Official BenQ FP241W Thread !!! Info, Pictures, Reviews

Sorry, I couldn't access your photo.

The gamma shift is most obvious on dark colors, but on lighter colors it is not. Here is a photo. Disregard the left side, as that is glare. Look from middle to right to see a slightly amplified version of this, as cameras amplify this effect and HardForums shows it at its worst. This is an FP241VW by the way. Almost exactly same panel and gamma shift as FP241W (just a different stand):

2422359227_3e2eaf083c_b.jpg


Fia24 said:
How bad is the gamma shift on the BenQ FP241W, VA panel? Does anyone have some pics? Such as http://i.pbase.com/o5/04/606404/1/67386274.bYbv23lc.angles.jpg

Didn't find any detailed discussion about this matter earlier in the thread. Sorry if I've overlooked...
Click to expand...
 
10e said:
Look from middle to right to see a slightly amplified version of this, as cameras amplify this effect and HardForums shows it at its worst.
Click to expand...

Hey great, not bad at all for my needs! :)

Just to make sure, would be interested to see more gamma shift pics, various angles & lighting conditions, from other proud (hopefully) BenQ FP241W owners...
 
I'm looking for a decent monitor for gaming, films, general web browsing and programming. I've been looking for months now and I still haven't found one that has everything I want at a decent price but I've just came across the FP241W for £340 which is a really good deal considering it usually sells for £445.

Does anyone know how this monitor compares to the HP LP2475w picture quality wise? I don't like the idea of the wide gamut on the HP even though I've never seen a wide gamut monitor before.

I take it this will also be significantly better than the Benq G2400WT's TN panel which I was also considering at £280?

Also, does anyone know what firmware version added 1:1 pixel mapping to this monitor? I'm attempting to find out the firmware version from the seller.
 
Question, any help grateful,

I have just bought PES 0 for the xbox which i have hooked up to the BenQ FP241W (via HDMI).

Playing a single player match works fine, however online play results in some serious ghosting on the screen and also caused the screen to flicker in horizontally... Has anyone else experienced this with online gaming??
 
I got myself a FP241W, and I noticed some issues:

1. How fast should be the response time of the OSD in this monitor?
When I switch through the OSD Pages, it takes approx. 2.5 sec to switch - is this a malfunction or is it meant to be this slow?

Up/down reacts immediatelly though.

2. Also I noticed, the first page of the OSD (H.Position, V.Position etc.) is grayed out - I can't modify anything there (DVI, any mode).

3. And finally - how can I check which firmware version my LCD has? Someone said something about stickers on the back - there are none on mine... any hidden service or info menu maybe?

Many thanks for any answers
 
Any user of this screen could verify if his OSD reacts delayed too?
Mine switches pages with a speed of ca. 2.5 sec (up / down movement is fine).

I still have some days left where I could have the screen returned, but I have no idea if this is a malfunction or if it just works that way.
 
i've decided to return mine. sent it back today. really a great panel...overall a good monitor. and for the price it is hard to beat! but i want to try a 30", and with black friday coming up, i think the 30"s will be very attractive when it comes to price. i would say this screen is a great option for viewing-angle sensitive folks who don't want to spend a lot. and for whom the 1920x1200 res is sufficient :)
 
Thank you for the response, Cousin Patty.
If the slow OSD is no malfunction, I have no reason to return mine - except for the color maybe - I ordered black, they provided a silver one. But that's no big difference after all... the screen is what matters, and the BenQ is great.

How can I check my FW version though?
Would really like to verify that mine is a new one.
 
I just tried to plug my XBOX360 w/ HDMI via HDMI -> DVI because the DVI input seems to have much better image quality.

It looks as if the XBOX cannot determine what resolutions the DVI port is capable of and I am stuck with a 480p only image. If I hook up to the HDMI port this is not an issue, but the image looks horrible in comparison.

I do not yet have the latest firmware upgrade for the Benq that fixes the 1:1 issues. Does the new firmware update also fix this?

The PS3 doesn't suffer from this problem, because you can forcefully select an output resolution, but the XBOX polls your monitor to determine what output resolutions it is capable of.

Anyone with an HDMI 360 and the latest Benq firmware wanna test this out? Thanks! I'll try to get my monitor flashed in the upcoming weeks.

