Monitoring the Situation with the BenQ PG2401PT

 

 

A monitor by any other name still looks as sweet and accurate, no? No. Picking the right monitor for your needs requires some fact checking, some hands-on experience, and an achievable goal of what you want the monitor to do. When you choose your monitor, you have to choose carefully.

If you’re looking for a standard computer monitor, for instance, are you primarily concerned with a monitor that will be used mostly for web surfing or homework? High-intensity gaming? Are you involved in professional-level video editing or graphic design? What about photo editing? Do you mostly hit the social media sites? Are you on your webcam more than you are on your smartphone?

Once you know what the primary function of your monitor will be, you can determine which factors like resolution, screen size, construction material, IPS or non-IPS, touchscreen, you'll need most, or even answer deeper questions such as: Does it have the proper output terminals? USB? What’s the power rating? Is it energy efficient? Will it be subject to image ghosting?

But one monitor does not rule them all.

There are professionals—videographers, digital imaging editors, artists—who need monitors that go the extra step. They are looking for more than a monitor—they are looking for a digital assistant that can show them the truest color representation of their work. These professionals require higher performance levels from a monitor, which means one that either needs to be professionally calibrated, or offers some type of color-matching function that will show them their work without error.

The BenQ PG2401PT 24.1" Widescreen LED-Backlit IPS Color Accurate Monitor is the monitor for them. Its most basic use is for soft proofing (seeing an image on your monitor that will look as close as possible in color and clarity to the printed  image), but it has applications in video editing and photography as well. Any profession where the on-screen image needs to be exactly the same as the image in print or sent out via video would benefit from a professional monitor like the BenQ PG2401PT. It has a 350-nit brightness rating and 1920 x 1200 native resolution, with a 16:10 aspect ratio with a typical IPS wide viewing angle of 178 degrees.

The PG240IPT uses its own X-Rite hardware calibration device to match colors as accurately and honestly as possible, so that you can adjust the 3D LUT (Look-Up Table) for the monitor, and store settings directly into the monitor’s presets. Look-up tables are used to map one color space to another, and most are traditionally one dimensional. 1D look-up tables map the RGB color across a plane,  while a 3D look-up table maps colors using cubes, ensuring excellent color gradation.

The 14-bit 3D LUT on this monitor gives you the best and smoothest RGB blending accuracy, so colors and gray tones transition smoothly into each other, eliminating sharp, jagged edges. The 10-bit IPS panel will also help smooth the images with more natural-looking gradations, sporting over one billion colors—64 times the amount on an 8-bit panel. It has a 1000:1 typical contrast ratio, and a 12,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio with a pixel pitch of 0.27mm (the measurement from the center of one pixel to the center of another;  the smaller the number, the more LED clusters are used to make up the image, and the resulting image is sharper at closer ranges).

The PICC (Printing Industry Color Certified) BenQ PG series of monitors specializes in color reproduction for tones with a Delta-E value lower than 2.0. A Delta-E value is a number that represents the distance between two colors, so the lower the better. Since a Delta-E value of one represents the smallest color differences that the human eye can see, the color reproduction for Delta-E at 2.0 ensures the truest color match you could expect in a consumer print-matching monitor.

With such a small Delta-E value, you’re also ensured the absolute closest color accuracy from the monitor image to the printed image. The reliability of the color from product to print will save you time and productivity hours as well, because less time is spent adjusting color values.

To enable this kind of quality, BenQ has each monitor individually tested for brightness uniformity, Delta-E range, and Gamma-curve calibration. These results are noted on a calibration report that is included with each individual monitor to assure that what you see is what the BenQ lab engineers saw when constructing your monitor. For designers and professionals who are concerned about color accuracy, these monitors cover 100% CMYK color space and 99% Adobe RGB color space. For those who are trying to learn about color spaces and print-quality color correction, the range within a color space is called a gamut. All of your devices, including your printer, monitor camera and more, have different color spaces with different gamuts. The BenQ monitor includes a wide range of color spaces, including all of the CMYK and Adobe RGB range (RGB ranges also differ, such as sRGB and Apple RGB).

