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To test the responsiveness during movies we ran into a bit of a hitch. Our test rig is equipped with CyberLink PowerDVD 8.0, which is a somewhat dated movie software. It has done the job for all other monitors tested but it seemed to be allergic to the BenQ when it was running at 144Hz. As the video below shows the screen is filled with what looks like white noise from an old TV set rather than the intended images.
The coloured contrast gradients were decent. The upper two red and pink bands seemed to blend in a bit too well but distinct brightness steps were visible elsewhere. So for gaming we found the BenQ XL2411T very nice to use. Once correctly set up the image was pretty decent as well making movies and general use fairly enjoyable. On top of this there’s a fully adjustable stand, support for 3D Vision 1 and 2 (plus LightBoost) and a competitive price tag. Overall it’s certainly a worthy choice for those who want a speedy monitor for gaming primarily but who may like to do other tasks on the side. We would not advise using any TN panel for any serious colour-critical work (this monitor included) but if that isn’t a priority for you then this should be one to consider.There was no silver bullet, but we found the following gave the most pleasing image. This was the case for both the AMD Radeon 7950 used for the review and the Nvidia 670 used to assess possible vendor-specific differences, both GPUs connected using the DVI cable supplied. It is important to remember that different individual monitors will differ, especially if BenQ provide revision changes at a later date. Contrast performance on the BenQ XL2411T was good with an average contrast ratio of 1090:1 using the ‘Standard’ picture mode. A static contrast of 1022:1 was also good to see following the adjustments made for the ‘test settings’. Very respectable contrast ratios were also recorded for the ‘sRGB’ and ‘Eco’ picture modes (>1000:1) with a slight drop to under 950:1 for the FPS and RTS modes. A more significant drop to just under 800:1 occurred when using the ‘Movie’ and ‘Photo’ modes, however. On the plus side the lowest white luminance could be achieved in these modes by settings the brightness to ‘0’ (not shown in table) – 110 cd/m2 in movie mode, for example, is significantly lower than the 163 cd/m2 minimum recorded under standard mode. At the upper end the monitor was brilliantly bright at 436 cd/m2 – plenty enough for viewing using Nvidia 3D Vision glasses. This gave a luminance adjustment range of 326 cd/m2 which is good – but it would be nice to see a minimum luminance less than 110 cd/m2. Good contrast performance overall with strong static contrast and plenty of brightness if you need it But the ‘connected’ feeling and overall fluidity is far superior to even the fastest ‘input lag free’ 60Hz LCDs. Another factor influencing this is the 144Hz refresh rate. Compared to a 60Hz monitor, the BenQ is outputting 2.4 times as many frames of visual information – including updating the mouse cursor position – every second. Compared to a 120Hz monitor (or running this monitor in 120Hz mode) the difference is less pronounced. Technically it is displaying 1.2 times as much information; able to draw an additional 24 frames per second. In practice this does make things seem just a little faster but it really depends on the sensitivity of the user to such things.
The bezel is chunky by modern standards, 17mm wide all around. The anti-glare layer is set inside the frame and competently rejects ambient light, rendering a well-saturated image free of grain or artifacts. The XL2411P is the first gaming monitor we’ve reviewed in a long time that doesn’t support G-Sync or FreeSync, and we wondered if it would be missed. The short answer is not as much as you’d think. The BenQ XL2411T is not one of those monitors you can expect to turn on and happily use without a bit of tweaking. If you aren’t at all fussy then the default settings may be just about passible but they certainly don’t give an accurate or well-balanced image. Fortunately there are plenty of presets at your disposal, alongside the ability to tweak important aspects of the image such as colour channels and gamma. Whilst no combination of settings seemed perfect it was possible to get quite a pleasing image out of the monitor with a bit of fiddling. Certainly the image balance was infinitely better than the factory defaults with a decent richness to shades without an oversaturated look.Setting the monitor to 120Hz worked fine on this movie software, however. Regardless of the refresh rate the film content itself is currently limited to a frame rate of under 30fps. Each frame is shown multiple times to fill in the refresh rate. This gives a slight edge in smoothness over running the film at 60Hz but isn’t as fluid as running high frame rate content such as games. There’s still a bit of a disconnected feeling to motion – but there was no noticeable trailing or overdrive artifacts in the two Blu-ray titles we tested. In the second movie title, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, colours were mostly well-represented with appropriate tone and saturation. Some vibrant shades, such as the orange and yellows of roaring flames and azure blues could have done with a touch more intensity but everything looked quite appropriate and natural overall. It’s a nice feeling being able to turn a monitor on for the first time and for everything to just look right. Unfortunately that feeling eluded us with the BenQ XL2411T. Under default settings it looked bleached, overly bright and very washed out. In fact it was quite comparable to a weak ‘solarize’ filter being applied in photo editing software.
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