BenQ EL2870U 28 inch HDR 4K Gaming Monitor review
BenQ EL2870U 28 inch HDR 4K Gaming Monitor review
Great accuracy out of the box
CONSDisappointing dark room performance
HDR doesn't add much
Specifications
Brand & Model BenQ EL2870U
Panel Type & Backlight TN / W-LED, edge array
Screen Size & Aspect Ratio 28" / 16:9
Max Resolution & Refresh 3840x2160 @ 60HzDensity - 157ppi
Native Color Depth & Gamut 10-bit / sRGB
Response Time (GTG) 1ms
Brightness 300 nits
Contrast 1000:1
Speakers 2 x 1w
Video Inputs 1 x DisplayPort 1.42 x HDMI 2.0
Audio 3.5mm headphone output
USB -
Power Consumption 26.2w, brightness @ 200 nits
Panel DimensionsWxHxD w/base 25.9 x 18.8 x 7.8"658 x 478 x 198mm
Panel Thickness 2.4" / 62mm
Bezel Width Top/sides - .7" / 18mmBottom - 1" / 25mm
Weight 12.6lbs / 5.7kg
I don't know why this is so oddly satisfying taking the fresh plastic off hello everyone and welcome to a review of BenQ zone 4k HDR monitor the el2 eight seven zero u this thing is a beast I'm gonna be reviewing this monitor it is unspun surd and unbiased so let's get right into it out of the box assembly was simple simple as it gets truly you have this stand right here these stand connects to the base via one prong and then this stand connects to the monitor via a prong and a screw simple simple assembly couldn't get easier it is only tilt adjustment which means that it only tilts forward and upward it does not have any height adjustment or any sideways tilt so if you plan on having height adjustment with this monitor you are gonna have to buy a VESA mount thankfully the people that BenQ have gone ahead and given us the holes for a VESA mount so thank you very much Ben Q you can find vesta mounts on amazon for
anywhere from to extremely awesome opie VESA mounts which are made to hold multiple monitors and those are all on amazon at different price points really quick I want to cover the stats and the features of this monitor it is a 4k HDR monitor with a brightness intelligence pluses monitor has a couple tricks up its sleeve honestly so what we have is an HDR button and then as soon as you turn HDR on some of the colors and intensity have changed as well as just
the saturation TN panels are really known for their really really fast response time this is a one millisecond monitor so it has the best possible response time for its pixels you have an 11-point 2 millisecond input lag which is really really good now the brightness intelligence + feature you'll notice this little bar down here and it is not for remote surprisingly it is the brightness intelligence plus what this brightness intelligence + does is it monitors the color temperature which would be the color brightness of your room and adjusts it based on your room's
brightness you'll see right here HDR on and we press again and you have your brightness intelligence Plus which is really cool I think that's an some feature and you don't see that in a lot of monitors so props to BenQ for adding that in I want to take a second and appreciate just the design and the features that they've put in overall this is such a clean looking monitor you see a lot of gaming monitors coming out with that bright gamer red such as a lot of Asus
products but this just has more of a professional finish you see this kind of brushed metal finish on the bottom here and I'm gonna have a couple close-ups for you truly this is just a supreme design I think I think they've done really well with it and I like the way that it looks in a premier gaming setup I think it looks really professional now functionality I do wish it would have come with a height adjustable mount at least for the price that you're paying a height
adjustable mount would have been nice but an easy VESA mount does simply take care of that issue now this monitor is rocking a fully vented frame so there's vents all the way around which is definitely a bonus you're never gonna have to worry about it overheating the power brick is built-in on the inside of the monitor so you're not going to have a power brick to deal with just a simple power cord and it is a 10-bit TN LCD panel now what that means is that you are
gonna have really really awesome response times an input lag like I said before that's what these TN panels are about they're for hardcore gamers this is a free sync monitor so it does benefit people who have PlayStation 4 pros Xbox one exes and AMD processors and their PCs so ultimately this is really geared towards your fast-paced gamer you're gonna have less screen tearing it is flicker free the blue light reduction feature really makes sure that if you're gaming
for extended durations of time it's going to be easy on your eyes while being on this monitor and that's really appreciated because a lot of people nowadays are streaming or going for long durations of time for their game sessions and they're looking for professional monitors that are going to take care of them in that aspect I think been cues really rounded out taking care of that as far as what came with this monitor it did come with a HDMI cable and a power supply it
