BenQ 24-inch G2400W Widescreen LCD
With screen real estate getting larger and prices ever declining, is now the time to get your hands on the affordable BenQ G2400W? To answer that question, we put this slim and modest looking 24-inch monitor through our tests and give you our verdict.
Big Is Getting Cheaper
As 19-inch widescreen LCDs dip in price, they are almost approaching mass-market product status as have 17-inch LCDs and are ideal for consumers with lower budgets. Not to forget that the 22-inch monitors too are slowly but steadily declining in prices, some of the more zealous consumers have developed a fetish for larger screen realty and have started sinking their ever eager teeth into even 24-inch and larger widescreen LCDs. After all, the usual trend is when a product segment's price starts to shift, so will the others.
Realizing this trend, manufacturers too have started getting into the act, releasing lower cost and more mainstream performance spec'd 24-inch monitors to tap into this growing market. While the premium ones do still cost a lot and come with enhanced functionality and better panel specifications, the cheaper models sometimes do sport decent features that will leave you impressed for their price tag.
Case in point here is the BenQ G2400W that we are reviewing and despite its average run-of-the-mill performance specifications, it comes with a HDMI port in addition to the normal D-sub and DVI ports. Retailing at S$699, the G2400W seems like a good bargain, and it is, though to be fair, the LG L246WH, which retails at the same price, also has similar specifications but with better contrast ratio specs. The Philips 240BW8EB which also has similar specifications as the BenQ G2400W but retails at a higher S$799 and lacks a HDMI port, thus making both LG and BenQ models more worth it. Perhaps the after sales support policies could make up for the differences, but that's quite subjective. Lastly, BenQ has a good reputation for affordable quality monitors, so we will see if this proves true during our testing.
The BenQ G2400W 24-inch LCD monitor as seen from the front.
The back view of the G2400W.
Designer Black
As usual, BenQ's design aesthetics are very clean and simple. The G series of monitors have always had a similar sort of design and the G2400W takes the same design concepts and clothes it all in black for a very sleek and svelte look. The only complaint we have of the design is the location of the menu/control buttons, which are placed at the bottom of the panel and are really little more than tiny nubs. To make matters worse, the inscriptions of the buttons on the monitor bezel are hard to discern on the black surface, making navigating the OSD a nightmare. These concerns could take the user some time to getting used to, but the fact that these design problems were already mentioned in our earlier reviews three years back is disappointing that they've not improved since then. That aside, we run you through the rest of the monitor's aspects in our following pictorial:-
The side outline of the G2400W is expectedly slim, bare and functional. In contrast, we shudder to imagine the side profile of an equivalent 24-inch CRT monitor.
Seen here are the buttons which control the OSD. While the inscriptions for the buttons are readable from this angle, we found them difficult to discern when the monitor is standing upright. The placement of the buttons also makes navigating the OSD tricky.
The ventilation slits of the G2400W are located at the top and sides of its rear profile.
The G2400W also has a wall mount option if the user requires it; could be useful for those intending to use it as a screen for their gaming consoles.
The G2400W has a D-SUB, DVI and HDMI port, the latter being present to satisfy all your high-definition needs.
The headphone jack is for the audio output of the HDMI connection and can also be used to output the audio to external speakers. Odd that the monitor doesn't have traditional analog audio input nor does the monitor have its own speakers. So do keep a tab on this.
Cable management is easy with the clip shown here, just pull out the clip, pass the wires through and re-attach the clip. Simple.
The base of the G2400W is easily removable and provides adequate support for the monitor.
Seen here is what it looks like without the base attachment.
Performance - Quality Testing
Firstly, we calibrated the color temperature settings on the BenQ G2400W using Datacolor's Spyder 3 Elite for LCD Monitors, while leaving the brightness and contrast settings at factory default. We then put the G2400W monitor through its paces with our standard suite of tests, starting with DisplayMate for Windows Multimedia with Motion Edition 2.0 at the monitor's native resolution of 1920 x 1200 @ 60Hz on the DVI connection.
- Circular Geometry, Cross hatch and Dot
As with most DVI connections, we were expecting the digital input to properly display the horizontal and vertical lines, and no problems were seen.
- Screen Uniformity
The screen luminosity was surprisingly even, with no variations or tints detected on our tests.
- Stuck Pixel
No stuck pixels were detected on our review unit, though other reviewers were not as lucky (as noted towards the end of that article).
- Pixel Tracking and Timing-Lock
We couldn't detect any noise nor did we need to make any readjustments when we tested with the DVI connection, though we would like to point out that this may not always hold true across the board just because we use DVI connections. Exceptions do happen.
- Dark Screen
The G2400W did very well in this test: at the default factory brightness settings, we could not see any light bleeding in from the edges at all.
- Dark Gray Scale
Despite its average contrast ratio of 1000:1 for the G2400W, we still managed to differentiate between the gray scales of the test pattern up to the index value of 5, which was pretty good as the threshold for the program was 6. That means that despite its low contrast specs, the monitor still performed decently.
- White Level Saturation
The results here was also pretty much a surprise too as the monitor performed admirably well and we were able to clearly discern pattern index of 252 out of the maximum of 255. We could even discern pattern index 251 if we squinted and stared somewhat, but that's really pushing it.
- Color Tracking
No weird tints were detected and colors displayed looked fine, though there were some slight issues with the darker hues of the colors.
