BenQ PD3200U Designer Monitor (AQCOLOR Technology, 32 inch, 4K UHD, sRGB/Rec.709, KVM)

Product Information

Low input lag and well-optimised pixel overdrive allowed the monitor to put in a convincing 60Hz performance

I’ve appreciated high resolution monitors since I got my first Retina MacBook. There’s just something to the crispness of the image that you have to see to appreciate. Previous 4K panels were all too small, however, requiring scaling or a magnifying glass to be usable. At 32 inches, however, this panel hits a sweet spot of size and density, without needing to do things like curve the display. The various modes bring some enhancements, although ones such as CAD/CAM mode will only be of use to a small market of professionals. If you’re buying this as a business monitor for your work you'll be pretty impressed with its performance, especially considering its price.A good screen size and resolution combination in our view (3840 x 2160 and 32”), plus HDMI 2.0 and an ergonomically flexible and solidly built stand The Asus ROG PG27UQ and the Acer Predator XB272-HDR are slated to arrive in Q2 2017, that starts tomorrow (and no, not an April Fool's joke) . That puts it some time in the next 90 days though I expect we will see them released right around the big outer shows in May. That means the BenQ capable of reproducing color nearly perfectly. Any score below 1.0 is considered to be perfect, so with 1.23, the BenQ comes awfully close. Let’s see if we can shave it down with calibration. Post-calibration Quality Finally, we assessed the contrast performance of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. This film contains many scenes where strong contrast is called upon, with bright lightsabers and explosions lighting up much darker surroundings. The monitor again put in a decent performance. It didn’t capture the atmosphere in the way that a model with significantly stronger contrast might (such as a VA model), but it didn’t appear washed out in a reasonably well-lit room either.

Moving on to color accuracy, the BenQ managed to steal victory from the jaws of defeat with a near-perfect score. With an average color error of 1.23, to the HP Dreamcolor’s 1.68, and the LG 27UD88-W’s 3.97, the BenQ wins by a significant margin. A sensitive camera and a small tool called SMTT 2.0 was used to measure input lag for the PD3200U. The monitor was compared to various screens of known latency, taking over 30 repeat readings to maximise accuracy. Using this method, we calculated 7.05ms (under 1/2 a frame) of input lag. This value is influenced both by the signal delay (element you ‘feel’) and pixel responsiveness (element you ‘see’). It indicates a low signal delay, which will come as welcome news to users sensitive to this sort of thing.

A large 4K screen for your desk

Hardware, particularly gaming hardware, hasn’t quite caught up to the demands 4K places on modern desktop computers, but it’s gaining steam fast, which means 4K content is going to become more and more common and much more accessible. To be fair, that’s the kind of improvement we saw from the HP Dreamcolor z32x also, which improved on its initials core of 1.68 by hitting .84. It’s important to point out that even though the Dreamcolor’s overall color error is lower than the BenQ’s, once you get under 1.0, the variances are rather minor. The LG 27UD88-W also improved, going from 3.97 to 2.34, but that’s still a little outside what you’d want from a professional monitor. The monitor also handily comes with a KVM (Keyboard Video Mouse) switch, which lets you plug in a second PC and switch between the two while using a single monitor, keyboard and mouse. It’s a great productivity tool to have, and it means that if you use multiple machines you can potentially clear up your desk by using the BenQ PD3200U and getting rid of any secondary monitors, keyboards or mice.