does have a DisplayPort 1.4 in the back but it does not come with a display port cable I just wanted to note that only comes with an HDMI and the power cable guys so DisplayPort to HDMI 3.5 millimeter jack and your power supply that's all she's got going on in the back guys it is rocking 2 2 watt speakers so I wouldn't say that the speakers are like oh my god amazing but heck a lot of gaming monitors nowadays don't come with speakers so it actually having a couple built-in speakers is definitely a plus it has over 18 languages programmed in I'm not
going to go over every single language if you want to check out all those languages just check out all the specs on bank use website I'll have a link below to the specs on this monitor I did take the time to game on this with the brightness intelligence plus off and on at different times of the day and really just see how I liked it compared to my 1080 144 Hertz Asus gaming monitor and definitely this is an awesome awesome monitor especially when you're playing
games that are going to be able to be upscaled on console to 4k and if you're on PC and you plan on gaming in 4k this is going to be an excellent choice especially for your fast-paced games let's get down to the nitty-gritty price point ladies and gentlemen what does it cost this monitor right now is going on Amazon there'll be a link below directly to Amazon where you can purchase this monitor or just check out some of the reviews it's currently rocking about 1.5 K reviews averaging over 4 stars there's really a reason for that it's great from console even
a PC gaming it's performed extremely well if you have any questions comments or concerns about this monitor please let me know in the comments below I'm really really active with people who have questions about products that I review and I really enjoy helping you decide what's best for you even if this monitor isn't your best choice maybe we can look at some other ones and find out what works for you I do appreciate everybody who's come through .
the brand new bank you il-28 70 you 28 inch HDR monitor but before we check that bad boy out let's check out a word from today's sponsor of course there the strafe mark 2 features 100% Cherry MX RGB key switches providing a smooth and linear response with precise accuracy these switches deliver flawless key presses and have a lifespan of up to 50 million activations so you know you're getting the durability you'll need there's also a convenient USB pass the report
for any additional USB device you might want to use it also includes a volume wheel so you can adjust the audio on the fly without interrupting your game at all the strafe mark 2 is also compatible with the IQ software so you can customize the RGB to however you want it to look looking for a tool to take on your PC opponents give the strafe mark to RGB mechanical gaming keyboard a look today so if you're looking for a new keyboard to get your game on
check out the strafe now today we're gonna be checking out the bank you like I said al 2870 you monitored and this monitor features HDR 10 it's a free sync monitor so to work with all the current and B cards other so you can get flicker free gaming now everything about this monitor is pretty much geared towards a gamer this is a gamers monitor it's not really meant for people who are going to be doing artwork or stuff like that the color correction on this won't be exact
for one thing this particular monitor features a TN panel we talked about this in other video TN panels actually have the fastest response time this particular monitor has a one millisecond response time which is very fast however the color gamut on it is only 75% of what real color is so if you're an artist and you need to match colors and do stuff like that in Photoshop you probably would not want to get this monitor but for a gamer who's playing games none of that
stuff really does matter so let's talk about the design first off about this monitor the one thing I want to mention right off the bat it's on the front you guys will see there is a very giant bezel around the side I think this is a really giant bezel and today's you know technology and if I was going to be you know using monitors for building surround vision or anything like that putting threes monitors together for me wouldn't exactly be the best thing whatsoever because of this the screen itself is a very very nice screen its flicker free it has eye care technologies it has a
different bunch of different stuff inside of it for blue also has some brightness intelligent plus so all kinds of technologies inside of the particular panel are geared to be so that you can play your your games on your monitor though for hours and hours on end um 16 + 9 aspect ratio it is a 4k monitor 3840 by 2160 s the resolution the brightness on this particular monitor is 300 c d the contrast ratio is a thousand to one the dynamic contrast ratio is twelve million to one so
