BenQ BL3201PT 4K monitor

I have the display and I hate it for my 3D/graphics/design work.

The colors are way too blue/cold on the default settings. Even after a day of adjusting the color balance with the monitor options and Nvidia control panel I still can't get natural tones. In photos and videos the problem does not stand out too much, but for graphical work it is just too off-balance. Are all LED monitors this blue/cold in hue? And although the contrast is ok on high settings it is not subtle enough (too clamped). The monitor also has an uneven color (warmer on the left and more blue on the right). I have an Dell U2711 (calibrated). And it has far more natural tones even though it has a wider color gamut. I think this PVA panel is just not of the same quality as a true IPS.

Does anyone have a suggestion for a display. I was thinking about the ASUS pro art (IPS)(ProArt PA328Q). Which should have been available in November, but there is no news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh16cJbuNwo
 
Dahkoht said:
Wondered if anyone that has this or the Acer similar model has it sitting next a Dell 30" or has seen a pic of it?Wondering if it's going to seem small in any way height wise if I'm using my Dell u3014 beside it on 2nd rig.
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793757002.jpg
 
Sephrioth said:
I have the display and I hate it for my 3D/graphics/design work.

The colors are way too blue/cold on the default settings. Even after a day of adjusting the color balance with the monitor options and Nvidia control panel I still can't get natural tones. In photos and videos the problem does not stand out too much, but for graphical work it is just too off-balance. Are all LED monitors this blue/cold in hue? And although the contrast is ok on high settings it is not subtle enough (too clamped). The monitor also has an uneven color (warmer on the left and more blue on the right). I have an Dell U2711 (calibrated). And it has far more natural tones even though it has a wider color gamut. I think this PVA panel is just not of the same quality as a true IPS.

Does anyone have a suggestion for a display. I was thinking about the ASUS pro art (IPS)(ProArt PA328Q). Which should have been available in November, but there is no news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh16cJbuNwo
Click to expand...

The PA328Q will either have this panel or the old, crappy IGZO panel. The 14-bit LUT will likely inflate the price hundreds over this monitor as well.

What calibrator are you using that you're having trouble with? I'm sure if you make a separate thread, someone will help you out with it. A lot of people here use a decent variety of them.

Sephrioth said:
I think it is not a true IPS pannel (they call it IPS though).
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This is like saying that Samsung PLS isn't IPS. It's the same thing.
 
MrMike said:
The PA328Q will either have this panel or the old, crappy IGZO panel. The 14-bit LUT will likely inflate the price hundreds over this monitor as well.

What calibrator are you using that you're having trouble with? I'm sure if you make a separate thread, someone will help you out with it. A lot of people here use a decent variety of them.
Click to expand...

Out of the box the display is just very blue in tone (everything has a very cold hue and reds are muddy/grayish). I can get somewhat decent results with a lot of calibration, but then the lighter and darker tones become distorted (not natural gray scales). I just don't like the monitor as much as my previous IPS screens which had a lot more natural grays and better colors. Is this cold hue a problem with all LED backlid displays? Do I have a bad sample? Should I consider the Samsung U32D970Q? I read somewhere that the colors of that monitor were good, but the contrast wasn't.
 
Sephrioth said:
Out of the box the display is just very blue in tone (everything has a very cold hue and reds are muddy/grayish). I can get somewhat decent results with a lot of calibration, but then the lighter and darker tones become distorted (not natural gray scales). I just don't like the monitor as much as my previous IPS screens which had a lot more natural grays and better colors. Is this cold hue a problem with all LED backlid displays? Do I have a bad sample? Should I consider the Samsung U32D970Q? I read somewhere that the colors of that monitor were good, but the contrast wasn't.
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What calibrator are you using? How do you know whether the colors are accurate or not?

I am not debating whether they are or not as I do not believe they are -- I'm asking what data you're using because you're talking about using this monitor in professional applications. What's the closest to 6500k you were able to calibrate to?

Sephrioth said:
How do you know this? Why shouldn't it have an other IPS panel?
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These are the current 32" panels.
 
MrMike said:
What calibrator are you using? How do you know whether the colors are accurate or not?

I am not debating whether they are or not as I do not believe they are -- I'm asking what data you're using because you're talking about using this monitor in professional applications. What's the closest to 6500k you were able to calibrate to?
Click to expand...

