BenQ PD3200U

Interlace pattern artifacts

On some monitors faint interlace patterns can be seen during certain transitions, particularly noticeable where light shades (muzzle flashes, explosions etc.) briefly pop up on the screen. These are sometimes referred to as ‘inversions artifacts’. Alternatively, static interlace patterns can be seen with some shades appearing as faint horizontal bands of a slightly lighter and slightly darker version of the intended shade. We did not observe any such artifacts on this monitor.

Responsiveness

Input lag

A sensitive camera and a small tool called SMTT 2.0 was used to measure input lag for the PD3200U. The monitor was compared to various screens of known latency, taking over 30 repeat readings to maximise accuracy. Using this method, we calculated 7.05ms (under 1/2 a frame) of input lag. This value is influenced both by the signal delay (element you ‘feel’) and pixel responsiveness (element you ‘see’). It indicates a low signal delay, which will come as welcome news to users sensitive to this sort of thing.

Perceived blur (pursuit photography)

In our responsiveness article, we look at the key factors affecting monitor responsiveness. Chief amongst these is the concept of ‘perceived blur’, which is caused primarily by movement of your eyes as you track motion on the screen. Pixel responsiveness also influences this, to a lesser degree on most modern monitors. We also take a look at ‘pursuit photography’, a special photography technique that uses a moving rather than static camera to capture motion on a monitor. This more accurately reflects what the eye sees when observing motion on a monitor, capturing both of the aforementioned elements of perceived blur rather than just pixel responsiveness.

The following images show pursuit photographs taken using the UFO Motion Test for ghosting, with the test running at its default speed of 960 pixels per second. This is a good practical speed for taking such photographs and one which represents both elements of perceived blur nicely. The monitor was set to its various ‘AMA’ (Advanced Motion Acceleration) pixel overdrive settings, with all rows of the test shown to demonstrate a range of different pixel transitions. The final column shows a reference screen, specifically a Dell S2417DG, showing how this test should look where eye (camera) movement is the only significant contributor to perceived blur. Note that this test runs at a frame rate matching the monitor’s refresh rate (i.e 60fps), with the UFO moving from left to right across the screen.



With ‘AMA’ set to ‘Off’, you can see that the UFO appears soft and blurry. This reflects perceived blur due to eye movement and is similar to the 60Hz reference – the pixel response time does not influence this particular element. There is also a faint powdery trailing behind the UFO for the dark and medium background and to a lesser extent the light background. Despite AMA being set to ‘Off’, it’s quite clear that pixel response times are already suitably rapid and undoubtedly a decent degree of pixel overdrive is being employed anyway. The ‘High’ setting didn’t really make any significant changes, perhaps reducing trailing a little behind the UFO cockpit for the medium background. There is no obvious overshoot (inverse ghosting), which is a definite positive, unlike for the ‘Premium’ setting which introduces bright and very obvious inverse ghosting due to overdone pixel overdrive. This is most noticeable for the medium and light backgrounds. During broader testing it’s apparent that the ‘High’ setting strikes the best balance between ‘fast enough’ pixel responsiveness and lack of obvious overshoot, reducing conventional trailing and hence lowering perceived blur just a bit compared to the ‘Off’ setting.

Note that we will not be including a section on overclocking, as the monitor simply loses signal when set much above 60Hz at its native resolution.

Responsiveness in games and movies

On Battlefield 1 (BF1) there was a fair degree of perceived blur. However; this was attributable almost entirely to eye movement and much as you’d see on even the fastest 60Hz LCDs. The vast majority of pixel transitions were performed fast enough for optimal 60Hz @ 60fps performance, without imparting any obvious trailing that would add to perceived blur. There was some faint additional ‘powdery’ trailing in places, particularly where very light shades were involved in the transition, but this was faint and short-lived. There was also a small amount of light overshoot. When certain medium shades moved against one another (for example moving past a house with blue sky in the background) you could see a partially transparent trail that was slightly brighter than the shades involved in the transition. As with the powdery trailing, this was very faint and something the vast majority of users wouldn’t even pick up on. We actually found the pixel overdrive to be slightly better balanced than on the older BL3201PT/PH, with even less obvious overshoot than what was already a fairly low level. We made similar observations on Dirt Rally. There was little to complain about, with just a faint trace of overshoot and powdery trailing in places but nothing we found remotely distracting. In terms of perceived blur things were really as you could hope for from any 60Hz LCD, so certainly an impressive performance in this regard.