there's a lot a lot of stuff there although like I said before the colors on a TN panel aren't going to be the absolute best reproduce you know like life life but that truly doesn't matter if you're a gaming you're looking for technology it's going to be very fast and it's not going to give you a headache now as far as the stang go it's really basic stand not too much adjustment either that's one thing about this particular model I guess it's a caveat about it is the stand itself only gives
you a tilt from 5 to 15 percent so that's really not very much there's no kind of adjustment for you know the height or anything like that you can't pivot the monitor and although I guess you know probably most gamers won't want that anyways but for other people who are doing stuff I guess you know they do there a point it's gonna matter they're gonna say oh I don't care I'm just gaming that's it just depends on you your aspect of you know what you're doing with the monitor and if for some reason you don't want to use the stand the monitor can be mounted to
your wall by the vase amount i'm also inside the panel you can't see them there are 2 2 watt speakers inside of there so if you don't want to use you know audio speakers you can use these there's also a headphone jack which will also double for a speaker jacks if you want to plug your speaker's directly into the panel you can do that the on-board speakers do provide adequate sound they're not going to blow you out of the water and they're deaf not so loud that
your neighbors can hear it but for generalize gaming surfing the internet and just doing stuff like that the speakers do work pretty well we'll a discrete set of speakers with a subwoofer sound better yes but hey this is onboard nets included , the on-screen display it's really easy to use it's right located on the front and you'll notice right on the right-hand corner of the monitor there's a little button that says HDR and this particular button allows you to
turn the HDR on and off when you're inside of games they'll let you know if um HDR is being enabled and being used like in the game pray that I've been playing a back you're behind me and pray it actually shows that the HDR is being simulated inside of the game now HDR is really meant to give you the actual best lighting inside of a game it makes a lot more areas inside of the screen are all lit up and the pixels per inch is particular monitor 150 a in the panel by the way bet it mention that and you can also access the on-screen display right from the
front on the bottom right hand corner right underneath that HDR button so you just click the buttons down there you can easily scroll through all the different things inside of the OSD it's very simple to use now the only other thing about particular monitors I wish that it was a little bit faster you know on the refresh rate it's only 60 Hertz I kind of wish that it was a little bit faster but I will say this even after playing games for hours on end with the flicker free
technology and writing inside the monitor I wasn't getting a headache which kind of surprised me usually in the past by play on the monitors that didn't have a hundred and forty four you know I usually started getting a headache and I didn't get a headache whatsoever so the eye care technology inside of the monitor allowing you to play games for a long amount of time um is actually a really really good thing the monitor does excel for playing games which is what it's
you know geared for in you it's not geared for doing art or anything like that and then you guys can see in game here and pray everything looks very very nice inside of this this game everything looks you know it's still cartoonish though that's one thing you know a lot of people have complained in the past about games you know like if you enable all the goodies everything starts so you know getting slower well that's because inside of these environments they're recreating you know we're trying to recreate you know the natural world as much as possible
and the more natural and we're real that it's going to look well then obviously the more taxing it's going to be on your system all around hooking up your system to the e l 2870 you is very simply done there are two HDMI ports these are both the 2.0 version and there's a single display port and this is the 1.4 version and also like I said before there's a headphone jack for either hooking up your headphones or hooking up to external speakers games look absolutely
great on the e L 2870 you there's nothing about this monitor in gaming that makes you go oh my god I don't like this and in fact even though this is an LED backlit monitor there's no light bleed whatsoever so if you're looking around the sides your monitor you're not gonna see any kind of light leaking through there's no bleeding whatsoever all the colors are just fine for gaming now there is one other caveat I don't think it's really gonna matter though is that the
viewing angle of this is if you're viewing it from off to the side instead of like you know looking at it straight on but when you're playing your game you're playing your game straight on you're not playing your game from off to the side so having something you know being able to view it from the side being important I really think it doesn't matter whatsoever I really like playing doom this is just one of those games you can just go around