Oh, and does the latest firmware also increase image quality on the HDMI input? Because if so, then the problem is essentialy moot.
 
i did it, pulled the trigger. this will be my first LCD screen ever. up until now i have been using an nec fp2141sb. at $449 and free shipping with 3 year warranty directly from benq i could not resist. hopefully no dead pixels. i hope this lcd screen lives up to its reputation for me.

edit* ... i bought the fp241vw ... pretty much same thing
 
People, those who have calibrated this monitor according to sRGB standard (~2.2 gamma, 120cd/m2 and 6500K), what have been your black depth results? Are they below 0.20?
 
Hey MaZa,

My FP241VW black level was 0.32 at 30 brightness, which is the lowest before black crush starts to creep in (before calibration). I was able to achieve just over 140cdm/2 white point at this level. Anything lower would have to be achieved with either lowering the RGB levels in the screen's OSD or using the graphics card to compensate.



MaZa said:
People, those who have calibrated this monitor according to sRGB standard (~2.2 gamma, 120cd/m2 and 6500K), what have been your black depth results? Are they below 0.20?
Click to expand...
 
That weak? And I thought this monitor would have good black depth... Backlight control isnt very good I presume?
 
I believe that 0.33 or so was close to the lowest that I had obtained from this screen. From 100 down to 30 brightness the backlight is lowered accordingly, but I think from 30 down to 0 it was using panel blocking to further reduce the brightness, and the backlight did not change.

Unfortunately I can't test it any more, as I've sold my beloved low lag FP241VW. Replaced with the Dell 2709W. The Dell has much deeper blacks, but the whites are not as good, and the lag is console friendly only.

MaZa said:
That weak? And I thought this monitor would have good black depth... Backlight control isnt very good I presume?
Click to expand...
 
I'm still loving this monitor, but there is just one flaw that I wish BenQ could have addressed: aliasing.

Problem #1:. When you boot up the PS3 or 360 via HDMI, the entire screen is at maximum sharpness. So what do you do? Go to the OSD menu, obviously.

This is where problem #2 begins though: when you change that sharpness setting in the menu, the jaggies go away, as expected. But if you dare to change input, or the scaling mode, or turn the monitor off, it'll revert back to that sharp image again. Evidently, there is no memory for HDMI input, so if it bothers you, you'll need to consult the OSD menu each time.

This glitch does not occur via any other input. For DVI, if you set it to "3" or "1" for sharpness, it'll remember from there onwards. Fortunately, it doesn't bother me enough to consider an RMA - but I do wonder if I'm alone with this problem. Has any found a way around it (besides just using a DVI-HDMI cable)?

My firmware dates back to September 2007 ("EUP0516" - with the scaling/blackout) fix - have there been any subsequent firmware updates that I can send my monitor away for?
 
Sharpness should be set to 3, to prevent any artificial sharpening or EE.

- If you set it to 1, you have max sharpness (weird?) with strong edge enhancement.
Text in for example IE tabs looks heavily sharpened and is horrible to read.
Both 1 and 2 is useless.
A pity they have locked sRGB to sharpness 1, since that renders this otherwise quite nice mode USELESS.

- If you set it to 5, you have picture softening.
Even though 4 might look okay, it actually works with blacks and lowering peak whites in contrasty zones.

It is very easy to check your shrpness here
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/sharpness.php

My settings on DVI:
Brightness: 30 (29 does not crush blacks, but very obviously green tints blacks. Below 29 black details are lost)
Contrast: 20 (I know its ok up to 50, but this was a way to decrese the insane brightness without loosing dark detail. Yes you loose "pop" but there is more than enough of that :) )
Sharpness: 3
Colour: User mode - R/G/B = 49/49/49 (50/50/50 gives an exagerated peak colur, which means there is a big step from colour band 30 to 32 for all colours - 49 fixes the problem for all colours)
Picture mode: Standard
Display mode: 1:1
1920*1200 @60Hz

NVidia gamma GF 6600GT:
Colour - correction nr - In value - Out value
Red - 1 - 0.35 - 0.33
Red - 2 - 0.53 - 0.49
Red - 3 - 0.72 - 0.69

Green - 1 - 0.35 - 0.34
Green - 2 - 0.53 - 0.50
Green - 3 - 0.72 - 0.70

Blue - 1 - 0.35 - 0.34
Blue - 2 - 0.53 - 0.51
Blue - 3 - 0.72 - 0.73

Blue still suffers from a bit to high gamma at 48%, buit this was as good as I got it.
The rest of the gammas at low, med and high are allmost spot on.

- The good about manually altering gamma = gamma gets more spot on
- The bad about manually altering gamma = some minor banding appears in greyscale ramps, but nothing that I can see during normal viewing.
- More good than bad IMO since you get a bit more depth in the picture.

