BenQ's great 3D 24-incher, now with
added convenience
We've seen what BenQ's XL2420T is capable
of for under $480, and we liked what we saw in three glorious dimensions so
much, we forgot about the suicide headaches 3D gives us.
It's a classy 2D performer, boasting great
colours, and is about as good as 3D viewing gets on your PC. That's mainly
thanks to Lightboost, which improves brightness, and Nvidia's 3D Vision 2
glasses, which tidy up peripheral fuzziness. Now imagine all that with a
built-in IR emitter and the 3D specs thrown in - a handsome proposition indeed.
The price is naturally a fair bit higher,
coming in at just under $640, but that still represents decent value in the
market compared to the excellent but pricey Asus VG278H, which is yours for a
princely $864. And while this BenQ. Panel's quality might not be blindingly
evident in the chassis, height adjustable though it is, there are plenty of
thoughtful extras bundled in.
Clunk, click
For example, the BenQ has a screen control
peripheral that attaches via USB and changes the display settings without
having to touch the monitor itself. Do you need it in your life? No, but it's
sometimes handy and sticks to the side of the stand with a satisfying magnetic
clunk. The panel's options also harbour a few game specific profiles beyond the
usual presets. There's an FPS mode, which presumably minimises ghosting (though
we didn't notice the difference). Again though, we're glad it exists, and by
tinkering with some manual settings we're confident that you could save a
handful of useful profiles.
The 3D experience is pretty special too,
and is made even easier by keepingthe IR emitter tidied away within the
screen's panelling - one less wire in the behind desk jungle will always win
brownie points with PCF. The wraparound specs, 120Hz refresh rate and
Lightboost make for 3D gaming with fantastic depth and clarity. Although the
headaches from long term use don't seem to have been fixed yet, we've come a
long way since the early days of 3D Vision, and the XL2420TX is right up there
with the Asus VG278H for viewing quality.
We did notice some oddities testing the
screen in plain old 2D, though. In busy images, a 'pixel-walking' effect (an
odd fuzziness like an out of tune TV) appears at the edges of the screen,
suggesting the clock or phase settings aren't correctly calibrated by default.
This being a TN screen, it doesn't offer a
great vertical viewing angle. When we filled the screen with block colours we
found that reds turned to pinks at the lower edge, and no amount of fiddling
with the doodad next to the stand is gonna fix that. The depth of the blacks
isn't quite on par with the Asus screen either, though the smoothness of
gradients is still impressive.
So where does that leave us? Well, it's the
same great 3D panel BenQ put together a few months ago, with a few extras for a
reasonable price. You could almost say it's cheap, as long as you're not
expecting the luxurious build quality of pricier Dell and Samsung screens. This
is the way to do 3D. This, and a decent stock of Panadol.
|
Vital statistics
§ Price:
$636.8
§ Supplier:
BenQ
§ Web:
www.benq.com
§ Native
resolution: 1,920 xl,080
§ Panel
size: 24in
§ Panel
type: TN
§ Brightness:
350cd/m2
§ Response
time: 2ms
|