shoot things up spin an hour and they're getting out to your aggressions killing stuff there's absolutely really no plot nothing like that going on you just simply go around and you kill kill kill kill kill and you know for a lot of people that's a lot of stress relief and when you have a really nice monitor that you can stare at for hours on end playing your games I think that's a comfort all right so there you have it all the specs and all the features of this particular monitor
I gotta say the e L 2870 U does have a lot of features for a monitor that comes to market at under four hundred and fifty dollars I mean let's just face it you get HDR ten you get free sync also this monitor claims that it does have 10 bit color I looked into this and I guess that it actually does a lot of people had said that oh hey that's just bullcrap but um TN panels are really slowly slowly closing the gap between them and IPS monitors they're really the only
difference between an IPS panel and a TN panel at this point is really the color gamut like if you're looking at an IPS panel they have those two almost a hundred percent RGB where they're like perfect they're mimicking you know whatever they're looking at almost perfectly with TN panels you still can't do that but with the gamer if all you do is game and sit in front of your computer and game who cares if the orange is zero 0.58 and not zero zero point six oh who cares about that as a gamer that's meaningless to you you're not going to Senegal you know
what I think the gaming developer meant this blue to be a different color blue man I'm not happy with this game so if you're strictly a gamer and you want the response times to be very very fast just make sure you get some of the newer TN panels that are really closing that gap this monitor does have a 10-bit color so you know if you have a video card that supports all that stuff and put that out then you'd be good to go all the games look really great in this as far as
the text and stuff online it looks totally solid I think that stuff's calm you know kind of irrelevant isn't matter whether using an AMD or an Nvidia card really at this particular point if you're just surfing the net I don't really think it matters you know what card that you're actually using I think at that point here just you know you're reading text and you're looking at stuff online and both cards do that very well now being an A and B card means that it you know excuse me being a monitor that supports all the AMD card so is really great so if you
have a card one of the newer AMD cards and it supports free sync you know you can hook it up to your monitor it's not expensive you get all that free sync technology means you can play your games flicker free and not get a headache Bink you really wanted me to stress though about the eye care technology and all that different type of stuff in the monitor because I guess a lot of people just take that for granted and looking at the monitor with all their flicker free and their
eye care technology like I said I was able to play games for at least three or four hours before I was starting to get eye fatigue and I mean I'm a guy in my 50s and I used to only be able to play games for like less than an hour unless I had a monitor that could do 144 Hertz so even those particular monitors only 60 Hertz I'm still will to play games on it for hours on end without getting any type of headache whatsoever which also translate if I'm gonna be working online
you know just surfing the net checking my email doing all that stuff I'll still be able to do that for long hours of time without gonna rub my eyes and going oh my god why am I feeling such fatigue because the fatigue comes from the monitor you know blinking and stuff all that blinking in the background that you're not really physically noticing but your eyes are noticing is what causes your headaches and so you get rid of all that stuff about the table headaches are
gone I have to say this is an editor's choice product I honestly wish it was a little bit bigger a little bit bigger virgin you know would have been really nice you know the 16:9 aspect ratio though it's perfect for this particular monitor the price is perfect I feel the only caveat like I said before are the very thick bezel I don't really like that whatsoever I wish it was smaller so I could put three of them together that's just my thing I I've been whined and looking for the perfect monitor setup in this corner back here behind that you guys
can't see I want to set up a big three you know three month or a gaming year again and have that stuff going on I really wouldn't want to do that with this monitor the fact that you really can't do too much adjustment on it that's also a little bit of a caveat but beyond that everything about this monitor for a gamer is spec on and right on so if you guys want to see more
information about this particular product buy one for yourself or just to check it out we'll have a link down the bullet like button where you can do .