Regards
Boogieman
 
Dazog said:
Anyone want to access the service menu and check which panel they got from NCIX's Sept 07 batch?

press

the "POWER", "SELECT" and "MENU" button at the same time.

After on lcd monitor, press the "v" button, now you can login to the

factory service mode.

The bottom Line should state the PANEL info.

I am curious to know which AUO panel this monitor uses before I pull the trigger thanks.
Click to expand...
Awesome, in my service menu I have adjustments for:
- Burn in mode (whats this for?)
- Power status (whats this for?)
- White balance (allthough I can not adjust it even if i press enter...it just does not accept enter)
- RGB Gain and offset (bias) - can be selected, adjusted and confirmed, but nothing changes picturewise... over DVI at least.
- See model nr Q245AXE MCEV020 0516 EUP (European model)

The question is if I can adjust the RGB Gain and Bias - that would have been AWESOME if tweaking the monitor for D65. But how do I "confirm" the values. When i change and press enter nothing happens with DVI picture. Is it only valid for D-sub VGA maybe?

Cheers
Boogieman
 
Hey all, I got my FP241W when it first hit Neweggs shelves back in 07 and I have loved it since, until I got the firmware flashed to add the 1:1 mapping. Since then, the monitor has been randomly turning off for 2-3 seconds and then coming back on. This sucks for desktop usage and especially gaming (such as guitar hero on my 360 via component since HDMI somehow resets the 360 if I switch inputs on the monitor and then back to HDMI). Has anyone found a fix for either of these issues or a resolution? I would really like to hear back. Thanks. I'm eventually going to upgrade to a 30", but thats way down the line. Probably late next year when I do a complete computer overhaul.
 
Any idea where to purchase one of these suckers? eBay, newEgg, Amazon, NCIXUS, google shopping...all either discontinued, out of stock, or page not found.
 
Has anyone had a problem with a FP241WZ going out? Last night I turned it on only to find that it didn't work right at all anymore. It still displays an image, but there's all kinds of bars and lines all over the place. I hooked up my laptop for testing via VGA, and the screen refreshed really, really, really slowly and there was an insane amount of ghosting. It felt very much like I was using an old passive matrix TFT from back in the day.

Mine's a refurb, so I'm pretty much SoL. I've had it for about 13 months now with no real issues and now it goes and dies on me. There don't seem to be any decent replacements out there either. Has anyone had BenQ repair anything before?
 
i might be buying a benq241w, i'm in europe, and i've asked first what the REV is. Could someone give me the could someone give me the REV numbers to look out for and which is the latest and greatest?

thx.
 
bardos said:
i might be buying a benq241w, i'm in europe, and i've asked first what the REV is. Could someone give me the could someone give me the REV numbers to look out for and which is the latest and greatest?

thx.
Click to expand...

I live in the Netherlands and I just received a november 2007 build - revision b5-128. It has the 1to1 pixel mapping and i haven't had any issues with it after a week of use. Build quality is great and i haven't discovered any dead pixels yet. Totally happy with it!
 
What settings people use when they are using the HDMI port? The problem is that I get quite crap image quality when using this displays hdmi port with PS3 (full hdmi range is off because this monitor doesnt support it and if its on it fails to display darker colours). The DVI is OK but the HDMI is just awful.

Any one care to share their settings that they have when they use the HDMI ?
 
Same here. I found you can get image to look better if you turn contrast way down, like to 25ish and bring brightness down to 30ish. But then again everything gets too dark.

PS3 over DVI looks way better. If possible invest in a DVI switch and use the DVI port instead. The DVI/VGA ports have normal contract/sharpness settings and the HDMI/Component ports are jacked up for unknown reasons.
 
Rockymaru said:
Any idea where to purchase one of these suckers? eBay, newEgg, Amazon, NCIXUS, google shopping...all either discontinued, out of stock, or page not found.
Click to expand...

They are completely gone. Sad too. Great screen especially June 2007 and beyond revisions.

km04 said:
Has anyone had a problem with a FP241WZ going out? Last night I turned it on only to find that it didn't work right at all anymore. It still displays an image, but there's all kinds of bars and lines all over the place. I hooked up my laptop for testing via VGA, and the screen refreshed really, really, really slowly and there was an insane amount of ghosting. It felt very much like I was using an old passive matrix TFT from back in the day.

