BenQ 2420T 3D Vision Lightboost 24 LED Monitor Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
2,229 words · ~11 min read
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now if you guys have watched my channel for a while it's possible you already
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know that the BenQ 2410 T was actually
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my favorite first generation 3D monitor
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that is by first generation I don't mean first generation cuz the first
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generation was that vonic one and that Samsung one both of which were 22 in
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which is not big enough and not highr enough uh for a proper gaming experience
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these days but by first generation I mean that went with the NVIDIA 3D Vision
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V1 glasses now I am very excited in that
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case today to have a look at the BenQ
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2420t so this is the successor to the
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2410 T and what it does is it brings a
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couple of wow it's really light a couple of interesting new features into the mix
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and the biggest one of those is of course
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light boost so it is fully compatible with NVIDIA's light boost technology
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which basically modulates the backlight
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of the LCD oh okay I think I opened it up upside down you can clearly see all
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the accessories here were uh piled in such a way as they would be easily taken
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out so why don't we go one by one uh what it does is it modulates the back
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light in order to create better separation between the left and the
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right image and also to reduce the amount of eye fatigue and finally last
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but not least to boost the amount of light that makes it to your eye uh it
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worked quite well on the ASUS 27 in that I tried so far but I am very very
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excited to see this one so what the heck
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is this Ben Q gaming is in the details it's
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a dust cover that is certainly a detail I've never seen a dust cover included
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with a monitor before okay we've got the uh base
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station it's right here so that goes in there fairly solid looking pieces so far
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we've got ah this is cool so this is called the s switch so the s switch is
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for navigating between a few different profiles so what you can do is you can
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throw a couple of different profiles on the monitor with respect to you know
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your brightness your contrast uh however you want to have it set up
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and then you can use that switch instead of navigating through the clumsy on
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screen menus you can use this switch to quickly switch between your different
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profiles so if you have a certain profile that's good for one kind of game but not as good for another kind you can
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switch to it like that and then uh you can store up to three profiles another
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thing that's kind of cool about it as well is the fact that you can download
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uh professional gamer profiles I shouldn't say professional Gamers they
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are professional Gamers so Heaton and spawn in particular have profiles you
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can download and you can use their exact settings and yeah we've got some
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distractions here so let me get these all kind of unwrapped and I'll get the monitor assembled we'll have a closer
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look at it so before I mount the monitor onto the stand I just want to have a
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quick look at what we've got included in terms of inputs so we've got a very wide
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variety including DisplayPort VGA DVI you're going to want to use this one for
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3D predominantly although I guess DisplayPort might also will it also
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work for 120 HZ uh two hdmis a USB for
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the built-in Hub and then a USB port that you could plug something into and
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this guy is for that s switch which was the thing for there's your power for
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quickly changing profiles so we're going to go ahead and mount this on here I
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also want to talk about some of the other unique features of this monitor
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before we actually fire it up because I'm really excited to test this one out
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uh so some of the other unique features are they're all new black equalizer so
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uh BenQ has added some image processing to this monitor that you know how a lot
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of the time whenever you have a shadow in a game you're almost tempted to turn
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Shadows off because anything with any kind of shade that the Shadows aren't
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soft enough so you lose all of the detail in there so Ben Q has according
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to what they're saying made it so that Shadows are going to lose less of the
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details but black will still be black because a lot of the time the only way
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to combat that is by turning gamma way up which means you lose a lot of the
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color Fidelity so you're either losing image Fidelity or you're losing color
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Fidel Fidelity one way or the other uh this is also an interesting one
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so display mode 17in 19in 19in wide 21.5
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in wide 22 wide and 23 wide I don't
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understand the point so you guys please
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post in the comments if you understand why you would want to quickly be able to
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uh virtualize a smaller monitor than the one that you actually purchased um
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please let me know uh why you would want to do that it includes smart scaling for
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fine-tuning these different picture sizes I mean the one scenario I can
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think of or it might make sense of something like Starcraft 1 where there's
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only one resolution that it really looks good at and otherwise it's going to look
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stupid so you might want to quickly scale your monitor to be a a 19in for
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example you know to play Starcraft 1 but that's the only scenario I can think of
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let me know if you can think of something else um in terms of included
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accessories and peripherals we've got a DVI cable a VGA cable a USB cable for
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the built-in Hub we've got a power connector and then let's go ahead and
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get this hooked up here so let's have a look at the overall aesthetic of the
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monitor before we get into the performance there's some pretty cool things for example the onscreen display
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is probably the smartest and easiest to navigate one that I've yet encountered