BenQ EL2870U 28 inch HDR 4K Gaming Monitor review
the Ben QL 2870 you it's nothing fancy it's a 28 inch 3840 by 2160 TN panel at 60 Hertz basically justyour regular 4k monitor specs it does support freesync but the refresh rate range is just 40 to 60 Hertz so it doesn't support low framerate compensation which is a bit disappointing Ben Q also makes a big deal about this panel supporting HDR and specifically HDR 10 but well I guess we'll talk about HDR later the design this is an entry-level monitor so I wasn't expecting anything fancy but the L 2870 U is a bit of a chunky beast not just in the
overall thickness of the panel but also in the bezels and 18 millimeters in thickness this is definitely not a slim bezel display and to make matters worse the panel itself isn't flush with the bezels instead it's set back about four millimeters I appreciate been cues choice not to include a lot of gamer junk but the large bezels and recessed display make it look pretty cheap the displays out of construction is also a cheap basic plastic with a bog-standard finish the stand
uses an uncommon I guess you'd have to say t-shaped design and the front section at first glance looks like it might be metal but on closer inspection its basic plastic with a brush texture the rest of the stand uses black glossy plastic which is an absolute nightmare to keep dust and fingerprint free in terms of adjustability again everything is very basic is the stand only supports tilt adjustment though there is a visa mounting support for inputs we get two HDMI 2.0 ports and DisplayPort 1.4 plus a headphone jack and yes there are built-in speakers you
also might have noticed this lump below the BenQ logo on the that's an ambient light sensor that forms part of Bank whose brightness intelligence plus technology or bi+ basically with this mode enabled the monitor will automatically adjust brightness color temperature to fit your surroundings that's pretty neat for those that like this sort of functionality but personally I prefer a static brightness and especially static color temperatures such that color accuracy is
maintained the bi+ mode is enabled through a button on the front panel which also doubles as an HDR button but don't get fooled the SGR mode is either force enabled when windows HDR and WCG setting is enabled or it can be toggled to simulate HDR when the monitor is receiving an SDR input and my simulate I mean mess with the colors and saturation to make the image less accurate the rest of the displays controls are accessed through a row of basic buttons so no
directional toggle which makes the OSD hard to navigate there's a healthy selection of color controls to be found in the OSD but a lot of bank use other features I'd never bother enabling like the low blue light mode the super resolution mode or the plethora of display modes let's talk about HDR because the e-l 2870 use support of HDR is listed as practically the first item on bankers website it's also one of the few 28 inch 4k TN monitors to support HDR which I suspect
is why it's been marketed around more than the cheapest monitors of equivalent specs but in reality that helps when he hit 70 U is not an HDR monitor it fails to support the three pillars of good HDR which are increased brightness increased contrast and increased color space and it fails almost every item in my HDR display checklist which I discussed in this review one of the corners will have that there I could do a comprehensive analysis of this monitor in the HDR
mode but the checklist really tells the whole story this panel is only capable of 300 nits of peak brightness which isn't even enough to get the panel display HDR 400 certified 300 minutes is not enough to convey bright highlights or flashes so you'll be left with an SDR viewing experience in that regard the panel does not support local dimming of any kind a local dimming is key for LCD panels as it allows very bright and very dark areas to coexist on the screen at the same time essentially raising the contour ratio of the panel without local dimming this monitor
is stuck in its basic a thousand to 1 contrast ratio which isn't high enough to convey the high dynamic range aspect of HDR the panel can adjust its entire backlight on-the-fly similar to traditional dynamic contrast modes but this is only useful when lighting changes between scenes or frames not when lighting differs within the frame and the backlight can't even get that bright anyway so again an SDR experience and finally the panel doesn't support a gamut
larger than srgb so you're getting SDR level colors rather than the wider gamut supported by true HDR displays BenQ does this 10-bit color support which is true and this is the most basic requirement of H John is really the only requirement to support HDR 10 and windows WCG mode and it's only 10 bit processing anyway the panel itself is 8 bit plus FRC I did test the HDR mode briefly but it was immediately clear this panel can't match true HDR displays as you
would have seen in the checklist anyway thank you really shouldn't be marketing this monitor as an HDR monitor and recommend anyone buying it just keep it on the STR mode moving on from that let's look at SDR performance because there's a chance this monitor could still be as standout you know non HDR display as we're still talking about an entry-level product this monitor does use a TN panel so viewing angles the average though surprisingly not terrible as I expect you for this technology brightness is acceptable for most indoor users at around 285