Mine's a refurb, so I'm pretty much SoL. I've had it for about 13 months now with no real issues and now it goes and dies on me. There don't seem to be any decent replacements out there either. Has anyone had BenQ repair anything before?
Click to expand...

My FP241VW used to do this. A power cycle helped, and when it didn't, I unplugged the power cable for a few minutes and plugged it back in.

kartul said:
What settings people use when they are using the HDMI port? The problem is that I get quite crap image quality when using this displays hdmi port with PS3 (full hdmi range is off because this monitor doesnt support it and if its on it fails to display darker colours). The DVI is OK but the HDMI is just awful.

Any one care to share their settings that they have when they use the HDMI ?
Click to expand...

The HDMI port only supported "limited range" video level colors, so Super white should be off, limited range for HDMI and make sure the BluRay AV settings are not set to RGB.

Granted I had the FP241VW, but I never lowered the brightness below 30 because that's when the "digital darkening" would kick in and cause dark details to go out completely. I also never changed the contrast much from default of 50.

I don't know if the VW and W are different in this, but I ported the lagom.nl black test over to the PS3 to test it and I could see almost all the dark boxes too.
 
Mine was cool until one day i had this line running down the majority of the screen. Shows up most on shades of grey, but its pretty annoying when watching movies or playing games too. disappointed...

2dbo3ft.jpg
 
Please let me know what it means in the first line in the service mode:
"White Balance Fail 7860".
What is "7860"?

How to read the number of hours of work?
 
hello!

this is a question for the ones that have the blackout problem: if you connect it to the pc through the hdmi port, does it still black out?
 
Cousin Patty said:
Mine was cool until one day i had this line running down the majority of the screen. Shows up most on shades of grey, but its pretty annoying when watching movies or playing games too. disappointed...
Click to expand...


That line looks like a slight burn in from some app. Think back to what apps you had running in that spot -- it looks like it has round corners.

The burn-in will fade away, but I've been noticing this on my fp241w for a few months now, and it seems to happen faster and faster. Steps I take to remedy it is to not keep any apps (like sidebar) or other static apps on that monitor (I have duals) and keep a decsent screensaver time threshold (default for Windows is like 10-20 min.) and display: off timer (Seems the cooler the display, the faster it goes away). As for fixing the burn-in now, it will fade, just try your best to limit use for a little bit.

Hope that helps!
 
Anyone else experience "clouding"? Like random patches that are darker on the screen? Also it seems mine suffers burn-in :(
 
So here I am eons later and I want to hookup another computer using HDMI.
Has anyone been able to hook up a PC over HDMI and use the 1920x1200 resolution?
I'm not able to go above 1920x1080. Thanks.
 
kryptolus said:
So here I am eons later and I want to hookup another computer using HDMI.
Has anyone been able to hook up a PC over HDMI and use the 1920x1200 resolution?
I'm not able to go above 1920x1080. Thanks.
Click to expand...

I've not been able to accomplish it via Vista nor Windows 7 with my Nvidia 8800 GTS 512MB card and a DVI-to-HDMI cable. I've read, however, that people have been able to accomplish it under XP by setting up a custom screen resolution. Unfortunately, it doesn't take under Vista and Windows 7 thus far.
 
I got mine from the BenQ store before they stopped selling them. I know they are hard to find now but I am very content with mine. It's sad that the market is now flooded with TN panels instead of improved IPS or MVA panels.

I think there is one here actually on the for sale/trade section..might want to check it out.

Rockymaru said:
Any idea where to purchase one of these suckers? eBay, newEgg, Amazon, NCIXUS, google shopping...all either discontinued, out of stock, or page not found.
Click to expand...
 
Jonathan said:
I got mine from the BenQ store before they stopped selling them. I know they are hard to find now but I am very content with mine. It's sad that the market is now flooded with TN panels instead of improved IPS or MVA panels.

I think there is one here actually on the for sale/trade section..might want to check it out.
Click to expand...

http://www.unityelectronics.com/product-product_id/5258

http://shop.benq.us/benq-us/product.aspx?sku=3744632&culture=en-US

I'm going to get one I think...
 
Hello,

I have been using the monitor with Xbox 360 over VGA with the official VGA cable over 1080p and it has worked great.

However, I heard that the HDMI and Component outputs may not work very well with Playstation 3. Component in general looks weird and oversharp even withh Xbox 360.

People suggested I get a HDMI -> DVI converted to fix this issue?
Will this cable suffice, and what are possible disadvantages with it?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812189057

Also, how is component quality with PS3?
 
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