BenQ EX3203R Curved Gaming Monitor 32 inch WQHD 144Hz Refresh Rate and FreeSync 2 | DisplayHDR 400

As much as I wanted to love this monitor based off the specs, I just cant live with the major flaw in the sampleI received. About 1 cm from the bezel on every side of the screen there is a noticeably darker area where the contrast is much lower than the rest of the screen. I tested with multiple sources and connections, all showed the same results. Its as if this 35 in monitor has a 34 inch backlight. The much less expensive Acer ED7 34 inch curved monitor I am testing against does not display this problem. Additionally the height adjustment of the included stand is very limited in range and does not swivel, which the ED7 does. The bottom bezel is much thicker than the sides or top, taking a bit away from the near bezel-free look. One of the main reasons I purchased this monitor is the HDR feature. My HDR10 4K Samsung TV is quite stunning with HDR source material so being an video/audio enthusiast I wanted this feature for a computer monitor I spend so much time with. I knew going on that this monitor does not have a high contrast ratio needed for HDR nor does it have local dimming zones needed to truly create the effect. Nevertheless the visual impact of HDR material is noticeable and impressive on this monitor. However the black box 1 cm from the edge of the bezel surrounding this screen kills it for me. Just too noticeable and jarring. As a sanity check I had my wife sit and look at the monitor with me and she also noticed it immediately as well, and shes not normally one to notice these sort of things that I nitpick at in TVs/monitors. Will be returning this to Amazon. If anyone has a suggestion for a freesync 35 inch UWQHD curved monitor with at least 100 Hz refresh rate and HDR compatibility please let me know!

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I bought this BenQ monitor as an upgrade over a 27" 1080p Asus IPS display. I use this primarily for gaming, both on PC and Xbox One, as well as streaming Netflix/Hulu and normal internet browsing. Ive only been using this for 6 days at the time of writing this review, but I will point out some key points of my experience thus far. 1. The curve is amazing for gaming. Took a little getting used to, but the feeling of peripheral vision it creates in FPS games makes a huge difference. 2. There are no built-in speakers, but there is an aux port so you can easily use your own speakers or headphones. 3. This is NOT an IPS panel display. I believe it is a VA panel. The blacks are not as deep/accurate as IPS but they still hold their own against many other gaming monitors Ive seen from other big name brands. 4. The monitor does not ship with a standard DP to DP cable, which you will need to get anything higher than 60hz at 1440p. It does include DP to mini DP, as well as standard HDMI and USB-C cables. 5. Ive had zero issues with using HDR in Windows 10 as I saw reported in several other reviews before I made the purchase. The monitor switches between HDR and my custom, non-HDR setting seamlessly when I use any applications that dont support it. 6. The monitor does sleep and wake-up when the input devices are powered off/on. 7. It ships in a ridiculously large box. Overall, I think this thing is a steal at the price it is being sold for. I am definitely happy with my purchase and have no problems recommending it to everyone. If youre having trouble deciding, just go ahead and pull the trigger on this one. You will not regret it!

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Ok, I wanted to love this monitor and I purchased it for a relatively fair price. For some reason it didn’t play well with my nVidia set up. I am running a 1080ti and expected to have no issues supporting this panel with my rig. I was stepping up from a 27” 2K monitor to this for a more immersive experience. When I booted up my first game I noticed some flicker. When I checked my FPS the PC was running at a solid 99. I changed setting on the monitor, in the drivers, within the game itself and even tried every cable option I had. For some reason my 99 FPS LOOKED like 9. So let’s just call this microstutter. The strangerst part of this was intermittently I was able to get this monitor to run smoothly with adaptive sync enabled within my drivers, but that was only until I would restart a game or my PC. The monitor is beautiful, but I can’t live with an expensive item that will only cause me frustration. I am now in the process of returning.

