BenQ PD3200U Designer Monitor (AQCOLOR Technology, 32 inch, 4K UHD, sRGB/Rec.709, KVM)

Product Information

But what about performance for non-professional applications? We hooked it up to a gaming rig with a mighty Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti graphics card, which does a pretty decent job of pushing games at 4K resolution, and they really did look superb. Overall, this is a standard array of ports for a professional monitor, but the layout is convenient and thoughtful. Controls

Calibration doesn’t always radically change a monitor’s performance, but in some cases, it will give you a little extra mileage and help gloss over some of your monitor’s flaws. Think of calibration like honing your kitchen knives. It’s not going to make them better, but it will make them sharper. With the BenQ, that’s exactly what we see after calibration.Yes. If you’re a professional looking for a display designed for creative use, you can’t do much better than the BenQ PD3200U — not without spending an extra couple hundred dollars. At this price, the BenQ is a steal. If you need a new workhorse monitor and you’re ready to step up to 4K, give this screen a serious look. On some monitors faint interlace patterns can be seen during certain transitions, particularly noticeable where light shades (muzzle flashes, explosions etc.) briefly pop up on the screen. These are sometimes referred to as ‘inversions artifacts’. Alternatively, static interlace patterns can be seen with some shades appearing as faint horizontal bands of a slightly lighter and slightly darker version of the intended shade. We did not observe any such artifacts on this monitor. In Standard mode, the PD3200U consumed 44 watts of power (it does not offer a power-saving ECO mode). That's more efficient than the same-size BenQ PV3200PT (57 watts), the BenQ BL3201PH (56 watts), and the 34-inch Dell U3417W (56 watts). Conclusion Looking at contrast and color gamut, you can see this monitor scores well, but doesn’t quite compete with the top contenders in this arena. The HP Dreamcolor z32xfeatures a wider color gamut, hitting 98 percent of the sRGB space, and 92 percent of the AdobeRGB color space. Even the LG 27UD88-W beat out our BenQ PD3200U, hitting 77 percent of the AdobeRGB space, to the BenQ’s 75 percent. As above with slightly cooler look to the image (marginal) and more flexibility with image controls. Although ‘2.2’ average gamma is achieved in both cases, the sRGB mode is targeted for better distinction of very dark shades as explained shortly.

Loading up our testing rig to play Destiny 2 at 4Kwas nothing short of spectacular. Similarly, 4K video looks incredible on this display. Even at 60Hz, its maximum refresh rate, everything appears silky-smooth and richly detailed. So, if you’re looking for an excellent high-resolution monitor with accurate color reproduction, which can also do a good job of displaying films and games in your downtime, the BenQ PD3200U is a great choice. Final verdict A good screen size and resolution combination in our view (3840 x 2160 and 32”), plus HDMI 2.0 and an ergonomically flexible and solidly built stand Low input lag and well-optimised pixel overdrive allowed the monitor to put in a convincing 60Hz performance Inputs are plentiful, with HDMI, USB 3, an SD card reader, and Display Port all supported right on the panel. While I haven’t made much use of the card reader or USB functionality, it’s conveniently located on the right side of the panel, along with additional USB ports on the underside, making it much easier to plug in your cables. In UseThe following images show pursuit photographs taken using the UFO Motion Test for ghosting, with the test running at its default speed of 960 pixels per second. This is a good practical speed for taking such photographs and one which represents both elements of perceived blur nicely. The monitor was set to its various ‘AMA’ (Advanced Motion Acceleration) pixel overdrive settings, with all rows of the test shown to demonstrate a range of different pixel transitions. The final column shows a reference screen, specifically a Dell S2417DG, showing how this test should look where eye (camera) movement is the only significant contributor to perceived blur. Note that this test runs at a frame rate matching the monitor’s refresh rate (i.e 60fps), with the UFO moving from left to right across the screen.

