fault. It's usually easier and quicker to just send it back under DSR as it is the law and you can't wriggle away from it as a company (it overrides any external conditions set by the company - but you need to contact them within 7 days of purchase).
 
Have you also installed the driver that came on the CD? I don't think that a hardware calibration would really help. He has tried all hardware settings under the OSD and if the gamma curve is tweaked using ICC that's no good for his gaming.
 
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