Benq BL3200PT (32" 1440p)

by my maths mine is currently 93(ish) PPI while the Benq comes in at just shy of 92 which lets be honest is pretty damn close ;)

To say I am "chomping at the bit" to change it is an understatement and it is only my shambolic finances that prevent me from pulling the trigger (praying for a lotto win lol)

I hear ya.

Should be 94.34 down to 91.79 on the ppi change I believe.

(Think I heard you had 24" 16:10)
 
The LG was a gorgeous screen. It was noticeably nice right out of the box.

Hardly any bezel and what was there wasn't very deep or thick.

Super viewing angles, very bright and things just jumped off the screen.

The issue for me on the LG34, and why I sent it back, is that it was simply too physically wide. I use window managers and I stand up at my desk, but I was actually having to move my head side to side laterally and/or shift actual body position to get a good look at the far right and left of the screen.

I know lots who are mainly gamers like the immersion, but at the same time those gamers have plenty of not so fun remarks about the IPS screen too.

Also, for wall mounting in my setup it was no good as the bottom of the screen had a protruding metal piece used for the desk stand that couldn't be removed. It didn't allow me to use my flush wall mount setup.

All that said, gorgeous screen.
I am on record openly wondering whether an LG 31-31" 4k will be right up my alley.

Thanks for the comparison mate. Really appreciate it! :)

I'm still caught in two minds as to whether the BenQ or the LG would work better for me. I like the look of the 21:9 screen but knowing that it's the exact same size vertically as my current 27" and just a few inches wider somewhat puts me off. Also, it's around 350 EUR more expensive than the BenQ and I'll have to upgrade my GPU too to push the extra pixels so the LG path is a lot more expensive for me.
 
I've received my LG 34UM95 just 3 days ago and I've just decided that I'm not happy with it...
I like it better than my previous Samsung S27B970D, that had beautiful colors and picture quality but wasn't big enough (...coming from an HP ZR30w) and too glossy.
The 21:9 feature is really cool in some games like TESO or Tomb Rider, but looks horrible in CoD Ghost and BF4.
I love the screen coating, the colors, the black and the contrast, but at the end of the day I'm still looking at an IPS 27" with wings, still not big enough.
Construction quality and aesthetic are great but the stand is useless (immediately replaced with a Vesa Ergotron).
As many others already said it before me: not enough juice for 1.000$ + taxes and shipping.
So, I've decided that I'll send it back to Newegg and I will buy a Benq BL3200PT from Tiger Direct. I will eventually keep the LG until the Benq arrives in order to compare them side by side and post my impressions.

Interesting read. I would think I would feel the same regarding the it's still a 27" with wings, be it very small pigeon wings lol.

I would love to hear a detailed side by side comparison of the two. I've never owned a VA panel and the idea of the plasma like black levels and no IPS glow really intrigues me.

In the LG thread, the input lag has been identified to be 17ms which is approx the same as what TFT Central found with the BenQ and it also happens to be similar to the lag of my current PB278Q monitor. I guess the only thing that can ruin this BenQ monitor for me is the pixel responsiveness and whether I would see any blurring. Time will tell. Just need to get stock here in Germany so I can buy it.
 
Okay I am a monitor noob and I've been looking around on and off to find a monitor to replace my 32" Panasonic HDTV 32LZ800 I've been using for the past 5-6 years. Last year I had bought an HP 27xl to see if it would be better as the HDTV isn't really designed for monitor use. The 27xl was very glossy and the IPS glow was very bad. This is actually the first thread I've read where people have talked about and care about glow in general. I returned the 27xl promptly. The 32LZ800 has no glow at all. Can't see a thing. If I put my face a few inches from the screen, I notice minor glow in the corners and dull shimmering on the screen in general, very similar to what I see on all IPS smartphones and my iPad. Is this the same sort of glow that the 27xl had a really bad case of? I also got a 23" Dell which has the same sort of glow, but not as bad, and I gave it to my mum.

