Presenting the ZOWIE XL2540 240Hz

[Q83Ia7ta]

I'll second Trip here. I played a few hours of Overwatch with BBR on at 125hz and it honestly felt less snappy than just turning it off and playing under 144hz. It was easier to keep track of things with BBR on, but 144hz just felt better. I don't think this is due to BBR itself though, but due to the decreased refresh rate.

144hz felt better because of input lag. Mouse input is better = better feelings. If you take big pause in gaming and will start to play with strobing (lower refresh rate) then may be you will feel ok.

[Erecshyrinol]

144hz felt better because of input lag.

Well of course. What I'm saying is that strobing under 144hz would probably feel just fine, despite the supposed dreaded increase in input lag that comes with BBR. People will avoid strobing because they heard it makes things laggier, but I think it's just a matter of them being used to 144hz and the added input lag of having to go lower than that to avoid crosstalk is the real culprit of the laggier feeling.

If you take big pause in gaming and will start to play with strobing (lower refresh rate) then may be you will feel ok.

Possibly. I've got into strobing immediately after getting into high refresh rate LCDs. It all felt quite amazing at first, but 144hz won out in the end.

[Chief Blur Buster]

Strobing can be great when lag is not a huge problem.

Strobing does look best, however, during VSYNC ON though. (There's a big reason why Oculus VR and HTC Vive goggles always operate in VSYNC ON mode).

For competitive gameplay, VSYNC ON can be a problem on fixed-refresh-rate displays due to the lag, obviously.
So you don't want strobing or VSYNC ON -- and just live with the lack of motion blur elimination.

But if you're just doing a solo game of many games -- like Borderlands (fast turning with high-contrast lines) or Bioshock Infinite (on those "rollercoasters") -- then the experience can be far better with strobing if you're using a strobed monitor with excellent color quality -- provided you're using VSYNC ON and making sure stroberate == refreshrate == framerate at all times (and using a properly adjusted 1000Hz or 2000Hz mouse, to eliminate mouse microstutters whose visibility are amplified by strobing). If you're seeking the "Old Sega Arcade Machine" fluidity or the "Nintendo NES butter smooth panning on a CRT" perfect motion 60fps@60Hz fluidity effect, at the least possible motion blur, you definitely want strobing and VSYNC ON -- while using a GPU that doesn't slow down below framerate. And setting the strobe rate lower, if necessary, to assure the framerate==refreshrate==stroberate lock necessary for the perfect-motion effect.

Obviously, this doesn't matter to you if you are a competition player who needs minimum latency.

But if you're someone who want to prioritize the "perfect fluidity" effect of yesteryear Sega/Nintendo games... strobing+VSYNC ON+powerful GPU = FTW!!!1! (for that particular goal)

TL;DR In the situations of "seeking the perfect-motion effect as priority over latency", 100fps@100Hz VSYNC ON strobing can look far better than 120fps@144Hz at any VSYNC setting (ON/OFF) on a non-variable-refresh monitor -- if input lag is not the priority.

[Sirslicey]

First, I'll say it again:

XL2735 NEEDS THE SINGLE STROBE OVERRIDE RE-ADDED IN ITS FIRMWARE. *I will buy this monitor* IF someone at BENQ / Zowie gets a clue and ADDS this feature back--there is NO reason to OMIT IT. PERIOD.

Now, as far as input lag, TBH, I'd have to disagree unless you're referring to Vsync being enabled:

People get input lag during strobing because they use a strobe phase that strobes the frame up to 1 frame behind what is currently being rendered on the videocard. Lightboost does this by default. I'm rather sure ULMB does the same thing. In my own tests, Lightboost 120hz, 10% is identical, frame for frame, and pixel for pixel, to Benq blur Reduction @ 120hz, Vertical Total=1500, Strobe Phase=000, Strobe Duty=008. Even the crosstalk is identical (top and bottom position). Funny enough, everything seems shifted downwards at 100hz on BBR compared to Lightboost, since 2.1ms needs strobe duty=012 and increasing strobe duty for some reason shifts the entire crosstalk downwards top to bottom (like phase does, but to much lower degree). But I'm rambling again:

Using a high strobe phase value removes almost all of the lag associated with enabling strobing in the first place, in fact, the original V1 firmwares defaulted to a strobe phase of 100 and a strobe duty of 020, unchangeable. This gave good pixel settling performance at the top of the screen (like Lightboost) but the bottom was filled with excessive crosstalk (pixel data from the "next" (~+1 input lag) frame mixed with the current frame was at the bottom). But at the top of the screen, it was fine and overall input lag was lower than Lightboost.

But now on the newer firmwares, if you use a very high strobe phase (a few points before backlight shutoff) and Vertical Total=1500, the input lag from enabling strobing vs no strobing is unmeasurable: maybe at MOST half a frame, like 4ms. No pro would be able to detect any input lag at all. But having to enable vsync to take advantage of strobing does add frame buffering lag and that can be felt, even at 120hz.

XL2735 (unlike XL2730) responds to VT tweaks again (up to VT 1825) so you can probably do the exact same thing as before: Jack up the "Area" value as high as possible, and use a VT tweak and get no noticeable input lag from strobing and get low crosstalk.

I'll stop rambling.

No, you should ramble more often. There's a lot of lurkers who have no idea what any of this mumbo jumbo means, but you tend to clear things for me.

