Viewsonic XG270 vs BenQ XL2746S vs Asus VG279QM

[another_ash]

120 - 200 nits is already a pretty standard brightness for reasonably lit office/room. Unless you sit under direct sunlight or use HDR, it's extremely unlikely you would really need to go above 200 nits unless your goal is to get eye strain.

Of course some people may prefer having extreme brightness and don't get eye strain after lots of screen time so it's perfectly up to the consumer whether or not they think paying extra is worth it.

This is so true, high nits BFI can make eye strains really annoying, that's why i never go past 50% brightness on my VG259QM, there are many other ways to improve image quality without getting a headache such as using ELMB with ShadowBoost, tweaked contrast and increasing saturation.

This! 200nits is plenty bright. AS someone who plays 8-10 hours daily I cannot stare at a super bright screen.

196 nits is not nearly enough for competitive gaming because it darkens shadow areas and actually causes more eye strain. You aren’t watching a movie where you turn down the brightness to sub 200 nits.

I disagree with these statements.

"it darkens shadow areas". Turning up brightness to see dark areas is like turning up volume to hear quieter footsteps. See this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRqVDb7sd0I. Luckily unlike turning up your volume, turning up brightness will not cause permanent damage but will cause eyestrain. The video about csgo sounds talks about the solution: compression where quieter sounds are made louder without increasing volume. Similarly; ASUS has Shadowboost which is pretty much the same as Benq's Black equalizer and will increase the shadow areas without increasing the brightness.

It's also important to realize that good competitive game design is another solution to this problem. In good competitive game there are never any shadow visibility problems in the first place so shadowboost is not really needed. This is why CSGO got a visibility update a few weeks ago and R6 got a lighting update back in 2017. But just in case, there are features to boost shadow areas in asus monitors anyway. IMO these features or turning up brightness don't help visibility but just make it easier to see the flaws in 8-bit color (banding). See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9j89L8eQQk. This video is talking about video compression but applies to monitors as we use 8-bit color when gaming.

"actually causes more eye strain". Eyestrain via brightness is caused by mismatch between room and screen. As a result your eyes will constantly have to readjust between the monitor and behind the monitor when gaming, making it worse for competitive play as you have to blink more often even if you don't feel eye-strain. Like I said, assuming you don't play under direct sunlight, extremely really bright room/greenhouse or use HDR; 120 - 200 nits is standard and will match your room lighting and won't be darker or brighter than your room. Playing on this won't cause more eyestrain but going above 200 can. If you want to use higher brightness then you probably need bias lighting but that bias lighting has to be brighter than your room lighting which is why it's more common in dark rooms more than normal lighting. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT1yOKlt-pM.

[Dirty Scrubz]

This is so true, high nits BFI can make eye strains really annoying, that's why i never go past 50% brightness on my VG259QM, there are many other ways to improve image quality without getting a headache such as using ELMB with ShadowBoost, tweaked contrast and increasing saturation.

This! 200nits is plenty bright. AS someone who plays 8-10 hours daily I cannot stare at a super bright screen.

196 nits is not nearly enough for competitive gaming because it darkens shadow areas and actually causes more eye strain. You aren’t watching a movie where you turn down the brightness to sub 200 nits.

I disagree with these statements.

"it darkens shadow areas". Turning up brightness to see dark areas is like turning up volume to hear quieter footsteps. See this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRqVDb7sd0I. Luckily unlike turning up your volume, turning up brightness will not cause permanent damage but will cause eyestrain. The video about csgo sounds talks about the solution: compression where quieter sounds are made louder without increasing volume. Similarly; ASUS has Shadowboost which is pretty much the same as Benq's Black equalizer and will increase the shadow areas without increasing the brightness.

It's also important to realize that good competitive game design is another solution to this problem. In good competitive game there are never any shadow visibility problems in the first place so shadowboost is not really needed. This is why CSGO got a visibility update a few weeks ago and R6 got a lighting update back in 2017. But just in case, there are features to boost shadow areas in asus monitors anyway. IMO these features or turning up brightness don't help visibility but just make it easier to see the flaws in 8-bit color (banding). See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9j89L8eQQk. This video is talking about video compression but applies to monitors as we use 8-bit color when gaming.

"actually causes more eye strain". Eyestrain via brightness is caused by mismatch between room and screen. As a result your eyes will constantly have to readjust between the monitor and behind the monitor when gaming, making it worse for competitive play as you have to blink more often even if you don't feel eye-strain. Like I said, assuming you don't play under direct sunlight, extremely really bright room/greenhouse or use HDR; 120 - 200 nits is standard and will match your room lighting and won't be darker or brighter than your room. Playing on this won't cause more eyestrain but going above 200 can. If you want to use higher brightness then you probably need bias lighting but that bias lighting has to be brighter than your room lighting which is why it's more common in dark rooms more than normal lighting. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT1yOKlt-pM.

You literally linked a bunch of irrelevant videos. CS: Go isn't the only competitive game in the world, there's plenty of BRs that millions of people play daily (e.g. Warzone, Apex etc) that have very dark areas that are exacerbated with a dim screen (e.g. 196 nits). Using a feature like BlackEq/Shadowboost can only do so much when your backlight can't compensate for it. This is a fact, I've got an Asus monitor here in the room w/me, an LG VA 10 bit display and this BenQ and I can do a side by side comparison in Warzone and see it in real time. The Asus I got tops out around 200 nits as well with BFI activated and it's pure trash. You can try to justify your Asus purchase all you want but I can see the evidence in front of me.