- 64/256 Intensity Level Ramp, 256 Intensity Color Level Ramp
For both tests, we noticed a minor problem with the darker bands of the colors as the lower levels were indistinguishable from each other. Moving up the scale though, the color separation was much better and the top levels were clear and distinct. So this might indicate that the monitor could have problems handling very dark movie scenes. We'll see how the monitor performs on that note in the next page.
- Scaled Font
Both serif and san serif fonts of the smallest size (9 pixels, 6.8 points) were crisp and sharp. Though at the smallest size, your face would have to be planted close up to legibly read the letterings on the screen due to the high resolution of the screen.
Movies and Gaming
With 24 inches of widescreen goodness, it would be a shame if the monitor was unable to perform for both movies and gaming, though we reckon it's not going to be the case, thanks to its built-in SenseEye technology which promises richer and vibrant colors. We'll be putting the G2400W through its paces via the scenes in Lord of the Rings and Kung Fu Hustle (Blu-ray) to test its video playback followed by the dizzy jumping action of Quake IV and the Heavenly Sword demo of the PS3 for gaming purposes. Lastly, we used Pixel Persistence Analyzer to check for any ghosting effects.
Video Playback
Testing on the calibrated user settings for the G2400W gave us a rather good picture when we played using the default factory settings for brightness (90%) and contrast (50%). The color temperature was preset based on the calibration done using Spyder 3 Elite. What we observed was the dark scenes of the Lord of the Rings were clearly lit, and the bright scenes were vivid and rich. We tried turning down the brightness settings to see if affected anything but the image was still clear. So perhaps DisplayMate was overly strict, but the monitor handled video playback with darker scenes decently in actual usage.
We also tried tested the HDMI playback on the monitor using a Samsung BDP-1000 Blu-ray Player and a PS3. Due to some compatibility issues, we were unable playback any movies when it was hooked up to the Samsung BDP-1000 player. So if you're hoping to watch Blu-ray movies, do bear in mind the monitor may not be compatible with some of the older Blu-ray players.
PS3 playback was thankfully fine, though we noticed that using the calibrated settings brought about a washed out color as the Datacolor calibration program added a software layer which adjusts the color settings. When we defaulted back to using the monitor's built-in Movie setting for Kung Fu Hustle, we felt that the colors were overly bright, though tolerable.
Gaming Performance
Using Quake IV again, this time on the Longest Yard map, we could detect no ghosting effects despite the 5ms response time of the monitor. The screen real estate was really useful for scanning around, though it can get distracting if you're upgrading from a non-widescreen monitor. However, you'll definitely appreciate the extra screen space when playing RPGs (role playing games) though.
PS3 performance was fine too as we tried out the Heavenly Sword demo with lots of fast paced action and did not detect any visible ghosting, though due to the bright colors of the game, ghosting is mostly impossible to detect, and we were unable to get our hands on a darker environment based PS3 game with fast-paced action at the time of testing.
Pixel Persistence Analyzer
Besides Quake IV and the Heavenly Sword demo in PS3, we also used PPA's Streaky Pictures test to analyze the G2400W and found slight traces of ghosting on the rear wheel. It's not really noticeable unless you look really hard (which we were), so for general gaming purposes, the G2400W is definitely suitable unless you're a dedicated hardcore purist.
Surprisingly Nimble
Despite its relatively mainstream-class specifications, the BenQ G2400W holds up surprisingly well in our tests. We were frankly surprised by its flexibility for the various scenarios in which we tested it. As a monitor for office needs, its low cost, simple design and good overall performance will appeal. For gaming needs, the HDMI port allows for easy interfacing with the third generation consoles and high-definition movie watching from set-top players. Additionally, its spacious screen size and native resolution of 1920x1200 allows watching HD movies in Full HD and facilitates indulgent gaming (as long as you've a speedy graphics card).
On the note of video/movie playback, it was generally good, but we noticed that colors were overly bright using the Movie setting of the monitor. Our calibrated settings when running DisplayMate tests also noted some problems with the darker hues of the color spectrum. Despite the problems with the darker hues, black levels in movies turned out fine and we were impressed with its capabilities. However those into illustration, photography and other works where colors play a vital role, this budget 24-inch monitor is not up for it as seen noted from our color ramp testing in DisplayMate. Then again, those who are serious about such works would be investing in professional monitors, thus we can't really penalize the BenQ G2400W as it's a general multimedia monitor.
Physically, the design of the monitor is very similar to past BenQ designs but with a change of color; BenQ has dropped the older silver motif and has used a very uniform matt black color, which we approve of. By adding a range of input connections, including the abovementioned HDMI port, the G2400W looks to have covered its bases in terms of connectivity. The only design issue that we've noted in the review is the badly positioned OSD menu buttons, which coupled with the barely readable button descriptions, makes navigating the OSD somewhat of a pain.
It's definitely a decent monitor if you aren't affected by a few of the noted issues, not to mention it has a good value proposition.
Granted that nothing is ever absolutely perfect in the world, the BenQ G2400W is a pretty good monitor for its classification, price point and its overall performance. Generally, BenQ monitors tend to be all-rounders, tuned for most general needs and functions, and the G2400W is probably what they had in mind to fit this concept. Taking that point into consideration, if you're not a color purist, or a hardcore gaming enthusiast with low tolerance for insignificantly minor ghosting, then go ahead and grab the G2400W, you won't regret it.
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