BenQ BL3200PT

Colour in games and movies

On Battlefield 4 colours were vibrant and inviting without looking unnatural. Vibrant elements, particularly lighter ones with darker surroundings stood out extremely well. A good example of this were the roaring flames surrounded by dirty plumes of thick black smoke on ‘Operation Firestorm 2014’. They looked very lively indeed, helped by both strong bold colours and excellent contrast. The environments were full of rich and varied colours, giving them a look that was both aesthetically pleasing and natural.

The environments were also rich, natural and suitably varied on Dirt 3. The forests of Finland, for example, had a very nice mixture of lush and vibrant deep greens and a variety of lighter shades. The distinction between closely matched shades was also pleasing and it’s fair to say the overall shade variety the best we’ve seen on a VA panel. The car liveries and advertising around the track was suitably ‘loud’ with a very pleasing vibrancy. It is hard to pick ‘stand out colours’ because they all ‘stood out’ in one way or another. There were some beautifully deep reds, blues and yellows as well as some excellent bright neon greens. Some of the liveries where strong colours were surrounded by black paint were particularly impressive due to the contrast.

Colours looked rich and natural on the Skyfall Blu-ray with appropriate saturation and a pleasing diversity. Skin tones looked as they should with good subtle shade variation, as did natural environments. Some vibrant elements within the film were displayed with excellent vivacity – the neon lights of Shanghai at night and candles lit by the Riverside in Macau for example.

We are usually quite impressed by how VA panels represent animated film content such as the Blu-ray of Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder. The BL3200PT did not disappoint, with striking neon colours, good deep colours and plenty of varied muted shades as well. Bright neon colours surrounded by the dark depths of space were particularly impressive here, but the consistency of shades was also pleasing. If you observe a single colour, for example the face of Fry (one of the main characters in the film), you can see that even when it fills most of the screen the variation in tone is not massive. There is a bit of variation due to the gamma behaviour of VA panels but this AMVA+ gives much less variation than you’d see on older VA technologies. Given the size of the screen this was particularly noteworthy. This consistency isn’t up to the level of IPS-type panels and the discerning eye may spot slightly less distinction between closely matching shades as a result. Even so there was a very pleasing array of individual shades each with their own unique identity. Coupled with the liberal lashings of vibrancy the overall colour experience on this title was excellent.

Viewing angles

To study the idea of colour consistency more specifically we used Lagom’s tests for viewing angle. The observations below were made from a viewing distance of 80cm which we feel is within an appropriate range for a monitor of this size. Some people will be sitting closer, others further away. The viewing distance can have quite an impact on the degree of ‘colour shift’ observed at different parts of the screen as the viewing angle of peripheral areas of the screen essentially shifts. The observations we made reinforce what we saw in our game and film testing. This monitor is not up to the levels of IPS-type panels when it comes to colour consistency, but it’s easily the best performance we’ve seen from a VA panel (including other recent ‘AMVA+’ panels).

The video below shows the results of the Lagom text test, a light desktop background and dark desktop background as viewed from a variety of viewing angles. Results here are good for a VA panel and in some respects look more you’d expect to see on an IPS-type panel. There is a slight brightness, gamma and contrast shift evident in the video but this isn’t as pronounced as you’d usually see from a monitor with this panel type. The dark desktop background reveals a slight glow in places, especially from fairly sharp angles. This is the aforementioned ‘VA glow’ which is in no way as obtrusive as ‘IPS glow’, ‘PLS glow’ or anything similar.

Interpolation

The BL3200PT provides a rather unique viewing experience, in that it combines a 2560 x 1440 (WQHD) resolution with a 32” screen size. The WQHD resolution provides around 1.77 times as many pixels as a Full HD (1920 x 1080 or 1080p) resolution, giving you more ‘pixel real estate’ which translates to a good deal more useful desktop ‘space’ to work (and play) with. A traditional benefit to this resolution on a 27” monitor is the fairly good pixel density that accompanies it – 108.79 PPI (Pixels Per Inch) compared to 81.59 PPI for a 1080p screen of the same size.

When you ramp things up to 32” but keep that 2560 x 1440 resolution you gain a pixel pitch of 91.79 PPI, so you don’t get the same sharpness or clarity potential as the 27” WQHD models. Interestingly this pixel pitch is exactly the same as a 24” 1920 x 1080 monitor, something many users are quite comfortable using. The best way to think about the overall viewing experience, in terms of the relative size of everything on the screen, is therefore like a 24” Full HD screen. The screen is of course considerably larger, but the same sort of clarity is maintained whilst extra information (pixel real estate) is also there.

If you wish to connect a games console or a less powerful PC to the monitor then a lower resolution such as 1920 x 1080 may be your only option. Because the pixels are a fixed size on LCD monitors the monitor has to use an interpolation process to accommodate the lower resolution. If using HDMI or DisplayPort on an Nvidia GPU you will notice a significant drop in contrast and washed out look to the colours. You will have to take action to correct the colour signal, or alternatively use the included DVI cable (or another Dual-Link DVI cable) instead. For the Full HD resolution there are two main options you can choose on this screen, available in ‘Picture Advanced’ – ‘Display Mode’ of the OSD. The first of these is ‘Full’ which is the default mode shown below.

