BenQ EL2870U 28 inch HDR 4K Gaming Monitor | Optimized for Gaming with Fastest 1ms Response Time

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Supports everything I need for my Xbox One X HDR 10 freesync 4K 60 FPS 1ms response time The controls on the monitor kind of suck but I don’t mess with those anyways

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BenQ 28 inch 4K HDR10 Monitor (EL2870U), UHD 3840x2160, FreeSync, 1ms Response Time, Eye-Care, Brightness Intelligence Plus, HDMI, DP, Built-in Speakers -Update- Something happened to the HDR, it suddenly stopped working and it looked like an old CRT with magnet damage. Let me know if anyone else had this issue but I returned it for now and got an LG 27uk650-w and I am very happy with it. -Disclaimer- First of all, the reviews on here are confusing as they are all grouped together, this is for the el2870u (28" 4k HDR). I have only used this for my Xbox One X and not PC (my PC is old and does not even have an HDMI output). -1st Impression- I bought this monitor for my new Xbox One X as it seemed to fit all the specs. My first impression is that the picture is very clear but also very bright. So bright in fact that the colors looked a little washed out until I calibrated the brightness and contrast as well as the other settings (which are posted at the end). With the proper settings, I was impressed by the color and contrast despite being a TN panel with LED backlighting. -HDR- Yes it supports HDR10, but not it is not true HDR. It is barely a third of the required brightness to qualify for true HDR but it still made most games look better. My biggest complaint is that when an HDR source is detected, it goes into either HDR or Cinema HDR mode and you cannot adjust any of the settings. Without an HDR source, these two modes emulate HDR but I advise avoiding them and just using your own custom settings. On the Xbox One X, HDR was a hit or miss, most games looked great but some were washed out or too bright. There are some known HDR issues with certain games so I think that it is probably not the monitors fault. Despite being not true HDR, the games with working HDR looked fantastic and noticeably better with it on. -Construction- I was a little surprised how heavy and solid it felt when I first took it out of the box. The stand is pretty sturdy and doesnt really wobble but it is not very customizable. All you can do is tilt it up and down but luckily it can be mounted to a 3rd party stand. The buttons are mounted on the bottom and also feel very sturdy. The bezels are pretty thick and not ideal for more than one monitor setups. -Verdict- Pretty good value for what you get: A very clear 4K picture, great color and pretty good contrast once the settings have been adjusted, and hit or miss HDR depending on the game. This is a solid 4 star monitor but I got it during a BenQ promotion for 15% off which put it above the other monitors at that price point so that is why I gave it 5 stars. Thanks for reading my novel, a lack of reviews prompted me to write it. -Settings- The following settings are what I was using at the time of the review that look pretty good on my One X: - Mode: User - Brightness: 20 - Contrast: 56 - Sharpness: 5 - Gamma: 5 - Color Temp: Normal - Hue: 50 - Saturation: 65 - Everything Else: Default

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Theres a glut of cheap 4k monitors, and quite frankly so far they havent been very impressive. I picked this up for $450 on a cyber monday deal and after plenty of delays it finally arrived. Simply put, next to my LG panel IPS 27 1440p display and my ancient but sturdy Dell Ultrasharp 2405FPW, its the weakest display. The resolution is fantastic. The size is great. The feature set is solid with multiple ports (I only need one but whatever) and USB 3.1c hub (sans some of the more extreme features like a SD card slot). FRC is nice, although it only supports 40hz-60hz meaning not an extreme range but still welcome. That said: Stick this next to a 27 inch iMac from yesteryear it looks cheap and its entirely due to the lack of uniformity on the panel. First theres the very striking "shadow" across the top 1/8inch of the screen. Then theres the color shift, no matter where you head is, just scanning across a uniform color shows the weakness of the panel as flat color looks anything but flat. . Fast scrolls also reveal the overzealous low latency correction (you can see bizarre ghosting of red on a white background as a yellow halo). Also strangely, Mac OS doesnt seem to want to detect the scaling resolutions, (not a big deal as you can option click the scaled resolutions). Precision color this is not. If youre not a discerning type, this probably is a "good enough" for many users although I find the color shift supremely annoying. Basically, if youre happy with this display, never stick it next to a quality display as youll become very unhappy with it. Also I couldnt seem to get in Windows 10-bit to work at 60 Hz, which makes me believe that its only available at 30 Hz. In any case, its not true 10 bit as its an 8-bit panel with FRC, meaning, it accepts the 10-bit color space and simulates colors by switching between nearest-neighbors in the 8 bit range between each cycle. Over all, though the monitor is much easier to assemble/disassemble which will make my return quick and easy. I guess you get what you pay for, the BenQ PD3200u even at $200 more than the EW3270Us current price seems like money supremely well spent. Its IPS or bust at the 32 inch size as its too easy to see the color shifting....