We also made some observations when viewing our Blu-ray movie test titles. Here, there were no noticeable weaknesses attributable to either slower than optimal pixel responses or overly aggressive pixel overdrive. The pace of action here is limited by the 24fps or so at which the content runs – which limits fluidity and also reduces the pixel responsiveness requirements. We also observed some higher frame rate movie content (60fps), which as you’d expect highlighted exactly the same sort of behaviour that our game testing did. There were again no obvious weaknesses, just a whiff of faint powdery trailing or overshoot here and there. Certainly nothing we found distracting and nothing that should bother even sensitive users. If it does, they’d likely be unhappy with any 60Hz sample and hold monitor.

The ‘4K’ UHD experience

In our BL3201PT/PH review, in the section entitled ‘The ‘4K UHD experience’, we take a look at how the 3840 x 2160 (‘4K’ UHD) resolution works out on a 32” screen. We also look more generally at the sort of advantages and potential disadvantages to expect from the resolution in our experience article on the topic. We won’t be repeating too much of that here, so would advise reading these articles if you aren’t familiar with the resolution or the sort of experience it can provide. We will give a quick summary, however. In our view, a 32” screen is something of a ‘sweet spot’ for the UHD resolution. We’re able to comfortably view text and interact with programs without relying on any scaling whatsoever. This avoids the scaling related pitfalls highlighted in our aforementioned article, which looks at the resolution as it applies to a 28” screen. This does depend on personal preferences and eyesight, but we feel many users would either be able to accept no scaling or low levels of scaling. Perhaps simply using application-specific zoom to increase text size on some applications and therefore not needing to rely on ‘scaling’ more broadly. This leaves an excellent amount of useful space on the desktop, providing great flexibility when it comes to multi-tasking or simply seeing a lot of information in a single application at once.

The UHD resolution on a 32” screen also brings with it a very pleasing pixel density of 139.87 PPI (Pixels Per Inch). This brings with it excellent clarity and detail when viewing images or indeed when playing games. As with images, getting the best out of this requires that the game itself offers suitably high-resolution content. You always benefit from extra clarity, a reduced need for anti-aliasing and that sort of thing anyway – but truly admiring game content at this resolution requires suitably high-resolution textures and particle effects as well. This is something we explore in more detail in the aforementioned article and indeed in our BL3201PT/PH review. Although they are in no way representative of what you see first-hand when using the monitor, we’ve included a few photos of the monitor running a range of game titles. Particularly with the details cranked up (which brought out GTX 1070 to its knees, unfortunately), these titles looked quite stunning in many respects and certainly benefited from the high resolution and pixel density on offer here.

Interpolation and upscaling

For users who find the 3840 x 2160 resolution too demanding or are simply using a system that doesn’t support it (an older PC, games console or Blu-ray player for example), it might be necessary to run the monitor at a lower resolution such as 1920 x 1080 (Full HD). The monitor has an integrated scaler which allows it to handle such non-native resolutions. There are two ‘Display Mode’ mode options of particular interest when displaying native resolutions, found in the ‘Picture Advanced’ section of the OSD. The first of these is ‘Full’, which maps the resolution onto the full native 3840 x 2160 resolution of the monitor using an interpolation process. The second is ‘1:1’, which displays using the exact number of pixels called for by the source resolution. For Full HD, for example, the image is displayed as a 16” diagonal area of the screen with large black borders all around. PC users need to make sure that the monitor is handling the scaling rather than the GPU, ensuring optimal results in addition to having access to the ‘Display Mode’ options. AMD GPUs will automatically get the monitor to handle the scaling when gaming, by default. Nvidia GPU users should open Nvidia Control Panel and navigate to ‘Display – Adjust desktop size and position’. They should then ensure that ‘No Scaling’ is selected and ‘Perform scaling on:’ is set to ‘Display’ as illustrated below.

The monitors interpolation process (i.e. ‘Full’ selected for ‘Display Mode’) gives significant softening to the image. Things are slightly sharper than when relying on GPU scaling and the softening is by no means the most extreme we’ve seen, but it is nowhere near as sharp as running the resolution natively on a screen of similar size. Contrary to popular belief, the monitor does not display 1920 x 1080 perfectly by 1:4 mapping onto the 3840 x 2160 pixels of the screen. Instead, exactly the same interpolation process is used as is used at other resolutions. This is the case regardless of the input used (HDMI, DP or MiniDP). The softening was more noticeable than on this model’s predecessor, unfortunately, although would potentially be a lot less noticeable if you’re sitting some distance from the screen. For example, using a games console with a controller. Even so, it seems this model is much better suited to running its native resolution on a range of devices (including new games consoles, via HDMI 2.0) than it is to running any non-native resolution.