Full scaling

It isn’t really clear in the image above, but using this setting the image looks noticeably soft. This is partly because of the 32” screen and 1920 x 1080 resolution, which gives a rather poor pixel pitch of 68.84 PPI. Moreover; it’s due to the interpolation process used by the monitor which essentially ‘stretches’ the image so that all of the pixels are used. The alternative is to use the ‘1:1’ option which is a pixel mapping function available on this monitor. This gives a large black border around the image and ensures that only 1920 x 1080 pixels are used to display the image, as shown below.

1:1 scaling

The image fills a space on the screen that is 24” diagonally and appears just as sharp as running the full screen at 2560 x 1440. If you are forced to run at this ‘Full HD’ resolution then it’s really up to you which option you select. If gaming on a console and you’re able to sit a bit further from the monitor the softness of the ‘Full’ option should not be so noticeable. If you’re playing PC games that you feel work better for you at this resolution then it may be more prudent to use the 1:1 feature. The good news for Blu-ray fans that use their PC and movie software to play films is that you can run the monitor at its native 2560 x 1440 resolution without any noticeable drop in quality compared to a Full HD display. In fact the sharpness and clarity of Blu-ray content on this monitor is surprisingly good. The overall experience (including the contrast and colours) really makes watching Blu-rays and movies from other sources such as YouTube and Netflix very enjoyable.

Responsiveness

Input lag

To calculate input lag on the BL3200PT we used a tool called SMTT 2.0 and a sensitive camera to compare the overall display lag of the monitor with a range of other monitors of known latencies. 23.4ms (just under 1.5 frames) of input lag was recorded. This figure includes both the signal delay (element of lag you ‘feel’) and an element of pixel responsiveness (the element you ‘see’). This level of latency is quite comparable to many other WQHD models overall. It will bother some users but not others – it’s a very subjective thing and not something to worry about unless you know you are particularly sensitive to lag. If you are then you will probably want to look beyond 60Hz LCDs anyway.

Pixel responsiveness

We used the UFO Motion Test for ghosting and a highly sensitive camera to assess the pixel responsiveness of the monitor. The speed of this test was set to ‘2560 Pixels Per Sec’ so that the UFO travelled rapidly, traversing the breadth of the screen in 1 second. In order to highlight the fact that VA panels in particular show quite some variation in pixel responsiveness depending on the shades involved in the transition (i.e. how light or dark they are) we used both the first and second rows of the test. The image below shows snapshots taken from the top row (relatively dark cyan background) and middle row (medium cyan background) with the monitor set to ‘AMA Off’, ‘AMA High’ and ‘AMA ‘Premium’.

Trailing with various AMA settings

With AMA (Advanced Motion Acceleration) ‘Off’ the monitor does not use any grey to grey acceleration and as such relies on the native panel responsiveness in an un-accelerated state. In other words the pixel transitions are relatively sluggish. This is particularly evident with the darker background as there is a very bold primary trail, a slight secondary trail and even a faint tertiary trail. For the medium background (lower image) the primary trail is somewhat fainter, as is the secondary trail. In reality the trailing appears to the eye as a smooth blur, seen in addition to the motion blur created by the movement of your own eyes. The level of perceived blur is greater where the darker background is involved as the pixel responses are slower.

Using ‘AMA High’ makes the trailing slightly fainter for the darker background. With the medium background the primary trail takes on a slightly strange pattern in places, despite being arguably weaker than with ‘AMA Off’. This is because the monitor uses quite strong grey to grey acceleration (strong voltage surges) to speed up these particular pixel transitions and actually overshoots the desired end point. This gives a small degree of ‘overshoot’ or inverse ghosting, fairly minor and not too obvious in this instance. The secondary trail has as good as vanished and indeed the level of motion blur is clearly improved by eye when using this setting.

‘AMA Premium’ ramps up the grey to grey acceleration massively. You will not fail to notice that the trailing here takes on a completely different appearance. For the darker cyan background the trails appear almost ghostly and monochromatic. For the medium cyan background the trails appear bright and almost neon in places. This is very strong overshoot (inverse ghosting) caused by the acceleration being too aggressive. It’s worth noting that some users may prefer this setting because despite these trailing artifacts the overall motion blur is reduced somewhat by the relatively rapid pixel transitions. We personally preferred the default ‘AMA High’ setting which was used for our subsequent ‘real world’ testing.

Responsiveness in games and movies

As our testing above revealed there was a fair degree of trailing captured by camera as a result of some relatively slow pixel response times. This also varied depending on the shades involved in the transition (i.e. darker vs. lighter background). In our subjective game testing we were able to look at an even broader range of pixel transitions and also consider how the human eye rather than a camera perceives the motion. A particularly important consideration is that a significant degree of motion blur you see on a monitor like this one is linked to the movement of your own eyes, which itself creates what is sometimes called ‘retinal blur’. This concept is explored amongst others in this article, well worth a read if you’re interested in the technical side of things.