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I bought this monitor exactly a week ago. Not counting today, the monitor has been working great! Its bright and the colors are decent.. although maybe Ill tinker with some of those settings soon. The 4k resolution is a grand upgrade from 1080p. Having 4 times the real estate is extremely helpful when programming, modeling, gaming, etc. The issue I have run into today is that the screen is flickering and turning off A LOT. I do not know if this issue is with the monitor, or with the (also brand new) display port cable. I have updated the monitor driver, restarted my computer, unplugged/replugged in the display port cable.. and the problem persist. I now have switched to HDMI and so far, there isnt any flickering or turning off. Its only been 15 mins but with how it was flickering/shutting off every few seconds.. this is a success. Im curious is this monitor has issues using the display port in general or if my display port cable is defective. Hopefully there isnt a more serious problem with the monitor. Ill update this review if/when anything changes. EDIT: Its now been a month and using HDMI seems to work better but I still get the issue where the screen goes black randomly as if its turning off, then comes back on. Its a strange issue but as long as its not happening at a high rate then I guess Ill survive. Id be iffy about buying another monitor from BenQ due to this weird issue though.

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Cant factory reset (well I can reset, but nothing happens), cant get "blue" tint to go away. Worked great for about 2-3 months - then literally while I was working it flipped to this blue hue for no reason and all settings are grayed (minus toggled HDR / Cinema HDR and a few other pointless settings). Im connected via DP - no changes to graphic card drivers or anything. Literally happened while I had word open.

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Bought this monitor as I wanted a HDR monitor for my PS4 Pro. Now I know naysayers will say it is t true hdr but I could care less. There is definitely a noticeable difference when it is on. Battlefield V for example is jaw dropping. I was using a Asus VP28UQG which is a 4K non hdr monitor. Really a great monitor but I prefer this BenQ easily. Being a va panel the colors and contrast ratio are just incredible. It may be only 60hz but that doesn’t matter to me since the PS4 is locked at that anyhow. Every game I have played has looked amazing and ran buttery smooth. Heck I won my first 3 games in a row on Apex Legends after setting it up. Really a great monitor and a absolute steal for around $200

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As many customers and professional reviewers have pointed out, this model of monitor is incapable of showing a gamut of contrast and color that is anywhere near HDR quality. In fact, its contrast and color gamut are worse than many high-range gaming monitors that predate any HDR standard. You have to set this monitor to permanent HDR mode by manipulating the buttons on it and turning off Brightness+ and other ambient brightness altering settings, and only then is its brightness and vibrancy just equal to a normal 80$ display. Basically if you want a good image and good gaming, get a 1440p screen with great brightness and contrast. Ignore this HDR sham since theres obviously zero guarantee from BenQ or any other company that they will give you a real HDR monitor for the money. Its just a sticker and an advertising campaign that means absolutely nothing in this case. A complete fraud. Ive owned it for nearly a year now and while I noticed the lack of HDR capability right away, other annoyances have taken time to show themselves. About half the time when my PC goes on standby, the monitor doesnt come back from standby automatically, so all my active windows and taskbar end up shunted off to whatever screen Windows 10 now thinks is the primary instead of where I need them and where I left them. Its an annoying pointless task that Ive had to repeat many times now. For awhile the monitor speakers kept trying to assert themselves as the primary audio device despite me never using them deliberately ever, so while I was listening on headphones audio would start blaring through the terrible monitor speakers and filling my house. Imagine how awkward THAT can be, and the paranoia that your PC is going to blare your media files at maximum volume instead of through your headphones for no apparent reason. Once I disabled the monitor speakers as devices for the 2nd or 3rd time it finally stuck, though. I had to shut off most of the comfort features, such as Brightness+ or whatever they call it, because they degraded the image quality very hard.