[another_ash]

This! 200nits is plenty bright. AS someone who plays 8-10 hours daily I cannot stare at a super bright screen.

196 nits is not nearly enough for competitive gaming because it darkens shadow areas and actually causes more eye strain. You aren’t watching a movie where you turn down the brightness to sub 200 nits.

I disagree with these statements.

"it darkens shadow areas". Turning up brightness to see dark areas is like turning up volume to hear quieter footsteps. See this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRqVDb7sd0I. Luckily unlike turning up your volume, turning up brightness will not cause permanent damage but will cause eyestrain. The video about csgo sounds talks about the solution: compression where quieter sounds are made louder without increasing volume. Similarly; ASUS has Shadowboost which is pretty much the same as Benq's Black equalizer and will increase the shadow areas without increasing the brightness.

It's also important to realize that good competitive game design is another solution to this problem. In good competitive game there are never any shadow visibility problems in the first place so shadowboost is not really needed. This is why CSGO got a visibility update a few weeks ago and R6 got a lighting update back in 2017. But just in case, there are features to boost shadow areas in asus monitors anyway. IMO these features or turning up brightness don't help visibility but just make it easier to see the flaws in 8-bit color (banding). See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9j89L8eQQk. This video is talking about video compression but applies to monitors as we use 8-bit color when gaming.

"actually causes more eye strain". Eyestrain via brightness is caused by mismatch between room and screen. As a result your eyes will constantly have to readjust between the monitor and behind the monitor when gaming, making it worse for competitive play as you have to blink more often even if you don't feel eye-strain. Like I said, assuming you don't play under direct sunlight, extremely really bright room/greenhouse or use HDR; 120 - 200 nits is standard and will match your room lighting and won't be darker or brighter than your room. Playing on this won't cause more eyestrain but going above 200 can. If you want to use higher brightness then you probably need bias lighting but that bias lighting has to be brighter than your room lighting which is why it's more common in dark rooms more than normal lighting. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT1yOKlt-pM.

You literally linked a bunch of irrelevant videos. CS: Go isn't the only competitive game in the world, there's plenty of BRs that millions of people play daily (e.g. Warzone, Apex etc) that have very dark areas that are exacerbated with a dim screen (e.g. 196 nits). Using a feature like BlackEq/Shadowboost can only do so much when your backlight can't compensate for it. This is a fact, I've got an Asus monitor here in the room w/me, an LG VA 10 bit display and this BenQ and I can do a side by side comparison in Warzone and see it in real time. The Asus I got tops out around 200 nits as well with BFI activated and it's pure trash. You can try to justify your Asus purchase all you want but I can see the evidence in front of me.

FYI I brought a Benq XL2546s. I used to play Warzone & Apex (competitive scrims) and had no issue on my brightness except for night maps (which are not played competitively) but I can turn on blackeq with one button anyway. Anything in the dark is as equally visible as in the bright no problem.

If you're committed to your opinion then I probably won't continue to try to convince you and leave this as my last reply regarding brightness. I mentioned links not directly related to explain the point I'm making which was: Don't turn up brightness for dark areas like turning up volume for footsteps: use something that boosts shadows otherwise you are promoting eyestrain. The last link through does discuss a bit of eye strain & ambient lighting so it's the most relevant.

200 nits is not dim. It's pretty much a standard and not something I randomly chose to defend ASUS here without evidence. Watch literally any monitor calibration video where they use a colorimeter/hardware calibrator and it will be 100 - 250 cd/m2 (nits) and still easily visible despite being in a extremely well lit bright recording studio. TFTCentral believe 120 cd/m2 is good for normal lighting and Rtings aims for 100cd/m2.

I'm perfectly used to around 200 nits since it matches my room. I used to fully max out my brightness much higher than my room with no eye strain but I noticed I blinked more often and it felt a bit annoying to use anything not dark mode. When I first switched to 200 nits I thought it was way too dim but after a day of use it was normal because my eyes adapted and the screen contrast looked exactly the same but now I could focus for longer while still easily seeing details in the shadows.

Putting up a 200 nit monitor vs something turned up to 300+ nits won't be a fair comparison because your eyes need to adjust. Eyes take at around 5 minutes to adjust from something dark to bright but if you use something bright for a long time and try to go dark can may take an hour to adapt (but took me a day to get used to it).

If you don't struggle with eyestrain you are free to use whatever I want but in my opinion it's better to use something that matches your room lighting since contrast will look exactly the same anyway when your eyes adapt. 200 nits is perfectly fine for 99% of rooms.

[Dirty Scrubz]

I can throw up a video in the next few days that directly show the ASUS vs BenQ side by side. You can keep trying to claim 100-200 nits is ok for games with dark corridors/rooms but it isn't. Software hacks don't make up for the lack of a bright backlight. Hell you can test this with the Zowie if you really have it, turn the brightness to sub 200 and crank up Black Eq, it looks like shit and doesn't highlight the dark shadowed areas properly.