I don't have a calibration tool. I wanted to buy one some years ago but the Eyeone and the Spider tools were just not very good with wide gamut displays. I haven't followed current developments, so there could be better calibrators now. I always tune my monitors by hand. I know when a monitor is too blue/green and the colors are just plain incorrect. I know that monitors will always vary, but I want a monitor with acceptable colors out of the box. When the color shift is too large out of the box, it becomes difficult to calibrate the colors back to 'normal'.

Do all monitors with these types of backlights have a blue color shift?


MrMike said:
These are the current 32" panels.
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I don't see the Samsung 32" PVA pannel here, nor the 32" IGZO Sharp ones.
 
Sephrioth said:
I don't have a calibration tool. I wanted to buy one some years ago but the Eyeone and the Spider tools were just not very good with wide gamut displays. I haven't followed current developments, so there could be better calibrators now. I always tune my monitors by hand. I know when a monitor is too blue/green and the colors are just plain incorrect. I know that monitors will always vary, but I want a monitor with acceptable colors out of the box. When the color shift is too large out of the box, it becomes difficult to calibrate the colors back to 'normal'.

Do all monitors with these types of backlights have a blue color shift?
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Dude.

You said your U2711 was calibrated earlier. I was trying to help you save some time and cash since you implied you had a calibrator and there are lots of people here with experience calibrating displays.

By color shift you mean hue or bias? No, it's purely dependent upon calibration and QA with WLED. CFL backlights will change temperature over time as they degrade. GBr-LED backlights are used to create wide gamut displays and usually have a green tint.

Wide Gamut displays are not accurate out of the box. Their colors are over-saturated. They have to be calibrated down to 100% sRGB. Even if they have an sRGB mode, the reds are still pretty saturated from what I've seen of the U3011s at work.

If you're comparing this against a factory calibrated wide gamut CFL that has been in use for years, it is more likely that the U2711 is both over-saturated and too warm.

If you want a >100% sRGB monitor, get a U3014. I haven't seen any wide gamut 32" 4k monitors announced.

If you want a monitor with close to accurate colors out of the box, get the LG 4k Cinema display or the 34UM95. Nothing is perfectly accurate out of the box.

Sephrioth said:
I don't see the Samsung 32" PVA pannel here, nor the 32" IGZO Sharp ones.
Click to expand...

What Samsung PVA panel? This monitor uses the AUO (owned by Benq) AHVA. The Sharp IGZO is 31.5".
 
If you're comparing this against a factory calibrated wide gamut CFL that has been in use for years, it is more likely that the U2711 is both over-saturated and too warm.
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I am not just biased because my old monitor is too warm (which is probably the case). But this display is just very off (I mean really blue/green). I have to radically adjust the screen to make it somewhat better. I will get the xrite i1Display Pro to calibrate my monitors.

Does anyone with this monitor also have a very blue/green hue out of the box?

Does someone else have an uneven display with warmer colors on the left and cooler on the right?
 
Last edited:
So I was wondering, which panel does the BenQ have? The M320QAN01.0 or the M320QAN01.1? I'm confused.
 
so I've been working with mine all day for the last week and a half, working out great, definitely a keeper.

Here are some (crappy) pics, just to give you an idea of size.
http://imgur.com/a/1CKpf
I have a benq BL2701 in portrait next to it, it matches almost perfectly when I have the retina scaling set to 3008x1692, which corresponds roughly to roughly the same "size" as a 30" 1600p monitor.

The remote control is really handy, finally accessing a monitor's OSD is a breeze. i use it every night to tap into low blue light mode for working at night as well.

My only issues are not related to the monitor itself, just the transition to hidpi/retina... ideally you want a perfect 2x pixel amount, which for this monitor is 1080p, which isn't practical at 32".... so some older apps are not crisp since i'm not at exactly 2x, but for that I would need a 5k monitor (to get a 32" 1400p @ 2x). This will get better as software updates for hidpi, but overall things look great since OSX handles scaling well.




G48yYlu.png
 
XcPNehVYlE4A3C said:
so I've been working with mine all day for the last week and a half, working out great, definitely a keeper.

Here are some (crappy) pics, just to give you an idea of size.
http://imgur.com/a/1CKpf
I have a benq BL2701 in portrait next to it, it matches almost perfectly when I have the retina scaling set to 3008x1692, which corresponds roughly to roughly the same "size" as a 30" 1600p monitor.

The remote control is really handy, finally accessing a monitor's OSD is a breeze. i use it every night to tap into low blue light mode for working at night as well.