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UPDATE 1-3-19: As mentioned below I had my monitor replaced by BenQ due to an HDR defect. They have some of the best customer service I have experienced in a long time. They helped me out very quickly and with no hassle at all. Ive been using their new replacement monitor since my original review date and havent had any issues. I cant confirm that the firmware was indeed updated and that this was the issue as the monitor does not list the firmware version anywhere for me to compare. The monitor does however work as desired and their 3 year warranty and amazing customer service has warranted me to change my review from 3 to 5 stars. ORIGINAL REVIEW: Read the reviews for this specific monitor, A significant number of people are having repetitive HDR issues. I ordered the product because it had a great review rating, I didn’t even bother to look into them much but wish I would have now. overall my final view of this product is going to based on how BenQ deals with the situation and if the monitor i receive fixes my issues. Had this monitor for 3 months before the issues started. During this time the monitor was pretty great, rich colors and great for gaming, very responsive. The colors were a little off especially with blacks which aren’t very deep. Other than that, the HDR and 4k were very nice, it was nothing much more or less than you’d expect for a $400 gaming monitor until I ran into this issue. The issue came when I turned my monitor on one day and all of a sudden, all the colors that were in HDR mode were washed out and flat. After reading carefully on Amazon and in forums I noticed that a lot of people have this issue with this specific monitor. You don’t see it reflected as much in the reviews because all the BenQ product reviews are twitstered together. This means that the star rating and reviews you see for this product are not all actually for this product, its for all the twistered products together. I contacted Amazon about it and unfortunately as of late at least, their chat customer service is getting increasingly more difficult to deal with and far less helpful than they used to be, every person you talk to gives you different answers and reasons as to why they decided they cant help you. So I contacted BenQ instead and their customer service was pretty Amazing. They had a new monitor being shipped to me within minutes of me contacting them and the monitor has a 3 year warranty. Their service is very good, I was very surprised at how fast they were and how easy they were to work with. Andy L. in their service department was really great and his service changed my mind completely about wanting to keep this product or buy future BenQ products. Ill update this post with any new information after I receive my monitor. BenQ told me that the HDR issue is most often caused by firmware which makes me feel a little better.

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I love everything about this monitor except what I bought it for. HDR will not work. Cannot stream 4K or HDR from Vudu. Cannot stream 4k HDR from Netflix or Amazon Prime. Ive tried 3 different Displayport 1.4 cables to rule them out. I have a GTX 1080 which i know has dispalyport 1.4. BenQs website and several reviews say the monitor is comes with Displayport 1.4 connection, but other reviews say its only Displayport 1.2, which cant handle the data needed for HDR. I can turn HDR on in Windows 10, but the selection to stream in HDR is grayed out and cannot be turned on. I dont know if its a Windows problem or BenQ is lying about its Displayport capability or its HDR capabilities. Other than that....its a nice monitor. Update 2-10-19: Turns out there was a Windows 10 update that completely screwed up HDR streaming. Its become an issue for a lot of people. And Vudu doesnt support HDR or 4K to desktops. Games that are HDR capable WILL display proper 4K HDR.

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I had high hopes for the 32" 4K BenQ HDR that is supposed to have more colors because of 10 bit. But its really not that great. Im surprised they get such good reviews. I have an ASUS 32" PQ321 from a few years back. Side by side you can really see the BenQ is not that great. Viewing angles are TERRIBLE, you move your head from side to side in front of it, or especially up and down, it CHANGES the brightness/contrast. I dont get that from the Asus. I thought the BenQ was going to be my new main monitor but no, went back to the ASUS and just kept the BenQ as a secondary monitor for email etc. Its ok for secondary duties for the price, so not sending it back. HDR seems pointless, I get more contrast and deep blacks and colors on the old ASUS. If I turn HDR off its washed out so I do keep it on. Whatever B.I.+ is thats useless too, just makes it washed out. Have tried all the settings. From below viewing angle, its matching my ASUS prettty well but as soon as I stand up it washes out. So if it werent for the bad changes with viewing angles, it would be ok - at least as good. But yeah, not that impressed. 2 stars for being better than SCEPTRE $200 POC i got a few months ago. Just dont try to skimp on monitors if youre doing professional work. :/

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