Benq BL2780T
Look on the bright side
PC monitor that adjusts to your needs
Adjustable, plenty of connections and great screen quality
Imagine our excitement at receiving a box marked ‘BL2780T’, surely indicating bacon, lettuce and 2,780 tomatoes. Inside, sadly, was just a monitor with yet another impenetrable tech product model number, but at least it turned out to be quite a good monitor.
Benq (‘ben-cue’), based in Taiwan and originally part of giant computer maker Acer, is best known for cheap and cheerful kit. It’s edged upmarket recently with monitors like the colour-accurate SW2700PT (£585 from Amazon www. snipca.com/28011, see our review, Issue 530). This one isn’t aimed at graphics professionals, but it’s still a few quid more than you might expect for a 27in screen with a basic 1080p resolution, although you might find it for under £200 if you shop around.
The most obvious justification for the price is the business-class design, which is plain, plasticky and a bit stiff but offers height, tilt and swivel adjustment plus rotation to portrait mode for long document reading. With fairly narrow bezels, it looks almost elegant if you squint, and there’s a VESA point if you prefer to mount it on an arm. HDMI, Displayport and an old-style VGA input are provided, and basic stereo speakers are built in, although there’s no USB hub.
It’s when you turn it on that you really
SPECIFICATIONS
27in IPS LCD • 1920x1080-pixel resolution • HDMI port • Displayport • VGA port • 2x 2W speakers • 547x512x231mm (HXWXD) • 7.2kg • One-year warranty www.snipca.com/32682 see where your money’s gone. The IPS LCD panel is a proper 8bit display, supporting the full 16.7 million colours of standard PC output. Some cheaper panels are 6bit, meaning colours that should be slightly different come out the same, causing inaccuracy and banding effects that are barely visible but not ideal. Not so here. Our meter found 92.5 per cent of SRGB covered with an average Delta E of 1.41, which is fine for casual graphics work.
Contrast was also better than we’d expect without paying a lot more. The only weakness was in uniformity, with brightness falling off by up to 17 per cent at the edges and colour inaccuracy also drifting upwards in these areas. So the BL2780T isn’t going to tempt pros, but to the untrained eye its picture quality is very good.
You could pay less for a 27in monitor, but you’d be looking at something like Dell’s SE2719H (£139 from www.snipca. com/32683), which is nicely styled but limited in adjustment and connectivity, with a dull 6bit image.
VERDICT The combination of adjustability and decent picture quality makes this a solid buy ★★★★ ★
ALTERNATIVE AOC Q2778VQE £205 Using a TN LCD panel, this older model has excellent colour but less flexibility