BenQ XL2420TE 144Hz Gaming LCD Unboxing & Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,979 words · ~9 min read
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the fractal designed toine R4 case gets featured on the wow build logs of the
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week section more than any other case click now to learn more about it welcome
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to my unboxing an overview of the latest and greatest from BenQ this is the 2420
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te whose main advantages over the
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previous Flagship 2420t 2420 TX for the one with the
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built-in transmitter is the fact that it's capable of a 144 HZ refresh rate
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versus 120 HZ so while the 144 HZ
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refresh rate isn't necessarily needed for something like 3D Vision if you just
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want as many frames displayed on the
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screen per second as freaking possible
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then you'll want that uh it also has
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what they're calling their zero flicker technology which means that at any
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backlight setting you're not going to have annoying flick in which can be
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fatiguing on the eyes particularly during long gaming sessions and those
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are kind of the key differences here but we'll walk through the rest of it as we keep going here so it's LED backlit it's
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Windows 8 compatible I should sure as bloody heck hope so it's NVIDIA 3D
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Vision ready including light boost technology which dramatically improves
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the 3D Vision experience making it much brighter and less blurry and sort of
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gross in general they're the official tournament monitor of Intel extreme
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Masters and I believe this is also an MLG endorsed model as well so it has
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some gaming sort of optimized features including the ability to set different
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profiles for particular games in fact it comes pre-loaded with a couple of
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different FPS modes optimized for CS 1.6 and CS source of all things there are
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other fpss that people play these days but whatever um and then you can also
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download profiles from your favorite Gamers which is kind of neat it comes
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with a little controller here so you can either use the redesigned onscreen
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display or and with the buttons on the side of the monitor to control it or you
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can actually thumb through things with the wheel here select things go back and
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press different profiles and change things on the fly with the controller it's actually kind of a good
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implementation we've used it before on the 2420 t uh it comes with a disc so
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you know what to do with that a dual link DVI cable because this runs at 1920
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x 1080 with a high refresh rate it does need a dual link DVI cable for optimal
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per performance it comes with a built-in USB hub so there's a USB to usbb Cable
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as well as a power cable VGA cable you can throw that away with the disc as
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well and then we've also got the height adjustable stand and a dust cover which
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they include with many of their premium grade gaming monitors these days they're
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using a hard foam however it is extremely well packed and extremely
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thick hard foam with lots of cushioning around the corners so you can see right
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there that they've got about a good inch and a half of corner protection which is
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extremely important because that is where things like this tend to get
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broken so we'll walk you through the assembly process here really quickly
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line the three holes with The Notches here there's a little arrow that
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indicates where you want it to end up facing front so we'll go ahead and put
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that in
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there and then turn it until it locks
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and once it's locked you can go ahead and rotate it freely just like that to
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lock it in place you can either use your hands or a flathead screwdriver to go
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ahead and tighten that next up we peel
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all the plastic off of it I really wish
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they'd just stop putting glossy surfaces on these things entirely because it's
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more work to protect them with plastic more work to take the plastic off when
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I'm putting it together and then more work to keep it clean later on after the
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fact and it just doesn't look any better but whatever okay so let's go ahead and
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and show you the final assembly step which is to go ahead and click it into
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place like that and you might have gone Linus how are you going to show me all
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the interfaces on the bottom if you've gone and assembled it first it's going
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to be more difficult no no don't worry I'm getting to that so it has height
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adjust so actually a fairly wide range of height adjust quite nice indeed
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you've got your tilt okay you got your
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swivel okay which I showed you before already and finally aha yes there we go
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pivot love to see pivot it's something I actually only really use to access the
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ports because I'm not a photographer and if I was a photographer I wouldn't be
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using this monitor because as far as color accuracy goes and color depth this
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is not going to compare very favorably to an IPS VA or PLS panel it's mostly
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optimized for Speed which is great for gaming but not uh professional sort of
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video or photo work here's the built-in Hub so there's the input for that as
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well as a single output and then the other two are actually sorry I'm going
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to go ahead and do this to you are on the side of the monitor right here as