There has been a lot of interest in ‘4K’ UHD screens (3840 x 2160), with users keen to make use of the pixels for both work and play. As we explore in this article, there is a lot to like about the resolution. But there are also some issues, particularly when it comes to relying on scaling on the desktop, something that is more pertinent with smaller screens. The BenQ PD3200U spreads its pixels out across a 32” screen area, potentially reducing the reliance on scaling whilst still providing an excellent pixel density. We certainly had a lot of positives things to say about the predecessor to this model, the BL3201PT/PH, so it will be interesting to see how this one performs in similar test scenarios. That means the BenQ capable of reproducing color nearly perfectly. Any score below 1.0 is considered to be perfect, so with 1.23, the BenQ comes awfully close. Let’s see if we can shave it down with calibration. Post-calibration Quality This is the weakest Low Blue Light (LBL) setting. It is not particularly effective, although it does reduce blue light output compared to defaults and give a slightly warmer look to the image.The monitor provided a decent contrast performance on Battlefield 1 (BF1). Dark and shaded areas had reasonable depth to them, with good detail levels maintained across most of the screen. Some of this detail was lost due to ‘AHVA glow’, particularly near the bottom corners of the screen as observed from our normal viewing position. As noted previously this was a bit less extensive and a bit weaker than you might expect from an IPS-type panel of this size, but it was definitely still there and created a bit of a ‘flooded’ look to dark shades in affected regions. Lighter shades had a slight graininess to them due to the screen surface texture, but no heavy or smeary graininess thankfully. These bright areas contrasted quite well with darker surroundings – explosions, gunfire and torch lights in the night stood out well, for example. However, this isn’t just a monitor for media consumption. It’s a monitor for media creation. In that regard, it holds its own against more expensive competitors, but it’s not the most impressive professional monitor we’ve seen. Good contrast performance overall, with static contrast as expected and a slight reduction in ‘AHVA glow’ compared to what you might expect from such a screen My monitor arrived with 0 dead pixels and excellent apparent uniformity. While this is only a sample of 1, it’s a positive reflection on BenQ’s QA processes.

The greyscale gradient was very smooth overall without obvious banding. There was a small amount of banding at the low end. Some temporal dithering was also evident, although well-masked and not obvious. It is known that the monitor uses a dithering stage (8-bit + FRC) so this wasn’t surprising. To be fair, that’s the kind of improvement we saw from the HP Dreamcolor z32x also, which improved on its initials core of 1.68 by hitting .84. It’s important to point out that even though the Dreamcolor’s overall color error is lower than the BenQ’s, once you get under 1.0, the variances are rather minor. The LG 27UD88-W also improved, going from 3.97 to 2.34, but that’s still a little outside what you’d want from a professional monitor. Monitors like the BenQ PD3200U give us hope for a 4K future. It performs brilliantly, and the large screen size really gives you an insight into how a large 4K monitor can improve your productivity. Hardware, particularly gaming hardware, hasn’t quite caught up to the demands 4K places on modern desktop computers, but it’s gaining steam fast, which means 4K content is going to become more and more common and much more accessible.

A large 4K screen for your desk

The monitors interpolation process (i.e. ‘Full’ selected for ‘Display Mode’) gives significant softening to the image. Things are slightly sharper than when relying on GPU scaling and the softening is by no means the most extreme we’ve seen, but it is nowhere near as sharp as running the resolution natively on a screen of similar size. Contrary to popular belief, the monitor does not display 1920 x 1080 perfectly by 1:4 mapping onto the 3840 x 2160 pixels of the screen. Instead, exactly the same interpolation process is used as is used at other resolutions. This is the case regardless of the input used (HDMI, DP or MiniDP). The softening was more noticeable than on this model’s predecessor, unfortunately, although would potentially be a lot less noticeable if you’re sitting some distance from the screen. For example, using a games console with a controller. Even so, it seems this model is much better suited to running its native resolution on a range of devices (including new games consoles, via HDMI 2.0) than it is to running any non-native resolution. The BenQ PD3200U also does a decent job of showing off media and games in 4K, so don’t dismiss it because of its professional-focused design and features. said:I wanted to wait for 4K GSYNC >60Hz, but seems like those things aren't coming together soon, so I popped for the Acer Predator XB321HK... 2 out of three ain't bad.