Conclusion

The BenQ PD3200U always seemed a curious evolution of the BL3201PT/PH, without obvious changes ‘on paper’. As usual with monitors, there’s a lot more to the story than just what is specified or listed on a manufacturer’s website. The aesthetic refinements on the outside were minor, but we don’t feel that’s a bad thing – this is a very solidly built monitor with excellent ergonomic flexibility. It doesn’t like showy nor does it look ‘ugly’ or dated in our view, so it strikes a comfortable balance in that respect. After turning the monitor on and performing some basic testing, we quickly recalled a lot of what we liked about the older model. The size and resolution worked really nicely for both work and play, giving a nice useful work area without necessitating scaling and good detail and clarity for games and image content. One particular change that struck us from the older model, at least one of the earlier revisions that we tested, was that the impeccably smooth (non-grainy) matte screen surface has been changed. The haze value remains similar and the screen surface is very light anti-glare – so the glare handling characteristics, vibrancy potential and lack of obvious layering of graininess ‘above’ the image fortunately remains. However; the surface texture had a light misty graininess to it that was not observable on the older model. This certainly isn’t something most users would notice or find bothersome, but it is clearly something we noticed and a change that puzzles us.

Another thing we noticed was that the factory calibration seemed tighter this time around. The ‘sRGB’ mode in particular was very impressive both in terms of its gamma handling and white point. When combined with 100% sRGB coverage (without extreme over-extension), this allowed the monitor to output rich but rather accurate shade representation. The consistency of these shades was aided by the AHVA (IPS-type) panel as well, which performed as well as we had anticipated in this regard. We were pleased to see that the ‘Gamma’ settings in the OSD had been changed from arbitrary numbers (1-5) to actual gamma values, and that tracking to the promised values was pleasing. The monitor retained other useful settings and OSD features, including the controller puck itself, which now has a more subdued look with matte grey rim rather than chrome-effect silver rim. There were also a range of easy to activate and deactivate Low Blue Light (LBL) settings, which worked as intended.

The monitor also put in a good contrast performance, much in line with its predecessor. The static contrast was close to what was specified, perhaps just a touch lower than the predecessor but within expected inter-sample variation anyway. Plus, the tighter factory calibration may come into play in that respect. There was certainly noticeable ‘AHVA glow’, but as with the older model this was somewhat subdued compared to what you might expect from an IPS-type model of this size. It was definitely still there and still a ‘feature’, though, eating away at some of the detail for dark shades in the affected regions. Particularly near the bottom corners of the screen. Responsiveness was also similar if not slightly improved over the older model, with low input lag and a convincing 60Hz performance. Pixel responsiveness was good enough to provide a pretty much optimal 60Hz experience, without obvious overshoot or trailing adding significantly to perceived blur. There were light traces of each here and there, but added a small fraction to the moderate perceived blur that exists on any 60Hz sample and hold LCD.

There was one particular issue we came across with this model that we understand could put some people off. This issue is certainly shared with its predecessor, but isn’t something we commented on simply because it’s GPU-specific and not something we came across during our earlier testing. There was intermittent flickering when using DisplayPort on this monitor, even using relatively short and fat (‘high quality’) cables. This was quite rare on our Nvidia GPU (GTX 1070) and just occurred for a split second then stopped. On our AMD GPU (Radeon R9 290) this was more frequent and when it happened basically rendered the monitor unusable, until refresh rate was changed to something else and then back to 60Hz. This issue did not occur when using HDMI 2.0, which the older model lacked and which still allows you to leverage the full 3840 x 2160 @60Hz capability of the monitor. We would therefore advise caution if you have an older GPU (without HDMI 2.0) as this could be a deal-breaker otherwise.

Overall, then, there was plenty to like about the PD3200U. We would say that the tighter factory calibration and inclusion of HDMI 2.0 were nice additions and a lot of what we liked about the older model was retained. We still don’t understand the change of screen surface texture to a grainier one, given the haze value and hence glare-handling characteristics seem very similar. But then, we still feel many users would find the new screen surface agreeable. This is perhaps a moot point given that the older model is discontinued in most regions, but certainly something that BenQ should reconsider for future models. It isn’t a cheap monitor, but the overall build quality and image quality is solid as is the feature-set.

The bottom line; a solidly built screen with a convincing performance in key areas, but some issues that could prove problematic to some users depending on their GPU and sensitivity to screen surface texture.

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