Blur Busters Forums

Hi everyone, first time poster but an avid reader and in desperate need of some advice.

I will try to keep it as short as I can, so about 2 weeks ago my main monitor HP x2301 started developing horizontal fuzzy white lines, to the best of my effort I was unable to get this problem resolved and was left with no choice other then purchasing a new screen. I like to add that I used this screen for over 3 years although it was a TN panel specification are nothing special I was generally happy with its color production and black level.

During the black Friday sale I found the Asus VN247H TN Panel for £139 and purchased it after checking out some reviews, unfortunately I was very disappointed with the many problems I faced. After spending 2 days of trying to calibrate and adjust the Brightness/Contrast it was sent back for a refund due to extremely washed out / gray looking colors and some major backlight bleed.

Next up I picked up the Samsung S24D390HL PLS Panel from local store, However this monitor turned out to be much worse then the Asus VN247H as you can see from Example 1 and Example 2, it greatly suffer from IPS glow even after extensive calibration.

Finely I decided to up my budget and go for the high refresh rate EIZO Foris FG2421 VA Panel. Now this VA screen produced some of the best black levels I have ever seen in a monitor and much better picture quality then the previous two but it had its share of problems.

1. Suffered from some cross hatching
2. Extreme light bleed from the Left/Right side of the monitor.
3. And in certain dark environments such as dungeons in skyrim it created a almost purple trail upon movement.
4. Uneven brightness and contrast across the screen even when viewed directly from the center.

I really wanted to like this monitor but the problems I faced left me no choice but to send it back for a refund. Now after few days of research and forum hopping I'm left clueless, basically I am looking for a monitor around £330 range that will be both good for games and general use which will have decent black levels and color production.

Any advice is greatly appreciated and thanks for taking the time to read.

My system spec:

CPU: i7-2600K clocked @ 4.2ghz
Memory: 4x 4GB Corsair Vengeance 4GB DDR3 1600Mhz Ram 9-9-9-24 = 16GB
GPU: 2x EVGA GTX 780 In SLI which is 2x8 PCI Bus speed with sandy bridge.
Motherboard : Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H

Decent for games AND good color reproduction?
Can't have your cake and eat it too...you have to choose one or the other.
Only way you're going to get BOTH is to get a CRT, or a VERY expensive laser projector.

You can try an 8 bit gsync panel like the Asus Rog Swift (assuming you get one without QA issues), even though it's STILL a TN, at least it has the best colors of any TN currently, or you can go with the Benq 2420G if you want gsync, AND adjustable Benq motion blur reduction (Z mode) and ability to hook it up to a console for blur reduction on that), 2430T for cheaper blur reduction without Gsync (you gain some extra display color options versus the Z/G versions), 2720Z if you can unlock lightboost (NVidia card/laptop) and want 1000:1 contrast ratios in lightboost (24" panels can't do this; you're doing great if you get close to 500:1)--that's situational, however some 2D side scrolling games/RPG's do look better in lightboost mode (with contrast set to 0=almost NO ghosting !) than benq blur reduction mode (I can't comment on ULMB, though)(, or just get one of the other Gsync panels (Acer/Phillips, etc).

Falkentyne wrote:Decent for games AND good color reproduction?
Can't have your cake and eat it too...you have to choose one or the other.
Only way you're going to get BOTH is to get a CRT, or a VERY expensive laser projector.

You can try an 8 bit gsync panel like the Asus Rog Swift (assuming you get one without QA issues), even though it's STILL a TN, at least it has the best colors of any TN currently, or you can go with the Benq 2420G if you want gsync, AND adjustable Benq motion blur reduction (Z mode) and ability to hook it up to a console for blur reduction on that), 2430T for cheaper blur reduction without Gsync (you gain some extra display color options versus the Z/G versions), 2720Z if you can unlock lightboost (NVidia card/laptop) and want 1000:1 contrast ratios in lightboost (24" panels can't do this; you're doing great if you get close to 500:1)--that's situational, however some 2D side scrolling games/RPG's do look better in lightboost mode (with contrast set to 0=almost NO ghosting !) than benq blur reduction mode (I can't comment on ULMB, though)(, or just get one of the other Gsync panels (Acer/Phillips, etc).

Hi and thanks for your reply,

Although I do play some FPS games such as Battlefield 4, CS:GO I am not a competitive player. I mostly focus on MMOs Such as WoW and RPG like skyrim. I am aware that you can't have the high refresh rate screen with great color production and my aim was to find something in between.