I will say though, as a competitive gamer, I personally love 120Hz MBR(v-sync off) for competetive(Unreal, Quake, Overwatch) FPS Gaming over 144Hz+. It really allowed me to be an even better player than I was before, BUT maybe I haven't given 144Hz+ a proper chance to redeem itself in my eyes. I doubt that any difference in input lag will make 120hzMBR players worse off. There are much larger factors at play here that most people don't think about, like the motion clarity of course.

[Chief Blur Buster]

A few percent of paid competition players definitely use MBR (strobing). Not many at all, though. The reaction time improvement advantage of full motion clarity has to (on average) exceed the latency penalty of strobing.

The average latency penalty of 144Hz strobing, at aggressive early-strobe timings (e.g. Slightly more GtG-pixel-transition crosstalk/ghosting at bottom edge, caused by flashing before GtG transitions fully complete at bottom of scan) is only 3.5 ms at 144Hz strobing. It can be as little as half the refresh cycle - center of strobed screen only 3.5ms more lag than non-strobed. (144Hz is 1/144sec per refresh, which is a 6.9ms scan. The center of the screen would be half that).

The CRT clarity (zero motion blur) reaction advantage can win it for a few competition players who know how to optimize strobing to minimum lag. Better reaction time with clear motion (e.g. Shooting tiny far away objects while in a fast turn, without pausing mid-turn to shoot) can outweigh the strobe lag penalty for certain competitive players for certain tactics like that.

However, many paid competive players lock their eyes only on the center crosshairs. Strobing doesn't help that situation if your gaze always stays fixed at the exact center of screen. This helps many tactics. You can see that strobing only makes a difference in eye-tracking situations, as seen at http://www.testufo.com/eyetracking (try it with and without strobing/MBR -- the stationary UFO looks the same, but the moving UFO looks different with strobing on/off) -- and some paid competition players have ceased eye tracking to bypass the motion blur handicap, and use the stare-almost-always-at-crosshairs technique (using peripheral vision for everything else).

TL;DR: Strobing/MBR can definitely help certain competitive tactics, but not all of them, and several paid pros use mainly tactics that strobing doesn't work with (i.e. stare-only-at-crosshairs-all-the-time).

[Sirslicey]

Very interesting, that might explain why I have a tendency to be a very aggressive player in FPS games(very-fast paced arena-fps). I very rarely stare at my cross hairs. I tend to nail rapid-acquisition shots very accurately. Easy to get OHK headshots in rapid motion with motion clarity. I think, what ever little input lag difference there may also be, can be easily accounted for through simple practice as well. Purely anecdotal however. Thanks for the informative explanation!

[Chief Blur Buster]

Anybody have any questions about it? I'll do my best to answer. Keep in mind I've got no colour calibration or latency testing equipment for hard numbers but I have the old XL2420G to compare to.

My full first impressions are here: http://www.respawn.ninja/2016/11/benq-z ... 0-preview/

Full review to come with a comparison to the XL2420G and XL2735 (Dynamic Accuracy) model.

Good job!
Those are called coronas -- overdrive artifacts.
LCD Motion Artifacts: Overdrive
And excellent pursuit camera capture, too (considering you didn't use the Pursuit Camera Grid as an aid!)
_________

For Readers/Reviewers/Writers who want to experiment with pursuit camera photography:

For pursuit camera photography (even hand-wave of a smartphone, if you don't have a camera rail) -- you should enable the pursuit camera grid to achieve more accurate camera captures. The difference between 144Hz and 240Hz should become slightly clearer with a successful Pursuit Camera Grid alignment according to these instructions here -- the instructions still work too with a hand-waved smartphone camera following the motion too. It's extremely tricky to get a very accurate pursuit, though.

Try out this TestUFO test with the Grid. If your camera can be adjusted to an exposure length of about 4x a refresh cycle (e.g. close as possible to 1/36th sec for 144Hz display, such as a 1/40sec shutter), that is even better.

HDTVTest.co.uk, RTINGS.com, and TFTCentral.co.uk, have used the BlurBusters invention (these links credit BlurBusters) -- have all done rail-based pursuit camera tests based on the Blur Busters invention, but even simple hand-waved-smartphone pursuit photography can improve successful capture with this technique too, by watching for grid-line skews according to these instructions.

[Falkentyne]

Chief: It's still completely absurd that Benq can't give us more AMA settings without having to either exploit firmware toggle bugs (XL2720Z) or go into the Service menu (XL2735, XL2730Z, XL2540) to change the "Overdrive Gain" setting (which seems to do the same bugs). Those coronas on a brand new $500 monitor make me sick.

The old XL2720Z at 144hz with motion blur reduction (MBR) disabled:
Oh look, Benq clearly hasn't learned what overdrive artifacts are yet, when you compare the XL2540!



XL2720Z at 144hz, MBR disabled, after two firmware exploits:
1) Enable MBR and set AMA to high, overwriting previous AMA setting:
2) Switch to a profile or S-switch preset with MBR disabled in the preset without disabling MBR in the OSD:



So what's the drawback of this, Chief? 3ms of more "pixel response" lag?
oddly enough, the image looks somewhat "cleaner" at 60hz, 100hz and 120hz with the same toggles...almost like 144hz is introducing some sort of inversion artifact (Masterotaku mentioned this actually):

100hz:


Sorry for the thread derail but you get the point...

[lexlazootin]

Why must you get a Benq and not something with G-Sync? They have great overdrive and single strobe. $350 bucks plus 185hz if you care about that.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01C05C1OK?tag=blurbust-20

[Trip]

Does anyone know what the input latency and response time is like on the xl2540. I am kind of interested in buying one but I wanna know these two things first before I am going to do that. Still cannot find any reviews about it on the internet.