BenQ XL2720T 120Hz 3D Gaming LCD Monitor Unboxing
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
2,029 words · ~10 min read
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welcome to a very exciting unboxing my only complaint about benq's 2420 tx
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which if you guys do or don't recall i'll tell you either way uh is the 3d
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monitor that we use for all of our 3d vision testing because unlike most other
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3d monitors that i've ever tried i don't get a headache using the 2420 tx because
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it's all about pixel response times when it comes to a smooth 3d experience i
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mean with that said no lcd is perfect um
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and something like a dlp projector or you know hopefully at some point in the
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future like an OLED display i really wish sed had taken off anyway uh the
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point is the 2420 tx is the monitor we
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use for our 3d testing because it's awesome and my only complaint about it
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was that it's 24 inch as opposed to 27 inch which uh benq's competitor ASUS has
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had on the market for quite a while so in the top we find a stand i realized i
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should have been showing this to you as we run what's the point of an unboxing if i don't even show you what i'm
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looking at here's their little control module so you can control the on-screen
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display with a little wheel and a click and a back and a 1-2-3 for profiles and
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things like that there's also a dust cover we'll show you that later as well as some cables you know what i give up
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i'm not even gonna bother showing you guys that okay moving right along we've
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got uh oh yeah
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see you always know a monitor is like better when it comes in more pieces
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trust me on this you guys if a monitor comes in one piece it's because it's
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like super low profile which means it probably has no height adjust it
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probably has like no uh no swivel or
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anything like that it's probably a super basic monitor so
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this packing material up here um
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it's kind of scary for unboxers because at some point everything you unbox has
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to be re-boxed and look at all these compartments
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nice thick foam though overall so i'm not too worried about the product being
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damaged in any way even though it is a bit of a a bit of a weaker style of foam
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and it can only take one serious impact unlike
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a softer closed cell foam the good news about it though is that this was shipped
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just in this box alone and nothing inside even the foam itself was damaged
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so here's the lcd panel itself which has about an inch of foam around the outside
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edges here you can see there's less than an inch here but there's like there's a
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gap there so it's it's fine it's not actually the monitor up against the edge
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of the box and then it sits face down in this guy right here
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27 inch monitors some people find that the dot pitch of a
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1080p monitor at 27 inch is a little bit
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a little bit low that is to say that the pixel density isn't quite high enough it
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depends how close you sit to it personally i love large format high
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resolution monitors but many people also don't mind it and even
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find it more enjoyable because what it does and this is just it's kind of an
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indirect side effect is it makes text larger it makes everything generally
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larger so particularly if you don't see well a larger monitor with not necessarily a
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super high resolution can be a very good choice all right so the default picture
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mode on this monitor is FPS which is designed for FPS games if you do not
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intend to play FPS games press any of the control keys on the right of the
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monitor and select picture mode to change the setting huh okay so we can go
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ahead and pull that off this is the official monitor of the Intel xtreme
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masters gaming tournament which is kind of cool so i'm sure some kind of validation was
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done somewhere along the line that it's uh that it's good mind you if it's anything like the 2420t
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our tx which are basically the same monitor one with a transmitter one with
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not then it should be pretty good and we're going to go ahead and assemble it and then we'll be back in a moment
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assembly is pretty straightforward align the arrow on the bottom of the stand to
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the arrow on the base right there
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well you can try to do that
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simple as long as you're not me there you go rotate it to put it in place
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then twist in the screw on the bottom either with your hands or with a phillips head
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screwdriver no video would be complete without one
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of my classic phone size comparisons so this is the htc one it's not a
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particularly slim monitor however the electronics that go into these high
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speed displays necessitate a little bit of a thicker form factor with more
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ventilation so you can see there's actually ventilation holes all along the
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back here that are covered in a plastic until you remove them
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there we go let's go ahead and do that and then we can mount it to the stand
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which is as simple as aligning it correctly which is easier to do when
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you're on the other side okay apparently it's really easy to do because i got it just aligning it and then letting it pop
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into place you can then remove the monitor by pressing this button and
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picking it up just like that once it's all assembled you have a lot of