I am very interested in G-sync screens however Asus Rog Swift is a bit out of my price range. But I was looking at theAOC G2460PG 24" Widescreen G-Sync 144Hz however i do have some questions regarding this screen. Picture quality aside, this monitor only has a Displayport 1.2 connection and I am little bit worried that this might cause the Limited RGB issue with my nvidia GPU. But since I never owned a G-sync monitor before I m not sure if they suffer from the same problem.

The second screen I was looking at is the BenQ XL2430T. On paper it seems pretty good, and it looks amazing also however i read some very negative feedback about it on these forums and it made me very skeptical to give it a try.

Any info about these 2 monitors would be greatly appreciated.

I don't have suggestions about monitors, but I am curious about all these returns. Do you get a full refund? Do you pay for shipping or bring it in person? What stores? Did they accept the monitors back without complaint?

dclon wrote:I don't have suggestions about monitors, but I am curious about all these returns. Do you get a full refund? Do you pay for shipping or bring it in person? What stores? Did they accept the monitors back without complaint?

Right well I live in UK to start with, and two of the three monitors I purchased was from "Overclockers.co.uk" which I thankfully got a full refund for, the third one was from a large company called "John Lewis" which sells all kind of stuff beside just electronics.

Frankly I lost the joy and excitement in shopping. I just want to find a"decent" monitor around the £330 price range 24" and be done with it, I'm really tired to be honest with you.

Benq XL2430T is the same panel as the 2420Z.
The only differences are
1) 3d vision 2 (lightboost) has been removed (Benq has to pay Nvidia fees for every monitor that is used in).
2) more settings for color controls (digital vibrance) and new gamer profiles and a new black equalizer
3) strobe duty and strobe phase can be set in the OSD now (single strobe on/off still requires entering the service menu)
Incorrect colors were reported to be fixed to being like the Z series by turning the digital vibrance down a notch.
Color quality and saturation are far more tweakable thanks to this new setting.

You should be able to get your laser yellows and bright slime greens (with a rich but oversaturated look) by adjusting the new color settings (without having to go to HDMI ycbcr mode, which unlocked hue and saturation on the previous models).

You should be able to get similar colors as VG248QE's theater mode, this way.
(previously, you had to use a workaround on the Z series to get these colors in DVI mode:
1) use a FPS profile
2) switch to HDMI, ycbcr mode (NOT RGB); easily selectable in AMD CCC
3) adjust hue and saturation (greyed out in RGB full or limited range)
4) save the setting to FPS1/2 or save the FPS profile to one of the gamer presets
5) switch back to DVI mode. (your hue/saturation changes will be recalled from the profile even though they are greyed out now. Hue and Saturation are completely ignored in standard mode, if not in HDMI, though (even if you save changes in HDMI mode in standard mode, and go back to DVI, it reverts to default always). No idea about displayport.

Ah I see thanks for that insightful feedback.

So from your experience with the BenQ XL2430T / 2420Z, would you say that its pretty decent for a TN panel? Do you happen to know if they suffer from back light bleed / washed out gray colors from the ones you had experience with or heard about? Sorry if I am asking too many question I just want to collect a little bit more information about the benQ screens.

Yeah, I know the feeling. LCDs are inherently flawed, and even if you accepted their problems there's inconsistency in production so you never know what you're gonna get.

John Lewis also fully refunded? How did you ship all the 3 monitors back?

dclon wrote:Yeah, I know the feeling. LCDs are inherently flawed, and even if you accepted their problems there's inconsistency in production so you never know what you're gonna get.

John Lewis also fully refunded? How did you ship all the 3 monitors back?

The two from overclockers was arranged for collection and refund and the one from John Lewis was taken back to a near by branch and refunded in shop. I should add that I had to sit there waiting for 10/15 min and once it was my turn the guy took his time to check everything out before he accepted the refund.

If i were you i would just get a gsync monitor and be done with it. Cant beat the artifact free and smooth gaming with gsync.

http://www.blurbusters.com/gsync/list-o ... -monitors/

The 27" Acer XB270HA is a real 8bit panel (same as ROG swift) and exactly in your price range. As far as colors go, thats as good as your going to get if you want to enjoy games too.

You could wait and see whats announced from CES2015 in 3 weeks, but chances are that if there is something for gaming with good colors released its going to be too expensive for the next few years anyway.