My only issues are not related to the monitor itself, just the transition to hidpi/retina... ideally you want a perfect 2x pixel amount, which for this monitor is 1080p, which isn't practical at 32".... so some older apps are not crisp since i'm not at exactly 2x, but for that I would need a 5k monitor (to get a 32" 1400p @ 2x). This will get better as software updates for hidpi, but overall things look great since OSX handles scaling well.




G48yYlu.png
Click to expand...



Haha, nice picture... p.s. hi fellow game developer ;) :D. I see Unity!
 
What Windows 8.1 (or any other version) DPI scaling you guys use?

Thanks
 
I use Mac OS at 100%, but the first step up on scaling looks great too.

Is anyone else noticing faint multicolored pixel patterns against black backgrounds? I just started seeing that while writing this post and looking closely.
 
So I've been using the BL3201PH for the past few days, and overall I think it's a pretty good monitor.

However, I noticed some things I was hoping I could get some feedback on:

1) Compared to my PA246Q that I was using before, SRGB mode seems to crush blacks a little bit. I notice that when I switch to Standard mode, I am able to change the Gamma to a 2 and bring some of that lost detail back. Has anyone else noticed this?

2) When using SRGB, the white's look a little on the blueish side (even more so when turning down the brightness to about 30%). When switching to Standard mode (which appears to be the same as SRGB mode, except you have more options to play with), I am able to change the color temperature to 'reddish' (from the default setting of 'normal') and it seems to help bring the display more in line with my PA246Qs. Any one else experience this?

3) The default sharpness settings seem rather high, currently I have it set to 5. By default for SRBG it was set to 10. What option does everyone else use?

PS: with regards to the display being warmer on the left and cooler on the right, I also notice this. I think this is due to the colorshift as well because as I move more to the right, the part that was once cool becomes warmer, and vice versa. This is the same behaviour I noticed on my two PA246Qs as well.

Thanks!
 
What Samsung PVA panel? This monitor uses the AUO (owned by Benq) AHVA. The Sharp IGZO is 31.5".
Click to expand...

Why would Samsung use an external panel and not it's own PVA technology? This makes little sense. Where can I find that the U970 uses that panel?
 
PS: with regards to the display being warmer on the left and cooler on the right, I also notice this. I think this is due to the colorshift as well because as I move more to the right, the part that was once cool becomes warmer, and vice versa. This is the same behaviour I noticed on my two PA246Qs as well.
Click to expand...

For me there was some color shift when moving the viewing position, but the screen always remained warmer on the left and bluer on the right (even at a distance).
 
elitebox said:
Mac Pro (late 2013)
Dual AMD FirePro D500 with 3GB GDDR5
Click to expand...

rushup edge said:
I use Mac OS at 100%, but the first step up on scaling looks great too.

Is anyone else noticing faint multicolored pixel patterns against black backgrounds? I just started seeing that while writing this post and looking closely.
Click to expand...

Mac users, are these the issues you're experiencing?

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6080897

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6250993

Sephrioth said:
Why would Samsung use an external panel and not it's own PVA technology? This makes little sense. Where can I find that the U970 uses that panel?
Click to expand...

I thought you were asking about this monitor's panel. There is no PVA 4k panel. The Samsung U32D970 uses the 31.5" IGZO panel but with SST. The only options available in the 32" range are the 31.5" IGZO and the AUO 32" IPS. You have to go up to 40" or down to 27-28" to get a different panel.
 
MrMike said:
I thought you were asking about this monitor's panel. There is no PVA 4k panel. The Samsung U32D970 uses the 31.5" IGZO panel but with SST. The only options available in the 32" range are the 31.5" IGZO and the AUO 32" IPS. You have to go up to 40" or down to 27-28" to get a different panel.
Click to expand...

The U32D970 uses a PLS panel according to =DEAD='s review: http://www.overclockers.ru/lab/6566...ung-u32d970q-tehnologichnyj-professional.html

An article from PCmonitors also claims it's using a PLS panel: https://pcmonitors.info/samsung/samsung-u32d970q-4k-uhd-pls-model/

The newer EV3237 uses a panel he wasn't able to confirm, but claims it's not nearly as grainy as the other 4k monitors he's tested: http://www.overclockers.ru/lab/6608...tora-eizo-flexscan-ev3237-plata-za-brend.html

Sephrioth said:
Why would Samsung use an external panel and not it's own PVA technology? This makes little sense. Where can I find that the U970 uses that panel?
Click to expand...