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I was on a quest for the best monitor to replace my former dual Asus PA248s from 8 years ago. Looking to use for CAD and web browsing primarily, but I also game so gaming performance is a nice to have. Biggest criteria are no backlight bleed, text must render crisply, zero flicker, and no dead pixels on arrival. I went through four other monitors in a month, all with issues, before settling on this one. The samsung 43, 34, 34 quantum dot, and a Dell U3818DW. VA panels are superior, IMO. IPS is great, but the rich black and no backlight bleed is worth the minor hit in image response time. It is imperceptible on this panel, really. I am hyper-aware of lag/blur, and I am 100% satisfied. The samsungs all had awful menus. The worst ever, out of the 20+ monitors I have used, of basically every brand readily available. Insultingly bad. Also, the qled panel had worse contrast than the non-qled. The dell flickered like crazy at 60hz, but was otherwise amazing. Its USB kvm and auto-switch thing was superior. The Benq, hands down, has the best panel, EXCEPT FOR ONE THING: as others have pointed out, there is a small band of dark/blur on the vertical edges, as well as a quarter inch of dead space all around the thin bezel edges. The blur distorts the picture if you are looking straight on at the dead center of the monitor. If you shift your head to the side, and look exactly perpendicular to the curvature of the screen, it is perfectly clear. I dont know why this is, but it is disappointing for sure. Other than that, this is the most beautiful panel Ive ever had, save for my LG C7P 65in OLED TV. One other gripe is the USB setup. One type C upstream, and two downstream ports. If it had two type B fullsize ports, and did USB switching, like the dell did, this would be the ultimate monitor. Switching inputs is quick, otherwise, so I am putting up with a external Sabrent USB switch for now.

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It turns out that this monitor is very good at doing a little bit of everything. For gaming its great with plenty of space to see whats going on around me. It replaced an ultra-wide display that was great for having multiple programs open. At first I couldnt get it to work properly, everything was on the dark side and I couldnt get the on screen controls to straighten it out. The Freesync2 was working fine with the cable provided with the display but it wouldnt run at the advertised specs i.e 144Hz. I went and purchased a better display port cable and hooked it up display port to display port on both the monitor and video cards (a pair of MSI Radeon RX480 in Crossfire) and it recognized all of the settings that its supposed to run at. I havent run any benchmarks on it yet but everything that Ive played run pretty smooth with much more realistic color. I wasnt sure about the curved display but it didnt take long for me to get used to. Editing images seems to work out fine along with using my office apps. I have noticed that display does adjust on its own when the amount of light changes which is a good thing for my aging eyes. It seems to be a well built display and the stand is very solid. It looks great as well. The only thing I havent been able to figure out is how to get all the finger-prints cleaned off. Thats my bad for getting them on it especially around the edges. However when its turned on I dont see them so much. The installation instructions could be clearer but I wont take any points away from it for that.

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Ive had this monitor for about a month and a half. I wanted to come back and review this monitor because I wanted people to know my experience so far. Most importantly, this monitor has a beautiful picture and it is very easy on the eyes when using for long hours. My biggest concern about this monitor is it is a VA panel and not an IPS panel like the majority of monitors out there. VA panels have some trade-offs both positive and negative. One of the positives is it has great contrast ratio, and this monitor definitely has awesome contrast. The scary negative is that VA panels can have ghosting issues. This monitor has some ghosting when running at 60Hz. That said, if you buy this monitor I highly recommend you run it at 100Hz. Its a 100Hz panel so you should be running it at 100Hz anyway. As a regular user looking for ghosting, it appears to have virtually no ghosting at 100Hz. As a gamer, I turn VSYNC off in games and use the RivaTuner app (suggested by a friend) to cap output frame rate to 96Hz. Then I use nVidias new drivers that support Freesync for GTX 1080 and up, and have had great success with this. All of the games I like to play work without issue. Of course if you dont want to mess with Freesync, just leave your games frame rate uncapped and let er rip. I paid full price for this monitor (around $750 USD at the time) and have no regrets. I give this monitor high marks all around. Its a beauty.

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The monitor was packaged very well, arrived with no dead pixels or damage. Was a little tricky to set up, as my last monitor had the joy stick like control, but once I figured out what all the buttons did, it was pretty easy after that. The pros are as follows" 1. It has an ambient light sensor on it, so it goes dark when its night, and gets bright when its light.(I have a lamp next to it, and that does not trigger the screen to go bright) 2. For the size, 2560x1440 still looks just as good as it did on my 27" monitor. 3. There is a hole in the stand, close to where the cables plug in, making it easy to hide all of your cables. 4. My Xbox one x can now run up to 120hz, thanks to the freesync 2 on this baby. 5. Has a USB-C port on in, which if you own any of the new cards, one cable can do it all, audio, video, and data tranfer to the two usb ports at the bottom of the monitor. (Also see cons section) Cons are as followed: 1. The displayport cable, is mini dp, to dp, which most people I know dont use.(Wish it come with the normal dp, or both) 2. Its hard to get to the ports on the bottom of the monitor, as the stand does not allow for height adjustment. 3. The USB-C port only allows up to 120mz, with a lower transfer rate to the 2 usb ports on the bottom of the monitor, as well as it only comes with a 3 usb-c to usb-c cable, so if your wanting to use that method, you will need to buy a longer one, if your computer is not close enough to the monitor. 4. It does not come with the ability to mount via vesa mount, you have to buy that separately. All in all though, with the cons not being the end of the world, this is a great monitor at both size, resolution, new features, such as usb-c, freesync 2, and this monitor also works with G-Sync. The thin bezel, and the 1800R curve, make this a top monitor in its price range. Rather your planing on hooking up gaming systems(you will need either speakers, or a wired headset with a 3.5mm connection) or a pc, this is the monitor to get.

