BenQ Review

In this age of wide-screen monitors, we rarely get to see monitors with a 16:10 aspect ratio. BenQ which generally has monitors based on the Twisted Neumatic (TN) and Vertical Alignment (VA) panels, has come out with an In-Plane Switching (IPS) panel based BL2411PT. While the 16:10 aspect ratio will immediately put it in the office-use segment, we find out if this can also make for a good home use monitor.

Design and Build Quality

BenQ BL2411PT is a 24-inch 1920×1200 resolution monitor

The build quality of the BL2411PT reminds one of the BenQ XL series monitors. BenQ has gone with an overall matte black finish and with the thinner bezel, the monitor looks quite elegant. It has a sturdy rectangular base. The stand is adjustable within a span of 130mm vertically and there is lock mechanism to keep the monitor locked at the lowest height. To adjust the height, you need to press the switch-like contraption behind the stand. Below the stand, there is a provision to route all your wires, which is quite thoughtful.

The monitor can swivel to the left or right by 45 degrees. It can also tilt down to -5 degrees and 20 degrees upwards. The stand remains rock-steady if you swivel the monitor, which is good. The monitor does tend to wobble as you raise the height.

There are touch sensitive buttons to control the detailed on-screen display

Touch-sensitive buttons are present up front, which control the on-screen display (OSD). While the implementation of the functionality of the buttons is good, we noticed that at times, we had to tap on the touch buttons twice to register a response. We still feel that nothing beats the presence of actual physical buttons for controlling the OSD menu; it would have made things a lot faster.

BenQ BL2411PT has a D-Sub port, a DVI port and a DisplayPort which are recessed on the rear side along with the headphone and microphone jack

In terms of display ports, you have a DVI port, a D-Sub port and a DisplayPort. Absence of an HDMI port is not an issue for office users, but it would have been a good addition. BenQ bundles only the DVI cable and not the DisplayPort cable.

Features

BenQ BL2411PT is a 24-inch monitor with an IPS panel. It has a native resolution of 1920×1200 (16:10 aspect ratio) and has a WLED backlighting. The BL-series is targetted at business users, which also explains the reason for going with the 1920×1200 resolution, for that extra bit of vertical real-estate. But we don’t think that should be a deterrent to regular home users to consider this monitor, unless of course, you cannot stand the black bars while watching widescreen movies.

BenQ BL2411PT tilts to 20 degrees upwards and 5 degrees downwards, apart from swivelling 45 degrees on the left and right

BenQ has added some interesting features with the anti-flicker screen being the main one. We will talk further about the anti-flicker feature in the performance section.The OSD on the BenQ BL2411PT is quite detailed and has various modes for different use cases. We like how OSD menus displays itself just above the backlit soft touch buttons. You can also skip all the preset modes and get into the User mode, to define your own settings. You can set colour temperatures, change the custom keys to your preference. You can choose between Picture mode, Display mode, Brightness, Contrast auto adjustment and so on.

The ergonomics menu has an option which displays reminders such as telling you to rest your eyes after a specific time-interval

There is an additional section in the menu called Ergonomics, which has a timer. You can set this timer to show you a message to relax your eyes. It indicates the number of minutes you have been continuously staring at the monitor for hours. It adds a nice touch to the overall feature set. Apart from this you have the Eco mode, which switches off the monitor, after its sensor which is present on the front of the monitor, does not recognise activity. Just beside the power port, there is a power switch.

Test Setup
Processor: AMD E350 @1.6GHz
Motherboard: MSI E350IA E45
RAM: 8GB DDR3
HDD: Western Digital WD2500JS
Blu-ray Drive: Hitachi BH30N
Graphics card: HIS 7750 H775FT1G
PSU: ASUS Atlas A45GA 450W
Cabinet: Cooler Master Elite 120M
OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate

Performance

The section marked lock, helps adjust the height and behind the stand you have a provision for cable management

Before testing the monitor, we used it for a couple of hours – working on it, gaming, watching a movie – to set in the burn-in. We used the Spyder3Elite Colorimeter to calibrate the display. We set the brightness setting at 100 percent and contrast settings at 75 per cent and got a contrast ratio of 467.4:1 with a black level of 0.43, whereas at 50 percent brightness setting we got a contrast ratio of 574.1:1 with a better black level of 0.31. Although in both cases, the black levels aren’t the best, but at lower brightness levels, the picture quality was much better.

Thankfully, there isn’t any visible bleeding around the edges, the way it was with the ASUS PB278Q, but you do notice some amount of backlight bleed in a completely dark scene.

We ran the Lagom.nl group of tests which has a battery of tests to check for colour banding, colour transition and even flicker. In the Contrast test, all the colour bands are distinguishable from each other even at the brightest red and blue ends. In the Black level test, the black boxes only tend to merge in the first row. With the other rows, you can differentiate each box. With the white saturation test, we could clearly see all the nine chequered boxes which is a good indicator of the monitor’s ability to separate different levels of whites. In the gradient banding test, there was a smooth transition from black to white levels and we did not notice any banding or colour tinging. In the Inversion (pixel walk) test which has a 11 different screens of varying pixel arrangements, we noticed only a mild bit of flicker in one screen which is a great validation of the BenQ’s flicker-free backlight claim.

While watching movies such as Avatar and Iron Man 3 on the user mode, which we had calibrated, the colours appear a bit more vivid, which can be adjusted by moving the colour sliders to your liking. Overall video quality was great and darker scenes showed only a minor amount of backlight bleeding. Thanks to the matte finish on the monitor, lights behind you are not an issue.

The Standard mode is quite balanced as compared to the other modes. The Movie mode tends to over-compensate skin tones and fine details, specially in the shadow regions. The Eco mode dims the overall brightness and adds a warm cast. The Photo mode tends to make the screen appear cooler or with a bluish cast. M book, which is expected to simulate the look of a MacBook screen, looked like a high contrast mode where in there was very little detail in the shadows and highlights. If you are not going to be calibrating the monitor regularly (User mode), the preset modes to go for are Standard and sRGB which are quite decent as compared to the other modes.

Reading on the BenQ BL2411 was easy on the eyes. Its 1920×1200 resolution is great for working on office documents giving you that extra vertical real estate for excel sheets. Even for image editing suites such as Lightroom, we found the screen to be quite good.

Thanks to the IPS panel, the viewing angles on the BL 2411T are quite good in a well-lit scene. You will barely notice any sort of colour shift when seen from the sides or from the top. In darker scenes though you may see the backlight if you view the screen along either edges, but only at extreme angles.

Verdict and Price in India

BenQ BL2411PT has good colour output, has enough user-customisable options for home or office users, sturdy build quality, great flicker control, optimum viewing angles and so on. Although the contrast ratio is not the highest, we didn’t find that to be an issue while working. We didn’t really find many issues with the monitor except perhaps the preset modes, which don’t really add any value to the overall colour reproduction. Actual physical buttons in place of touch-sensitive buttons would have been a better touch for usability.

It comes at a price of Rs 21,000 which puts it in the same bracket as Dell’s UltraSharp U2412M which is retailing for around Rs 19,000 now. Both monitors perform quite well but the BenQ BL2411PT offers better control over flickering, an issue which has plagued the U2412M. We would ideally like to see the BenQ BL2411PT selling under Rs 20,000. We agree that this is a high price for a home monitor, but then this is meant only for those who are looking at a high quality IPS panel monitor. For that TN panel-based 24-inch monitors from BenQ and Dell are still ideal as they retail for much lower than Rs 20,000 and also have full HD resolution.