BenQ EW2740L review: A 27-incher with an interesting mix of features

BenQ has quite an interesting portfolio when it comes to monitors. We had reviewed **BenQ BL2411PT**, its first IPS panel monitor, a couple of months back and today we have the BenQ EW2740L, a 27-inch monitor having a Vertical Alignment (VA) panel which boasts of MHL connectivity. What’s that? We’ll get to it in a while but first, let us look at the design.

  Build and Design [caption id=“attachment_223023” align=“aligncenter” width=“538”]  BenQ EW2740L is a 27-inch full HD monitor with a Vertical Alignment panel[/caption]

BenQ has gone in with a simple design while keeping the bezels quite slim under 20mm on the sides and top. It has a matte black finish with the BenQ logo in the centre on the base bezel along with touch sensitive buttons on the right hand side. The stand of the BenQ EW2740L is a flat rectangular plastic with brushed metal finish with the central portion having a glossy finish, which basically continues as a stem on to which the monitor is attached. Due to the fixed stem, the monitor can only tilt but not swivel. In the base stand, there is a provision to rest your cellphone while using it in the Mobile High-definition Llink (MHL) mode.

    [caption id=“attachment_223026” align=“aligncenter” width=“538”]  The BenQ EW2740L has a slim bezel and from the side profile you will only notice bulge at the centre[/caption]    

Coming to the rear side, you have a glossy black finish through out the entire area. The side panel is quite slim, although you will notice a slight bulge in the centre portion. The rear ports are arranged in a vertical order one below the other in the centre on the rear side. There is a D-Sub port up top, followed by an HDMI port, another HDMI port with MHL connectivity and finally the audio/mic jacks followed by the power port. The BenQ EW2740L comes with a 19V power supply unit. On the extreme right hand corner of the rear side, you have provision for a Kensington lock.

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    [caption id=“attachment_223024” align=“aligncenter” width=“538”]  On the rear side you have D-Sub port followed by two HDMI ports (one with MHL compatibility). It lacks a DVI port[/caption]    

The base stand is sturdy and keeps the monitor in place despite mild tapping. Although the on screen display is well laid out, it is still a touch based control which takes longer than physical buttons. We would have liked to see the soft buttons being back lit when you are using them.

Features

BenQ EW2740L is a 27-inch LED backlit LCD monitor with a native resolution of 1920x1080. It has a vertical alignment (VA) panel which should offer better colour reproduction and viewing angles as compared to Twisted Nematic (TN) panels.. As the name implies, the liquid crystals are vertically aligned as opposed to the horizontal alignment seen on IPS panels. VA panels offer a better viewing angle than Twisted Nematic or TN panels.

    [caption id=“attachment_223025” align=“aligncenter” width=“538”]  The stand of the BenQ EW2740L has provision for placing the phone when using the monitor in the MHL mode[/caption]    

The BenQ EW2740L comes with Mobile High definition Link (MHL) support which allows you to connect your mobile devices to the monitor via an MHL cable (HDMI to microUSB cable). It allows you to view you mobile device screen on the 27-inch monitor. It has an option called Super Resolution which helps with up-scaling low resolution content.

    [caption id=“attachment_223028” align=“aligncenter” width=“538”]  Low blue light mode offers options for multimedia, web surfing, office and reading thereby adjusting the blue light in each case[/caption]    

The on screen display is similar to what we see on most BenQ monitors. But the EW2740L has a feature called Low Blue Light mode. Blue light is known to cause eye-fatigue and BenQ has added a feature to reduce the blue light emitted. Under the Low Blue Light mode, you have options for reading, web surfing, multimedia and office use. Apart from this, you have the regular preset modes such as Cinema, Photo, sRGB and so on. We liked the smart focus mode where you can selectively dim the rest of your monitor if you just want to concentrate on a particular portion on your screen. It lets you adjust the size of the focus box.

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

We burned in the monitor for a couple of hours before starting with our testing. We used the Spyder3Elite Colorimeter to calibrate the EW2740L. At a brightness setting of 100 and contrast setting of 75, we got a contrast ratio of 970.81:1 with a black level of 0.37. On reducing the brightness to 50 we got a contrast ratio of 912.72, but a better black level at 0.22.

      [caption id=“attachment_223027” align=“aligncenter” width=“538”]  Smart focus mode allows you to only highlight a portion of the monitor in case you want to limit your concentration to only a portion of the screen[/caption]      

When seen up front, there is little backlight bleeding around the edges, but the screen does not go completely black in dark scenes either. With HD and full HD content we barely noticed any banding in scenes involving a single solid colour. But while watching some non-HD content, in the fullscreen mode, you may face the issue. We could barely notice any improvement in the output with the Super Resolution mode turned on.

After calibrating the monitor, we carried out the Lagom.nl test. In the contrast test, you can see all the 32 bars on all colours except for magenta and red where the last three bars tend to merge. In the black level test, all the boxes in the top row merged whereas in the white saturation test, only the last two checker boxes merged implying a good ability to distinguish between whites. Gradient banding test wasn’t as great as we could see banding and colour tinging as the screen transitioned from black to white. In the pixel walk test, which checks for flicker, we did not notice any flicker in any of the test screens. This validates the monitor’s flicker-free claim.

To check out the movie viewing experience, we ran full HD movies and trailers such as Avatar, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and so on. Standard mode is comparatively brighter than the others while keeping the colors on the natural side. sRGB mode gives a good output keeping the colours muted and giving an overall pleasing look when it comes to landscapes and skin tones. It has a slightly greenish tinge though and it tends to keep the contrast minimal.

The Photo mode tends to increase the contrast to a sufficient degree and tends to add in a bit of warmth. Game mode shoots up the saturation levels, thereby giving an unnaturally vivid output with a higher bias towards blue. Cinema mode tends to give a slightly grainy output, but out of the box it tends to cover up a lot of shadow details that are easily visible in the sRGB mode. If you are a fan of high contrast modes which compromise on shadow and highlight details, maybe you will like the Cinema mode, but we were not as impressed with it.

You will have to buy the MHL cable separately based on your handset. We got an MHL cable in the BenQ box, but it was meant for HTC phones with MHL compatibility, as was clarified by a BenQ representative. We tried this with a Galaxy S3 as well but the device wasn’t recognised. Also, the monitor would switch off on its own and we had to disconnect and reconnect the power ports to turn it back on. So bear in mind to get the right MHL cable based on the handset model you have.

Verdict and Price in India

BenQ EW2740L offers good contrast ratio, good colours and barely noticeable flicker. You will most likely need to calibrate the monitor or spend some time with the settings menu and tweak brightness/contrast and colour sliders to your preference, as the preset options (apart from Standard) are not that impressive. The monitor is great for home use and thanks to its slim profile, will not occupy much space on your table as well. At an MRP of Rs 25,000 it has many competitors in the 27-inch category which are priced lower and sport IPS panels as well, but features such as MHL, focus selector, Low Blue light mode give the EW2740L an added incentive. It is available in the market for around Rs 21,000 which is a more sensible price point for the 27-incher.