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different options in terms of adjustments so you have height adjust
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there you go well that's good that's about six inches of height adjust you've got tilt
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just like that and you've got swivel
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no pivot on this one pivot remember guys is when you can change it oh okay it
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does have pivot nevermind okay so it has pretty much the entire range of
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adjustments although i really can't imagine anyone actually gaming like this
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but but one thing that i do use the pivot on my monitor for is plugging in my
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connectors and then putting it back so there you go it might be handy for
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you
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included accessories wise things are pretty straightforward here's that dust cover that i showed you guys before so
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if you're worried about dust on your monitor then you can use it there you go
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we're just going to take that off for now though uh let's talk a little bit about the features so it's a 120 hertz
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monitor which is required for 3d it is also better for not 3d particularly if
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you're worried about the maximum responsiveness remember any 60hz monitor
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no matter how little lag there is in the rest of your gaming setup whether it's
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your mouse or whether it's your graphics card or any other delay in something
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happening to reaching your eyes on the screen a 60hz monitor at best can do
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16.6 milliseconds assuming it's perfect
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um of sort of bet of worst case scenario
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uh latency to getting the image to your eyes a 120 hertz monitor cuts that in
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half it will bring you more images so that the worst case scenario for an
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update will be not as bad by half so there you go that was a very convoluted
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explanation but i hope you understand display modes can be changed to 17 19 19
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why 21 and a half wide 22 wide 23 wide 23.6 wide and 24 wide this is handy
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because what it allows you to do is practice at a different aspect ratio or
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a different monitor size before sort of walking in blind to a tournament setting
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where you're required to use a different monitor smart scaling for fine-tuned
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picture sizes that's basically the same thing as display mode and their black
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equalizer for optimum visibility will pull details out of blacks rather than
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crushing them so what it does do is it makes the blacks a little bit less deep
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a little bit less true but you're compromising that for the sake of being
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able to see someone crouching in a shadow or being able to see a unit in an rts that's kind of hidden in the fog of
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war or whatever else or outside of your visibility or something like that so
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you're able to see details that you couldn't otherwise uh been key is rating it at a one millisecond greater grade
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response time and it does support light boost which is 3d vision 2 sort of
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we're going to be back in a moment because our lighting just dramatically changed
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more handy features it comes with a handle as well as a headphone hook which
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i personally think is kind of cool it's nice to have somewhere to keep your headphones as well as a built-in usb hub
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hub so there's your headphone output on the side of the monitor as well as two
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usb ports so you could actually plug all of your peripherals into the side of the
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monitor down here we find all of the i o so it
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supports there's more usb hub so there's your usb in which is going to give you
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three usbs out between the one on the bottom and the two on the side dual HDMI
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in which is cool because if you're a console gamer and you don't have like
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maybe you're in a dorm or something like that you don't have you know a monitor and a tv and like another tv then you
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can just switch the inputs and you can go okay xbox input pc input and switch
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between them just like that so dual HDMI dual link dvi this is important because
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this one is going to be the one that's going to run NVIDIA 3d vision you have
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to have 120 hertz support and HDMI at
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1920x1080 does not support it it's not fast enough
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vga seriously if you're using a monitor like this was vga that's a problem
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there's the last usb output which goes to that little controller which actually
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clips to the side of the monitor on whichever side you prefer using a little
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magnet so you can put it right there and then run this up to that output and last
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but not least it supports displayport in
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there's your power in right there and
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included cables are dual link tvi use this one
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power vga and usb a to b which is what will power
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and provide data for the built-in hub last but not least touch sensitive
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controls but not the bad kind of touch sensitive controls these ones have audio
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audible feedback so you press them they go beep and then they also light up
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which is really really cool and the menu pops up right here i actually found
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using these more convenient than using this one but that's just me also it
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looks like this monitor does have a built-in 3d emitter much like the 2420
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tx as opposed to the 2420t which means
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you don't have to have the little pyramid-shaped 3d vision emitter i
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thought maybe i had one handy but it looks like i don't don't forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips for more
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