BenQ XL-Z from Amazon.co.jp

[maftulkuftul]

Hi all,

I'm a non-Japanese currently living in Japan. I'm planning to buy a BenQ XL2411Z from Amazon.co.jp and I have been exchanging emails with their support as to whether the monitor already has the V2 firmware installed or not. Initially they contacted BenQ Japan and BenQ Japan claimed they don't know of any V2 firmware released for the monitor. After pointing them to BenQ's announcement and download page, Amazon's support contacted BenQ again and this time they told me that version sold in Japan is apparently different from the one sold in US/EU and I believe this means that the new firmware is most probably not gonna work on the Japanese model, even though I can't imagine how the monitors can be different considering the fact that they have the same model number and everything. Has anybody here bought a BenQ XL-Z from amazon.co.jp and can confirm or deny whether they come with the V2 firmware pre-installed and if they are actually different from the American version or not?

[Falkentyne]

As far a I know, Benq has a Taiwan headquarters also, but I don't know if they're originally an European company or not.
There's no reason why a model sold in Japan would be any different from one sold in America if it isn't even any different from one sold in Taiwan, lol.

Every monitor will come with at least V2 firmware by now. It's been over a year since V2 was widely produced.
The new news now is getting V4 firmware, which has some important profile and displayport bug fixes and much better overdrive (AMA) settings for blur reduction.

The good news is you can flash even a V1 version directly to V4.
Wrote a cobbled together updated guide based on bishis's and the original page 1 author here:

http://forums.blurbusters.com/viewtopic ... &start=200

[maftulkuftul]

@Falkentyne, thank you for your reply. The problem is that there are some really weird stuff sold here in Japan. For example it is not possible to find the ASUS VG248QE here anymore and instead a replacement model is sold that has the model number VG248QE-J; needless to say, the new model costs at least 8000 yen more than the previous one while it seems it is exactly the same monitor (or maybe not, nobody knows) and of course you cannot find this new model anywhere outside of Japan. The same also applies to Samsung's SSDs (MZ-7PD256BW (US, EU) vs MZ-7PD256S/IT (Japan) vs MZ-7PD256B/IT (Japan, discontinued) ) and a lot of other products.

In case of the BenQ monitor, at least the model number is the same as US and EU but the following is a direct quote from Amazon's support, quoting BenQ's support:

They replied to us about those items between BenQ Corporation of U.S. and Japan are different in the aspect of their specifications. Even if they have a similar-looking, they're different.

I believe these different model numbers are most likely due to the fact that Yen has gotten a lot weaker in comparison to dollar in the past year and vendors are discontinuing original models and replacing them with new models, which are exactly the same as previous ones, so that they'd be able to sell the product for a higher price but I might be wrong and hence, it is a little bit risky for me to spend so much money (from a student's perspective) for a product that might not work as it should.

Anyway, I think I might actually consider buying the monitor blindly and hope for the best (maybe I'll get one with V4 pre-installed ) but I think I'll contact BenQ's support directly and see what they'd say first.

[maftulkuftul]

I finally received a reply from BenQ's Japanese division (in Japanese) and based on what I can understand from the google translated text, "they cannot disclose any information about the firmware of the models sold in Japan!" Needless to say, I only asked them about the version number...