Benq SW2700PT - User Review — Damian Tan Photography

The Benq SW2700PT is a 27 inch QHD wide gamut 10 bit IPS display. It retails at about slightly under $1k SGD. (About $600 USD). It also has hardware calibration which is unheard of for the monitor of it’s size and price. Some key specs at a glance:

2560x1440 max resolution
LED backlight
IPS panel
1000:1 native contrast
60Hz refresh rate
16:9 aspect ratio
100% sRGB
99% AdobeRGB
1.07 billion display colours
109 PPI
10 bit colour

Out of the box

After setting up and power up the monitor to my iMac. The 1st thing I’ve noticed, it is not displaying at it’s max resolution of 2560x1440 but at 1920x1080. As I looked at the cables provided, I’ve used the DVI cable and there is another display port cable so I just gave that a try and yup that works. It is displaying at 2560x1440 now. With a bad start, now I really have a bad feeling about this monitor.

Use the display port cable if for some reason your computer can’t display the max resolution of 2560x1440.

Just to add, I did try to reproduce the same problem on a later date but somehow the connection via DVI is able to display 2560x1440. Weird!

Build and features

Benq added some nice touch to the monitor. A handle at the top of the neck and a big cable management hole at the bottom. Frankly, I use the both of them for cable management. The matte screen and matte finish of the monitor is nice. (Hate the glossy part at the rear)

There is a height indicator on the neck that allows you to know at which level you set you monitor height at but honestly I don’t think it is as useful as it may sound.

The big plus of this monitor I guess is the added shade that it comes with. If you have your monitor near a window or any other light source glaring into your monitor, it will be good to have the shade on.

Removable door on the top of the shade for colour calibrator to go through

The Hotkey Puck or OSD can be customised to different colour modes. It can also be used to navigate through the monitor’s setting. While it is good to have but I don’t really see myself using it that often.

Connectivity, from the left of the image below there is a Mini USB connector to the OSD, Headphone Jack, DVI, HDMI, Display Port and a USB 3.0 up stream port.

There is 2 USB 3.0 hub on the left side of the panel and a SD card reader.

Calibration with Palette Master Element (PME)

PME is Benq’s software that allow the monitor to be hardware calibrated. I am not going to pretend I am an expert in this software but somehow I can’t seems to get the calibration right with PME. I am using Spyder5 which is one of the approved calibrator. The main setting are as usual, D65, luminance 120, gamut 2.2 while the rest I did played around but the end result was pretty much the same. While the validation report did passed with a delta E of less than 2. But the monitor colour just look dull. Really dull! The monitor’s colour temperature also seems to be more towards the cooler side.

Average Delta E of 0.72 with the max at 1.78

One thing to note is that, if you use large patch set size, the calibration takes quite a bit of time about 20++ mins.

After multiple tries, I must say I gave up on PME. I am totally don’t know what’s wrong with the calibration. The statistic results looks and seems fine but the colour on the display don’t. Maybe the problem is with Spyder5? Well, I don’t have a X-rite i1 Display Pro so I can’t be sure at this point.

Calibration with Spyder5 pro

Calibration with Datacolor Spyder5 Pro is quite straight forward if you are familiar with the software. One thing, I think it is best to set your colour mode in the monitor setting to custom 1 or 2 before you start. The 1st time I did it was in Adobe RGB mode. After running the Spyder5 pro calibration the profile can’t be saved the 1st time I click saved. (Not sure why) But the 2nd time I try click save, it did saved. So I am not sure if it over write the Adobe RGB preset or not? I did the calibration again on custom 1 and didn’t encounter the failure to save in the end.

After calibration with Spyder5 Pro, the results were quite the opposite if compared to the PME calibration. While the colour looks vibrant but now the monitor looks a bit more warm and magenta. I did some edits after that and everything seems fine after comparing them to different displays, mobile devices and a print from my Canon MG7700 printer. So I guess I can trust the Spyder5 pro calibration.

An interesting thing that I’ve noticed when calibrating with the Spyder5 Pro is, the display gamut varies. I did see the display gamut of Adobe RGB at 99% once but most of the time it is less than that. The lowest I ever notice was only 70-ish%. (Can’t remember the exact figure)

Conclusion

After all the hiccups, to say am I satisfied with this monitor. Nope! It was frustrating trying to figure out what is wrong with the PME calibration. As of writing, I pretty much gave up on it till, if I ever get a i1 Display Pro. As for now, I’ll just rely on the Spyder5 Pro calibration. Nevertheless the Benq SW2700PT is still a pretty decent colour accurate monitor for the price at the 27 inch QHD range. Anything 4K, colour accurate at 27 inch will be at a whole new different price range. The advertise 99% Adobe RGB is questionable as it vary quite a lot every time I calibrate the monitor with Spyder5 Pro. A defect, QC issue? As for sRGB, most of the time it is at 100% but there was 1 occasion it was at 99%, so not as bad in comparison I guess. I’ll be getting in touch with Benq support soon on all the issues with this monitor.