I am actually pretty interested in this monitor, the BL3200PT. But still have some noob questions about displays in general.

Glow in HDTVs. I can't see any on my 32LZ800. I've never seen it on other TVs either. Why are they prominent on computer monitors? What makes the difference? Also, why are TVs so cheap compared to monitors and what am I losing/gaining from buying one over a regular monitor? There are many 32" 1080p HDTVs with nice designs for $200ish at Sam's Club, for example.

IPS vs VA. Or MVA. Someone here said that VA was superior to IPS other than color accuracy, which is not a big deal to me as I screw up the colors on purpose anyway. Can someone elaborate on why VA is superior?

Semi-gloss vs matte. I really don't like matte coatings at all in general since they do look like a piece of cellophane, or a piece of skin I peeled off my thumb and stuck on the screen. What is the semi-gloss on the BL3200PT suppose to be and does it give the gloss brightness without the gloss reflection?

Height adjustment. The stand and thick bottom bezel of my HDTV gives it a good 5 inches of height before the screen actually starts. My desk is also a bit on the higher side, so I end up having to tilt my head a bit to see the top comfortably. How low can the BL3200PT be adjusted?

Would there be any issue with 720p/1080p signals over HDMI from my PS3? My HDTV actually overscans/crops 720p signals and there's no way to adjust it. I don't know how good the internal scaler in a monitor would be compared to an older HDTV.

Audio out. My current setup has both my PC and PS3 connected to my HDTV via HDMI and the audio piped from the TV through red/white RCA cables to my speakers. Can I do the same setup with the BL3200PT using the headphone jack connecting to my speakers?

I am using an old Nvidia GTX 260. Do you think it will be able to run a 1440p desktop without issue? (I don't game) Does the monitor come with a dual link DVI?

Also, aside from the BL3200PT, are there any other good IPS/VA panels that are 1080p that would be cheaper than this?

Sooooo many questions.
 
Sooooo many questions.

I think most HDTVs are VA. The cheap ones are TN. The advantages are many, including wide viewing angles, deep contrast and black level, as well as little or no glow. TVs are easier to sell and get returned a lot less. Text on an HDTV is usually poor.

There's glow and then there's backlight bleed and they can be hard to tell apart. Glow isn't really an issue for AMVA and it doesn't have to be there on IPS either. It's a common flaw but not all of them have it, at least not to the degree you mention on the hp. It should be mostly unnoticeable. Backlight bleed is a design and quality control issue and should be minimal across the board.

But yes there are lots of decent MVA 1080p displays that would be acceptable for bunch cheaper than this display. At 32 inches not so much. You'd be looking at 24-27" 1080p. There's a lot of choices there but my suggestion for a 27" 1080p va would be the benq EW2740L.
 
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At 32" 1080p I'd go for one of Sony Bravias as they tend to at least care about low input lag in game mode.
For 27" 1080p I'm happy with my 2760HS (which i got as temporary solution until something better arrives) or Asus VN279Q which uses same panel
 
Bravia's HD TVs have horribly high response time and the smearing is very noticeable, unless you pump brightness up a lot...Tried both the W6 and W7 and had to send them back.
 
Is this monitor really 75Mhz and 4ms refresh?

http://www.pcworld.com/product/1427844/benq-bl3200pt-widescreen-lcd-monitor.html

I see the same specs reported at bhpphotovideo.

The monitor sold out at newegg at 699 and now its up to 740. There is one review on newegg and amazon has one review, but 10 comments. I'm waiting to hear if it will work for FPS. Hopefully the price will go back down once new egg stocks it.

Either this or wait until later this summer when 4k arrives.

I'm leaning towards this one though.
 
Every retailer declares it at 76Hz.
It is time to place the order...
Any suggestion on which retailer I should use?
 
Every retailer declares it at 76Hz.
It is time to place the order...
Any suggestion on which retailer I should use?