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well as a headphone pass through if you're using HDMI in which is kind of
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nice to have you've also got two HDMI in so that's another thing that makes this
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kind of gaming optimized is that you can have your PS3 and your Xbox and your PC
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all kind of hooked up to at the same time switch between them pretty easily you've got that useless VGA port please
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please for the love of whatever you believe in don't plug anything into that
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and finally you've got DisplayPort which is not dumb and then last but not
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least you've got the little control pod thing that actually docks um with
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magnetically to the side of the monitor which also has plastic on it there you
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go so it sits there held in by like a little magnet thing and you go ahead and
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plug that in if you do decide to use it but you don't have to it's completely
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removable should you prefer that approach last but not least you've got a
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Kensington lock which I think is more for like tournament people than actual
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like regular people who don't usually lock down their monitors but if you have
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a whole bunch of these set up at a tournament that's not necessarily a bad idea to have implemented and then check
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this out another gamer optimized feature is the headphone hook on the back of a
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monitor so I'm going to run and grab a pair of headphones so I can show you how that might work in a real world scenario
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boom so that way you can have your headphones hanging behind your monitor
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instead of on the front of your desk if you wanted them oh yeah it also has a
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carrying handle so the carrying handle is kind of sturdy well well not kind of
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sturdy it's very sturdy but the thing I don't like about it is it's not very
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well balanced so you can see when I hold it like this it kind of hangs like that
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but I don't really know what else they'd be able to do about that other than
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repositioning it to the top of the panel for example which might cause it to lose
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some of its strength so I think that pretty much wraps it up for the actual
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unboxing portion so stay tuned guys we'll be right back holy crap it's the
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first 120hz monitor that doesn't have
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color depth then color accuracy that looks completely balls unbelievable I
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actually love the 2420 te I'm extremely
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impressed by this monitor normally the compromises that get made when you amp
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up the refresh rate is generally with respect to image quality particularly in
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terms of color depth now color depth refers to that banding that exists when
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you have similar colors that aren't quite the same and the monitor just
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isn't capable of reproducing enough in between so you end up with like these
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chunks of colors you'll see this a lot of the time with movies and things like
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dark scenes you'll see like big blocks of like slightly lighter brown and Big
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Blocks of slightly darker brown because either the uh bit rate of the file is
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very low or the display you're watching on isn't very good so that is not a
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problem on this monitor which I'm extremely impressed by not only that but
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this is more than a 120 HZ display this is a 144hz display and it's really the
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first one that I can recommend without an asteris because before I'd say yeah I
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recommend 120 HZ monitors if the refresh
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rate is really important to you if it's
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really important and then what I would always say is I personally prefer higher
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resolution and better color accuracy for
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a more immersive gaming experience now I'm only actually left with one of those
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points are you going to be doing any professional you know Photoshop work by
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the way we have the Star Citizen hanger module I'm running on here are you going to be able to do any professional
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Photoshop or like color correction work on here the answer is no it's not that
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good but it's so much better than the typical TN gaming monitor that I'm going
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to take that caveat away from my recommendation so the only thing that's
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really left is you still can't get high resolution monitors that are also High
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refresh rate and this is due to a limitation in the bandwidth that can be
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delivered by most of the display interfaces we have today so something
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like HDMI 2.0 or better DisplayPort 1.2
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implementations could address this in the future but for now this is what
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we've got and as far as the 2420 te goes
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I am extremely impressed guys I
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wholeheartedly recommend this monitor it's expensive but it is so much better
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than the last generation T and TX just
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due to the fact that the color reproduction is dramatically improved
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that uh I mean I other than just kind of gushing about it for another three
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minutes I don't know what else to say benq's got a winner on their hands here
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and compared to other 3D monitors that I've seen this is hands down the one to
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it leave a comment if you're as freaking surprised as me that this thing doesn't
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look bad I mean no offense to you know
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everyone else who tried to build a 3D monitor that was high refresh rate but
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what can I say and uh I think that's pretty much it