On Battlefield 4 the overall motion experience was much better than on older AUO VA panels (particularly prior to the GW 50 series) and indeed modern VA panels from other manufacturers such as CMO. There were some noticeably slower transitions, particularly between contrasting shades. These were particularly noticeable when driving quickly in a nimble vehicle and passing objects where dark and light elements mix together. Mixed green foliage with dark shaded areas, for example, would blur a fair bit. Some slightly smeary trails could be seen in certain indoor areas in particular, where very dark and slightly lighter colours moved against each other. A black fire extinguisher handle against a wall painted medium-dark green for example. We didn’t notice any of the very obvious ‘smoke-like’ smeary trailing that you can see on slower VA monitors, thankfully, nor any obvious overshoot.

On Dirt 3 there was a moderate degree of blur even when cornering fairly gently. This was predominantly down to eye movement and is as you would expect from a 60Hz LCD. There was a degree of trailing on top of this but it wasn’t particularly obtrusive. The slowest pixel transitions on this monitor involve contrasting colours and instances where very dark and slightly lighter shades move against each other. Driving at night on this game created such conditions, introducing a slight smearing in places. This was still not overly distracting and was quite different to the ‘smoke-like’ trails seen on slower VA panels. It was also far less obtrusive than the obvious inverse ghosting that some other monitors suffer from (as does this model when set to ‘AMA Premium’).

Overall we feel the pixel responsiveness of this monitor was decent when gaming and generally users who find this bothersome might take issue with 60Hz LCDs more broadly. We also tested our movie titles and didn’t notice any issues with trailing or overshoot caused by overly sluggish or excessively accelerated pixel transitions. The 24fps or so at which the Blu-ray titles run limit the overall fluidity, but that’s not a fault of this particular monitor.

Conclusion

Subjectivity always plays an important role with monitors, none more so than the BenQ BL3200PT. There are some rather unique aspects to the panel the monitor uses, not least the combination of 32” screen size (itself a rarity) and a 2560 x 1440 resolution. Although this combination may not be to everyone’s taste it’s one we felt quite comfortable using. The pixel density is equivalent to a 24” 1920 x 1080 monitor – something that many users will find quite comfortable. VA panels are something of a forgotten third son as far as many users are concerned – in fact many users don’t even know that they exist, even if they’re somewhat familiar with IPS and TN LCD technologies. Not only did this monitor play to the strengths of VA technology, it also gave the most pleasing image we’ve seen from a VA panel.

The static contrast was strong, coming close enough to the specified 3000:1 that we wouldn’t grumble. Blacks appeared relatively bold and inky whilst light colours stood out very nicely against their darker surroundings. The screen surface was also very agreeable, featuring an effective but light matte anti-glare surface with a very smooth texture. This is something some users would refer to as ‘semi glossy’ and it maintains a relatively non-grainy and vibrant appearance to the image whilst preventing glare issues in most light. As is usual for VA panels there was a degree of ‘gamma shift’ and the associated ‘black crush’, but this was fairly minor and didn’t prevent the monitor from displaying an appropriate level of detail and maintaining a good atmosphere in dark scenes.

The colour performance was also pleasing. Despite the size of the screen, colours remained surprisingly consistent. The ‘gamma shift’ associated with VA panels did cause a degree of variation for some shades, making them appear slightly lighter towards the edges of the screen. From a comfortable viewing position (we tested at 80cm) we observed the lowest levels of ‘colour shift’ we’ve seen from a VA panel. The subtle shade variety this invited to the image was closer to what you might expect from an IPS-type panel. The monitor also handled vibrant shades beautifully, displaying them with great richness, putting its 100% sRGB gamut and light screen surface to good effect.

Responsiveness is something of an Achilles heel for VA panels and the BL3200PT was no exception. Some transitions were noticeably slower than others, causing a degree of trailing that was noticeable on top of the usual ‘60Hz motion blur’. Thankfully the monitor distanced itself comfortably from some of the slower VA panels that some manufacturers still produce. There were very few ‘smeary’ trails and none of the obtrusive smoke-like trailing that slower VA monitors produce. It’s fair to say that most of the motion blur was caused by eye movement and would still apply on much faster 60Hz LCDs anyway. The input lag is again one of those factors that some users will be bothered by but others won’t be. The signal delay of the monitor (what you ‘feel’ when interacting with the monitor) was very much comparable to most other 2560 x 1440 models which many users game quite happily on.

Not only was the core performance of the monitor quite impressive, the overall build quality and features included really rounded off the experience. The monitor has a decidedly solid feel to it (something the 13kg weight and metal stand elements assist with). It offers excellent ergonomic flexibility, plenty of ports and a very intuitive remote control system for the menu system. The On Screen Display was packed full of features, leading us to produce the longest and probably dullest OSD video yet. All things considered, including what we feel is a fair asking price, this screen has a lot to offer. We really enjoyed using and reviewing it and feel that it’s one of those models you really need to try for yourself.

 

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