I'm going to get one off of the egg since I have a preferred account, but I think Amazon would be good too in case you want to return it. The 76Mhz refresh sold it for me as well. Happy Days!
 
i wouldn't hold my breath about the frequency, might be an error which got taken over by everyone copying the specs.

also, called my shop today and they told me that the screen will be here on the 20th :( moar waiting for me.
 
Can any current owner to try it, please? If it has 75hz, I might actually get it, since judder-free playback of 25fps content is very important for me. :D

Seconded. If frame skipping, obviously not good. I've reached out to the person that did the review on the egg if it truly runs at 75Mhz since they said it looked good on BF4 and Thief.
 
I remeber looking into it. It can be done with overclocking. I just never cared to change it or overclock
 
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I own a 1440p asus monitor and to get 75hz you gotta drop the resoulion
Hehe. I asked that in the WQHD thread but didnt get an answer. Which model is it? Does it do 75hz in 1080p also or do you have to go even lower res?
 
You got to lower it like to the lowest the get 75 lol
Its the pq28 the first one they come out with
 
It is a 25% OC in the first place I would definitely fall in love with this thing if it can do 76Hz, but I barely played with it an hour. I think I will keep this one. My Monitors this year Zr30w->XStar 27"->Zr30w->this Benq. I'll try it just don't have a lot of time on my hands. I have to jog my memory on how to do it in the first place. If not at 1440p I don't care anyway.
 
I got confirmation from a owner, Benq BL3200PT native refresh rate is 60Hz, he didn't try to overclock it yet...
 
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Amazon has 3 monitors available:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ITORMNM/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER
But priced 743$ + taxes!
TigerDirect has it at 699$ no taxes...
Of course on Amazon you have a great RMA service for the first month, on TigerDirect, for the same price, you can have 2 years of Square Trade protection plan!
Any suggestion on which retailer I should pick?

Wow, it was $703 just this morning on Amazon. Price at newegg also went up from 699 to 740. Price increase $40 in less than a day.
 
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Edit 3 : Just so there is no confusion I did not get this to work over 60Hz. Once I could see skipping at 66 I just put it back to native. I don't really know what I'm doing, but I can see skipping.
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76Hz and 75Hz did not work, but 74Hz did. I'm just using Nvidia control panel and running the frame skipping test for a little bit on Chrome. 75 & 76Hz the screen just stays black and corner says "Out of Range!" Like it won't accept the signal at all.

Hmm I wonder if it could somehow do it. I mean should there be a "frame skip" zone before just a black screen or some fuzzy anomoalies? I think I might settle on 72Hz and run the tests some more.
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edit 1 : I'm not sure I'm really testing this right. It says "VALID" at the bottom and the screen is accepting the settings, but wasn't sure that is good enough. I have clicked on the link a few times before and not even gotten it to say valid so I figured I was doing good. Yes I'm a noob. Looks like I have to take camera shots.
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edit 2 : Yeah I could see it skipping squares. I dropped it to 60Hz and can tell my eyes weren't playing any tricks. Now I can tell for sure it is not skipping squares... at 60Hz.
 
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texuspete00, take some photos of the monitor itself with some games on, next to your previous screen, etc. it's really surprising how scarce the media photos/screens are about this screen. :O
 
Edit 3 : Just so there is no confusion I did not get this to work over 60Hz. Once I could see skipping at 66 I just put it back to native. I don't really know what I'm doing, but I can see skipping.
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Thanks Tex for taking the time to test this out. Sounds like frame skipping above 60Mhz.
 
Errrr...this Amazon price keeps climbing -___-

How about we all agree not to buy any for a while so the price goes down? =D
 
I know man i want to pull the trigger on it now. But i havent made up my mind for sure between this or the 34 lg
 
I know man i want to pull the trigger on it now. But i havent made up my mind for sure between this or the 34 lg

i was in the same boat, decided to pull the trigger on the benq, it's cheaper and if i don't like it, i can still return it under DSR and get the LG
 
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