I think it's safe to say that I speak for the entire PC and gaming media
industry when I say that we are sick of
hearing marketing people running around saying this product is like optimized
for gaming it's the best for gamers I mean you guys probably feel the same way
hit that like button if you're tired of this crap I mean what does that even
mean for headphones and headsets it's often the manufacturer's way of saying
hey it's got rubbish sound but you don't care or even notice anyway because
you're going to be too distracted by the vibrant colors and flashing lights in
the case of motherboards it pretty much means hey this performs exactly the same
in every possible way as a non-gaming model but it's a different color enjoy
and traditionally for monitors it's meant TN panels they might have crummy
color in viewing angles but hey the pixels switch a little faster and
they're cheap so uh gaming but maybe this is different maybe
the xr3501 is truly a gaming monitor not
only because it's just not good enough for anything else but because even the
compromises that have been made legitimately make it better for gamers
could it be true I guess we'll find
out the master case 5 by Cooler Master gives you the freedom to truly make your
midtower PC case your own with a variety of modular parts and accessories click
on the link in the video description to learn more so I'm going to split this
video into two parts part one will be the speeds and feeds the specifications
because for the most part a monitor can be broken down into raw numbers with
better numbers equaling a better monitor that's more worthy of your hard-earned
money so let's kick it off with the physical tour if the industrial design
Trend towards slim panel assemblies and
hyper thin bezels reminiscent of a typical high fashioned runway model are
your thing then power to you but if you find more Beauty in the Ronda Rousey of
the world than the xr3501 might be your type this baby is
thick and imposing but not exceedingly
bulky nor is it by any means unattractive the stand is an elegant
looking dark chrome finish affair with a
red accent Cable Management hole through the back and not really much else to say
about it it does feature 20° of tilt but
no swivel or height adjust so you'll need a beefy vase amount and a transfer
kit if you want more flexibility in terms of I/O I give it a C+ in spite of
its size BenQ couldn't put the power supply inside the
xr3501 so they Supply an external power brick there is no built-in USB hub and
while having both DisplayPort and mini DisplayPort is nice there's no DV or
VGA if you're ever in a jam and the dual HDMI ports are version 1.4 rather than
2.0 meaning that the maximum reported refresh rate of the panel when cooked up
via HDMI is 60 HZ oh and I guess there's
also a headphone jack pass through down there slightly to the right of the iio
you will find the onscreen menu controls
which are not very well labeled and it's kind of hard to line up which button
corresponds to which dot I found it kind of frustrating to navigate but all the
usual options are in there you can control pixel overdrive you can set up
benq's black equalizer feature if you want to see a little bit more detail and
dark areas of the scene so I guess that leads us pretty well around to the
business end of any Monitor and let me
tell you there is some business going down there this is a 21 by9 my favorite
for those who have been out of the loop for a while aspect ratio monitor
measuring 35 in diagonally so a touch
larger but pretty similar to models that I've used in the past from l G and Acer
featuring get this a 2560 by 1080 8bit
amva panel running at 144 Hertz and
boasting as good as 4 millisecond response times wow and there's more to
it too unlike those monitors I mentioned
BenQ has added free sync adaptive refresh rate support a huge Plus for the
AMD Gamers out there and gone super aggro on the curvature of this display
with the xr3501 featuring an industry-leading 2000r curve that would
give a circle of these monitors just over half of the radius of a circle of
34 UC 97s holy crap but is that even a
good thing I mean obviously you could curve a display so much that you
wouldn't even be able to use it anymore so who has struck the right balance here
well I guess I'd say it depends on the use case for productivity and office use
I like to feel like there's a world Beyond whatever project I'm working on
at the moment a subtle curve is good in that case for gaming wrapping the
display around me letting it hold me tight that is an experience worth having
and that's the xr3501 in a nutshell
whether you're into Shooters racing games flight Sims whatever it is one
hell of an experience the pixel response times aren't anything to write home
about if you're coming from a fast TN like the assus
pg278q but the 144hz refresh rate and
outstanding contrast coupled with practically non-existent backlight bleed
and a lack of ips glow thanks to the amva panel more than makeup for it in my
mind and on the subject of the amva panel let's change gears and get
empirical for a minute this thing freaking rocks for color performance
these cman 5 charts show just over srgb
gamet cover and the best outof thee boox accuracy that I've seen since I got my
hands on my i1 basic pro2 display calibrator I mean we're talking almost
nothing with a Delta e of greater than two you could photo edit on this thing
right out of the box awesome right hold
on there is a big gotcha that I glossed
over earlier and I have to come back to now that resolution I mean I get it this
is a gaming Monitor and in that cont text this trade-off actually makes a lot
of sense because at 3440 by 1440 there
isn't a display interface today that can handle 144 Hertz not to mention that
hardly a graphics card in existence would be able to drive that resolution
at 144 frames per second but that many
pixels at this kind of size is not a
retina display and in fact as I mentioned in my video on the lg34c 67
it's quite unpleasant for me to use outside of games because onscreen
elements look unnaturally large like someone turned the scaling up too high
and some graphics even seem to lose Fidelity when viewed like this with
black lines ending up with weird colored glows around them but with all of that
said this is truly a gaming monitor it
is intended to be purchased and used by people who will game on it primarily
with creating spreadsheets in Excel as a distant afterthought and as such I
consider it a smashing success if you're
more productivity focused I still love my high resolution LGS if you're
somewhere in the middle Acer 75 HZ XR
341 CK is a great middle ground but if
you're a gamer to the core I agree with
benq's product design team's choice to go all in with this lower resolution and
super tight curve 144 htz panel and the
xr3501 is my new Top Dog gaming monitor
especially if you're running an AMD graphics card and you can take advantage
of freesync adaptive refresh rates so thanks for watching guys if this video
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next time