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This monitor has horrendous backlight bleed. I figured after the first one that maybe I just got a defective one, but upon having the same thing happen on the second one (like identical in every regard) I realized this is just a terrible panel by Benq! Turn your sights elsewhere! I couldnt even watch any Netflix on it because I kept seeing a white glow around everything

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Loving this monitor, but not sure about the vesa mounting because it doesn’t seem to be available unless I get the adapter. Other people have said otherwise so I will wait until my mount gets in before I make that call. I have used this monitor for a few weeks now and purchased two other monitors that I felt were in the same range. One was a Samsung monitor which I wasn’t a fan of the 1 year warranty that was included and the other was a dell monitor that was extremely cheap but didn’t meet my needs based on this monitor and the other monitor. First off only 2 out of the 3 monitors were 144hz which was one of the deal breakers for the dell monitor. Secondly I would have to say that I am a fan of all of the colors of this monitor more so of the other two and most of my everyday tasks have been a breeze. I can only imagine when I decide to start to game on this monitor that I will really see the usage of the monitor but for now I am only using it for productivity and music production which is does a stellar job at both. My girlfriend has been using it to also edit her photos and has not had much issues with it. Overall I have to say this monitor looks sleek and I am currently enjoying it and will definitely update you all on the monitor as the time passes.

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Gaming Monitors right now have too many flaws to dump this much money into them. Just get something thats $300 and live with the flaws. Major flaw of this monitor is backlight bleed splotches. In decent ambient lighting they are hard to notice, especially in colorful games. In games/movies/screen where the majority of the screen is black, there are white splotches on the screen. My lower right is particularly noticeable. Its just not acceptable for a monitor this expensive. When the conditions are right (which is about 80% of the time) this monitor is gorgeous. But when theyre not, it enrages me to no end. Pros: -Excellent Color -Very Black Blacks (3000:1 contrast ratio way better than the 1000:1 TN panel I upgraded from) -Pixel Density is decent. Exactly the same as a 24" 1080p monitor. I hear 27" 1440p looks sharper due to higher pixel density, but 32" 1440p certainly doesnt look bad. -FreeSync 2 (adaptive sync) works perfectly well with NVidia Cards (Using RTX 2070). However, you have to edit the VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) using a program called Custom Resolution Utility (CRU) or you may experience flickering. (see this youtube video for how to: https://youtu.be/EYcFKeiDzmM) -High Refresh rate. Images look smooth at high refresh rate, however, see Motion Blur and Ghosting in Cons Cons: Backlight Bleed - by far the biggest con. VA panels are supposed to have little to no backlight bleed. However, I think because of the curvature of the screen, this monitor has characteristic backlight splotches. The splotches are almost worse than a uniform backlight bleed because they are very distracting. Contrast looks awesome in dark scenes EXCEPT for the splotches of white in a few places on your screen. My lower right corner is particularly bad. This is my number one reason for not suggesting buying such an expensive monitor, as the panel technologies still havent solved this is. HUGE CON. This can be improved by having ambient lighting in the room. When you have daylight in the room for example you have to strain to notice the backlight bleed. Also, if the game is really colorful or really anything except pure black (like loading screens) then you would be very hard pressed to notice. However, when you have a very dark game and your room isnt well lit it will make you want to smash your screen. -Motion Blur - Motion blur isnt terrible, but definitely noticeable coming from a TN panel, even with overdrive on. If it werent for the backlight bleed, for me this trade-off would be worth it for the increased contrast, blacks, and color compared to TN Panel -Ghosting and Anti-Ghosting - Noticeable ghosting with Overdrive (AMA) off, Noticeable Anti-ghosting (looks like black streaks) with Overdrive (AMA) on Max. This isnt a deal breaker for me, but the tradeoff for VA contrast and colors vs TN is ghosting/antighosting and motion blur. Not a major con for me, but it will give your monitor/games a very characteristic look that is hard to explain.

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