myths which falls a touch short of BenQ 300 nits claim contrast ratio though it's one of the weak aspects of its performance of just 822 one or thereabouts TN is the worst technology for contrast ratio and that's on show once again with these mediocre out-of-the-box results default color performance is average not terrible not amazing just fine for an entry-level display a grayscale delta a average of 3.0 is again hits pretty average but like with a lot of monitors the
CCT average is a little wacky out of the factory the most disappointing aspect is the default gamma of below 2.0 which really should be to point to as shipped performance is similar in saturation and color checker tests with Delta averages between 3.0 and 4.0 no standout issues here just a typical out of the box experience when this sort of display it is possible to improve performance through tweaking a few OSD settings using these settings here which mostly focus
on user color changes I was able to improve the grayscale delta-e to 1.90 and largely fix the gamma curve although gamma is slightly too high now it's also very difficult to fix the CCT curve without full calibration hence the weird shape is seeing here saturation and color checker tests do improve thanks to these tweaks but we're still not in the territory of a fully calibrated display at least when looking at the color checker results that said this is a pretty decent result from me OSD calibration plenty of displays don't allow you to get to this point as you might
expect running a full calibration using spectral cows Kalman 5 software tightens up most areas of this displays performance we get much better gamma and CCT curves both saturation and color checker tests are tightened to a delta a average under 2.0 that said as you can see from the saturation chart blue performance remains a little loose despite calibration the good news is calibration doesn't impact the contrast ratio significantly falling to around 800 and one-to-one which is better than other TN panels I've tested calibrated power consumption is also decent
for a display of this size at 52 watts as we displayed uniformly well the e/l 2870 u isn't exactly the most uniform display though high grade uniformity is typically reserved for professional monitors rather than budget displays like this one still I'd like to see a more uniform backlight especially as this isn't a curved display edge uniformity is slightly better than some curve displays I've reviewed but it's not as fantastic as other flat panels now we get into the interesting stuff response times Ben Q has used a TN panel here and claimed one millisecond
response time so I guess it's a typical figure 40 and displays however in practice average grade gray response times aren't even close to 1 millisecond I recorded a 6 point 5 3 millisecond average and there were only a few transitions that approached 1 millisecond 50% white to black was around 1.3 milliseconds and full white to full black around 2.0 milliseconds but most other transitions were well above the 5 to 6 millisecond mark so once again we've got a manufacturer using an unrealistic minimum grader gray metric than an average this TN
monitor is also pretty slow in general a 6.5 millisecond average puts it well in the territory of VA and IPS displays but without the benefit of those panels like increased contrast ratios and superior viewing angles transitions were within the 16.7 millisecond refresh rate window but the results are still very disappointing for a TN panel it gets even worse when you factor in the input lag the e/l 2870 u is the slowest display I've tested so far with a significant amount of input lag I'm not quite sure what the panel is doing perhaps Bank you simply opted for a cheap and
slow scale I guess whatever is the case there's a lot of input lag which is not great news for gamers there's not a whole lot more to say on the Ben QL 28 7 to you it's on the cheaper end of 4k monitors with the TN panel and basic design and across our performance tests this monitor ranges from average to poor it's possible to calibrate the monitor to a reasonable enough standard using OSD controls but uniformity is poor as our response times an input lag
particularly for a tiered display the e L 2870 U is currently available which is to be honest a bit too expensive for what this monitor offers I don't see any compelling reason to buy the spend cue option monitors with near identical specs from Samsung LG or others especially considering this monitors chunky and unimpressive design if HDR was legitimately functional and worked well then perhaps you could justify spending an extra bucks to get HDR but this isn't a true HDR monitored despite bank use advertising so it's definitely not worth even
considering its HDR support in your purchasing decision it's a disappointing conclusion really I like budget displays and it's great to see such cheap 4k monitors on the market these days but budget conscious shoppers should have their eyes on the plethora of options instead that's it for this review of the bank UEL 2870.
BenQ EL2870U 28 inch HDR 4K Gaming Monitor review
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