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you just use these touch buttons here
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you go and see it gives you a little context dependent menu so that's back uh
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you might want to go picture mod oh oh right we need to do that
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yes oh I'm in 3D so it's not letting me okay it's not letting me navigate right
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now but it's very intuitive see how uh depending on the context the
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functionality of the buttons changes all touch sensitive and very easy to use you
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can also however use this guy right here to scroll between things and that makes
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life once again even a little bit easier so we're going to just exit out of that
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um so industrial design I mean Ben Q on
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the 2410 I thought they did a great job on this one they've done pretty much
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exactly the same job nice thin bezel very thin monitor remember guys this is
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Led backlit so actually I'm fairly sure
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it's LED back lit hold on yeah it's LED
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back lit so that means that you've got um better power consumption in addition
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to uh actually surprisingly good backl
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bleed uh check this out it comes with a headphone whoops a headphone hanger on
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the back so you can hang up your headphones behind your monitor if you're not using them um yeah there's no oh oh
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look there is there's swivel there's height
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adjust there's
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tilt and no you don't have any pivot so
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it's got pretty much your basic functionality now I want to talk about
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the monitor itself so it does use a matte screen which uh many of you do
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find preferable personally I find that to be very preferable and and in terms
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of the 3D performance it is outstanding
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so you see how bright areas like this
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look the part of that is because of light boost technology so as soon as I
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look through I wonder if you look through the GL yeah so if you look through the glasses you'll see more like
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the brightness that I'm seeing which is significantly brighter than actually you
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know what I bet you can also see if you look through the glasses so that's
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significantly brighter than 3D Vision V1 I actually want you here let's get a
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little bit closer and let's look at our character here so I want you guys to
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look for any separation or or I want you to look for
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any ghosting of the Right image you're looking through the left ey right now
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and I'm willing to bet you can find almost none and I call it ghosting but
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that's more colloquial uh what I really mean is cross talk or crossover so what
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light boost has done in addition to dramatically increasing the brightness
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is it has given significantly less uh noise between one
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image the image you're supposed to be seeing and the image that you do see or
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rather the imagees because that's how it's been a lot of the time in the past
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for me anyway um so in something like try 2 which is absolutely beautiful in
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3D I can play for an extended period of
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time on 3D Vision 2 I know because I've done it in the past however with 3D
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Vision 1 I get a headache after about 15 minutes it used to be on 3D Vision one I
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would do just fine with a DLP projector
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but as soon as I went over to an LCD because of the uh the stereo cross talk
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seeing the left image in my right eye and vice versa I I just wasn't able to
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really use it past a little while like it's cool and it's fun and it's great
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but it would give me a headache after a while so remember guys light boost is
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compatible with 3D Vision V1 glasses looks exactly the same through the V
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actually I should double check that let's see if it looks exactly the same yeah looks exactly the same through the
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V1 glasses as it does through the V2s the benefit of the V2 glasses is that
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they do have the bigger frames so you are less likely to see sort of you know
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black cut off instead of just the screen
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that you're looking at although personally I don't find the v1's that uh
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that bothersome I've never actually uh demoed them side by side like this
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before so I think that pretty much covers it thank you for checking out my
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overview of the BenQ 2420 so far out of
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the light boost compatible 3D Vision 2
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ready monitors that I've tried it is I'd
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say a worthy competitor I don't think I can necessarily declare it to be the
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winner because unlike the 2410 which was obviously better than its competition
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which had things like glossy screens sort of critical design design you know
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errors and judgment in my opinion um the
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the ASUS 27 in that I've tried already is very good as well so right now
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without trying them side by side I'd say it's about a for all intents and
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purposes equal both of them provide an excellent gaming experience with very
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little stereo cross talk so it's going to to come down to whether you want a 24 in or a 27 in between those two right
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now like all 3D ready 120 HZ monitors
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you do have less overall color depth uh
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available to you because there is less processing going on with the image so
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what that means is that okay I'm not going to be able to
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get back to the Windows desktop it means you're going to have less Rich cders
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overall this is a byproduct of trying to make such a fast panel with such quickly
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switching pixels so you have to decide do you want the
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Lightning Fast gaming performance do you want 120 HZ remember 120 HZ is a benefit
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whether you're running 3D or not because
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you do have a smoother overall experience or do you prefer Rich colors
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in which case you're going to want to go with an IPS or a VA or a PLS type panel
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so thank you for checking out this unboxing and first look at the BenQ
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2420t don't forget to subscribe to L Tech tips for more unboxings reviews and
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other computer