articles/Monitors/benq-sw2700pt-page2

BenQ SW2700PT - part 2 of 1 2 3

by Mike McNamee Published 01/10/2015

Set-up
Set-up was straight forward once we substituted our on-board single DVI cable for the supplied Dual DVI one; the high resolution demands a dual cable. In fact we ran three monitors off two graphics cards during the test which proved to be our initial downfall.

Although i1 Profiler recognised and correctly identified all three monitors, Windows was less accommodating. Windows decided to pretend to be using our bespoke BenQ profile while in reality using that of the second monitor and this delivered some rather ordinary audit data. Our certification protocol takes Windows out of the equation and we noted much better audits during this test. More probing isolated the problem and by removing the second monitor profiles from the system we forced Windows to comply with our wishes. This is not really relevant to the majority of users but it does point up the problem when profiling monitors - that all the black box stuff goes on behind the scenes and you can never be sure just what is going on! This is one reason why auditing is so vital; had we not done an audit we might have accepted the monitor as it was, operating badly, on the incorrect profile.

Performance
We tested the monitor with a number of protocols to obtain the average colour error and also the screen uniformity for both colour temperature and luminance variations.

All bar one patch, the set-up passed the IDEAlliance certification test (aka Fogra/Ugra) using a luminance of 75cd/m2 at a D55 setting. There was a 7% variation in luminance across the screen which is better than the 10% brightness non-uniformity required by ISO 12646. The monitor can probably be regarded as reference grade for pre-press work, the solo failed patch was only 0.06 outside the standard. If you look at the IT8 chart from the certification test you can see that all of the higher errors lie in the dark patches.

Overall then this is tremendous shooting for a monitor at the price! The data confirm both the Color Confidence 5-star rating and the high gamut.

• BenQ SW2700PT page 1
  
• BenQ SW2700PT page 2
  
• BenQ SW2700PT page 3
  

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