BenQ FP241W

Craig Simms says ThanQ to BenQ.

BenQ’s last 24" monitor wasn’t that special – in fact a lot of BenQ’s we’ve seen simply weren’t up to scratch, so imagine our surprise when the best 24" monitor so far simply sauntered into our labs.

It’s not perfect, to be sure – BenQ still insists on putting its buttons on the side which is vastly annoying, the menu is excessively slow to respond and the base is not heavy enough when trying to swivel the panel, resulting in the whole unit being swung instead.

All the usual adjustments are there – height, swivel, tilt and rotate, so you’ll be most comfortable no matter which nook or cranny you shove it in. The range of height adjustment can only be described as monolithic – the neck just keeps going and going.

After the usual switching off presets and reverting to a custom mode to gain a neutral cast, we found we had to drop the RGB values to about 45 to stop the whites blowing out. Once this was achieved, DisplayMate was fired up and the FP241W romped through all the tests, displaying the full 256-colour greyscale gamut and showing no problems with colour gradients, horizontal or vertical.

Out of the Dell 2407FPW, Samsung 244T and the BenQ FP241W, only the BenQ uses an AU Optronics panel, the others use an identical Samsung.

The monitor supports DVI, D-Sub, component, composite, S-Video and HDMI, covering pretty much any video input you care to, well, input.

Unfortunately like the Samsung the BenQ has no hardware scaling options, meaning that everything is stretched to the full screen. This can be circumvented through your video card control panel, but through non-graphics card inputs like component or S-Video you’re stuck with fullscreen. In today’s HD world that means stretching from 16:9 to 16:10, creating unsightly deformations. Despite its leanings towards a multimedia monitor (heck, it has an HDMI input!), thanks to this oversight like the Samsung it really should only be used for PCs.

Colours are great and gaming is fantastically immersive as it tends to be on a 24" screen, without being as overwhelming as the larger 30" screens. The 6ms response time really kicks in making the experience very nice indeed. This will be reportedly improved with the BenQ FP241WZ which features Black Frame Insertion – the splicing in of a black screen every few frames to help reduce the apparent visibility of ghosting – effectively attempting to wipe the human retina of the previous image so things appear a little sharper. This will of course bring a price premium, so we look forward to seeing if it is worth it.

PIP is of course available, and position and size is of course customisable. The most useful swap function also exists here, allowing you to switch the small image to full screen and vice versa should you wish to focus on your console gaming or video rather than work, but still keep a watchful eye on Trillian.

Two USB ports dot the side and one on the top is there for a webcam – not the greatest of placements but if you need the extra ports they’re always welcome. It appears Dell is still the only one building in the uber useful card readers, but if you’re not a photographer this shouldn’t bother you.

BenQ has pumped out a fantastic product at a decent price point, and it’s to be commended for the effort. Now allow hardware one-to-one scaling, make the base heavier and move your buttons to the front, and you have yourself a perfect product and a hot award coming your way. We await the results.