I'm just going to assume you mean PLS.
 
rushup edge said:
Unfortunately no, it's not chromatic abberation (also I am running a Hackintosh.) It's more of a starfield type effect against black backgrounds, pixels fade in and out to primary colors very subtly. You have to look closely to see it.
Click to expand...

Ahhh. I hadn't noticed what you're referring to, but I can look more closely when I get home. Maybe it's from the coating and some glare?

Nikyo said:
The U32D970 uses a PLS panel according to =DEAD='s review: http://www.overclockers.ru/lab/6566...ung-u32d970q-tehnologichnyj-professional.html

An article from PCmonitors also claims it's using a PLS panel: https://pcmonitors.info/samsung/samsung-u32d970q-4k-uhd-pls-model/

The newer EV3237 uses a panel he wasn't able to confirm, but claims it's not nearly as grainy as the other 4k monitors he's tested: http://www.overclockers.ru/lab/6608...tora-eizo-flexscan-ev3237-plata-za-brend.html
Click to expand...

That's weird. I wonder why Panel Look doesn't have it listed? dead's review lists it as a 31.5" but the only 31.5" 3840x2160 panels they have listed are Sharp.

He lists it as GB-LED too, so there's no way it's the IGZO.
 
Is it confirmed that this is a different panel than that awful 31.5" IGZO panel sharp came out with?
 
Fullfrontal said:
I set up my 3201 last night and discovered a weird ring stain at the top of the screen.

Its so disappointing because its a beautiful display. I did not detect any dead pixels! Now I have to return it to Amazon and wait for them to come back in stock. :(:(:(
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You should have resized the image or linked to it instead of inserting it to the post, it doesn't look so great when large images are inserted to posts.

I dont' see what is wrong on the image. There is a darker curved line on the top, is that what you mean? :confused:
 
=)(= said:
You should have resized the image or linked to it instead of inserting it to the post, it doesn't look so great when large images are inserted to posts.

I dont' see what is wrong on the image. There is a darker curved line on the top, is that what you mean? :confused:
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Sorry about that! I have edited my post. Yes, the darker curved line. I have added a second link in which I messed with the contrast of the picture. I would say the second picture matches more closely to what I see with my eyes. Sorry for the quality of the photos (taken with my Iphone).

I would say the stain is very apparent. It almost looks like a bad coffee stain. Its visible on a light/white background (which includes my desktop wallpaper).
 
Fullfrontal said:
Sorry about that! I have edited my post. Yes, the darker curved line. I have added a second link in which I messed with the contrast of the picture. I would say the second picture matches more closely to what I see with my eyes. Sorry for the quality of the photos (taken with my Iphone).

I would say the stain is very apparent. It almost looks like a bad coffee stain. Its visible on a light/white background (which includes my desktop wallpaper).
Click to expand...

That sucks. Now you will have to wait several weeks to get another monitor.

It's not anything that can be cleaned?
 
I already tried cleaning it with a lint free cloth (dry and wet) and no luck. It seems to be underneath the glass and on the panel itself. I hope Amazon doesn't take that long to restock.
 
rushup edge said:
I don't think it is – it only happens when black background are displayed.
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I've looked for it the past couple days but didn't see it. Not doubting you that it's there, maybe I just don't see it sitting 3ft away?

Vega said:
Is it confirmed that this is a different panel than that awful 31.5" IGZO panel sharp came out with?
Click to expand...

Yep, this uses a panel made by AUO. It's M320QAN01.0. The Acer B326HK uses the same panel, but doesn't have adjustable overdrive.

Fullfrontal said:
I set up my 3201 last night and discovered a weird ring stain at the top of the screen.

Original
http://i.imgur.com/WfYxJPR.jpg

Edited Contrast:
http://i.imgur.com/9McQyeH.jpg

Its so disappointing because its a beautiful display. I did not detect any dead pixels! Now I have to return it to Amazon and wait for them to come back in stock. :(:(:(
Click to expand...

Dude that sucks. Was the box really beat up?
 
Fullfrontal said:
Nope, just some normal wear on the box corners. I'll be shipping it back today.
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That's lame. It looks like quality control isn't much better than the B326HK then. The QC of monitors is just exhausting.
 
my 2nd Monitor arrived today, but, sadly bot of them are going back to the store.

IMG20150106161708.jpg


After testing i am seeing the same yellowish @ the right bottom corner which is really bothering me, especially at this price range Monitor. *sighs*
 
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