The 24” BenQ PG2401PT monitor also features a Brightness Uniformity Function that balances brightness for a more uniform look when viewing images. Inconsistent brightness can result in an inaccurate image—disastrous when you print the image. Keeping a bright hue across the monitor will result in a truer representation of your work.

The monitor also ships with the Palette Master Color Calibration software suite, which was developed in conjunction with X-Rite, who developed the hardware calibrator for this monitor. The software allows you to match and validate color matching according to G7, FOGRA, and UGRA standards (all of which are professional color-calibration and color-certification entities). Fine tuning is possible through either professionally calibrated presets, including Standard, Adobe RGB, sRGB, illumine.A, D50, and D65 for standard graphical work, or a heavily customizable Custom Mode for finer, detailed work.

As for the look and feel of this monitor, professionals will appreciate the flexibility in the design, from the ability to rotate the monitor from portrait to landscape mode and back, to the -5 degrees forward or +20 degrees backward tilt and angle adjustment to eliminate glare. You can even swivel the monitor +/- 45 degrees so that others around your work area can easily view your work. Also appreciated is the wide variety of connection options, including D-Sub, DVI-D, HDMI, DisplayPort, and Mini DisplayPort. It also includes a USB 3.0 port, as well as a card reader, for speedy access to files.

A detachable hood comes standard with the BenQ PG2401PT monitor—a nice bonus, since ambient light and glare from artificial lighting sources can really affect the viewing of images on screen. You can also wall-mount this screen for optimal viewing with a 100 x 100mm VESA-standard mount.

The monitor also features an Eye Protect Sensor so that images viewed in the morning, afternoon, and evening are all displayed at a comfortable level that your eyes will appreciate, and an Eco Sensor sets the monitor enters to a power-saving mode when no one is standing or sitting in front of it.

With all of that, we can safely say this isn’t the monitor to get for the kid’s new gaming computer, or a replacement monitor for your desktop. Unless you are a professional who needs to know that what you see is what you get, the BenQ PG2401PT is best left to those for whom color is not just a differing shade of gray—but a way of life. Book editors, photographers, videographers, and other print specialists will fully appreciate the functionality and engineering behind these BenQ monitors.

 

Product Color	Dark Gray
Back Light Unit	LED
LCD Size	24.1” W
Aspect Ratio	16:10
Resolution (Native)	1920 x 1200
Display Area	20.3” x 12.7”
Pixel Pitch (mm)	0.27
Brightness ( typ.)	350 cd/㎡
Contrast ( typ. )	1000:1'
DCR (Dynamic Contrast Ratio) (typ.)	12,000,000:1'
Panel Type	IPS
Viewing Angle (L/R;U/D) (CR>=10)	178/178
Response Time (Tr+Tf) typ.	12 ms, 5 ms GTG
Display Colors	1.07 billion
Color Gamut	102%, 99% Adobe RGB
Hor. Frequency (KHz)	30~83
Ver. Frequency (Hz)	50~76
Video Bandwidth (MHZ)	205 MHz
Input Connector	D-Sub / DVI / HDMI / DP / mDP/ headphone jack
Power Supply (90~264 AC)	Built-in
Power Consumption (Base on Energy star)	30.9 W
Power Consumption (On mode)	74.6W
Power saving mode	<0.5W
K Locker	Yes
Dimensions with Stand (HxWxD) mm	14.3” × 21.8” × 2.9” (without hood)
Weight (Net/Gross)	27.33 lb
Special Features
Senseye	Senseye 3
AMA	Yes
Vista	Premium
Win7	Yes
Win8	Yes
HDCP	Yes
Color Temperature	2800°K/3700°K/5000°K/5500°K/6500°K/7500°K/8200°K/9300°K/Custom Mode (increment by 100°K)
OSD Language	17 languages
USB Hub	Yes, USB 3.0 (2*downstream, 1*upstream)
VESA Wall Mounting	100x100mm
Pivot	90°
Swivel (left/right)	45 / 45
Tilt (down/up)	-0.25
Height Adjustment	150mm
Light Sensor	Yes
Touch Pad	Yes
Dynamic Power Saving (DPS)	Yes
Included Accessories	VGA
Regulations
Regulations	TCO 5.0
Limited Warranty	3 Years, Parts & Labor