BenQ's V2400W is a great way to get a higher resolution at a cheap price, although some of the usual extras are left out along the way.
Design and Features
A departure from the usual style, BenQ's latest is striking &msdash; from its curved base, to its glossy black bezel, to the touch capacitive buttons on the front, it's sure to grab attention.
These looks though come at the cost of flexibility &msdash; the V2400W doesn't support height or swivel adjustment, nor does it have a rotate function &msdash; a simple tilt is all that's provided.
It features DVI, HDMI and VGA inputs, although BenQ is quite stingy and only includes a VGA cable, leaving you to buy a separate DVI or HDMI cable to get the most out of it. Considering you can find the V2400W online though for less than AU$500, we don't mind so much &msdash; just be aware you'll need the extra cables to save you from travelling back to the shop in disappointment after you open the box.
The on-screen menu is easy to access, however because the buttons are so long, it can be time consuming to navigate. The "Enter" button also functions as an input switcher, but this is not clearly marked. It offers five colour profiles &msdash; Standard, Movie, Dynamics, Photo, and sRGB. Depending on what profile is selected, different options are made available &msdash; Normal mode gets access to Brightness, Contrast, Sharpness and custom colour settings; sRGB is limited to Brightness and Contrast; while Movie, Dynamics and Photo only allow Dynamic Contrast to be turned on or off.
It also has an option for audio, as there's a headphone jack on the left-hand side that acts as a passthrough from HDMI. There's also an option to turn AMA (Advanced Motion Accelerator, the chip responsible for giving the V2400W its claimed 2ms response time) on or off, should it cause any issues.
Performance
The V2400W uses a TN panel which means it only supports 6-bit colour, and emulates 8-bit through dithering. TN panels though have gotten quite good these days, and for gamers and day-to-day use they're quite fine &msdash; only the colour critical professions or those who demand the best are likely to be disappointed.
DisplayMate performance was acceptable, being capable of showing from four through 253 out of 256 shades on the greyscale, and while gradients had a tendency to crush blacks and whites a little quickly, it was still within acceptable limits for the price range.
While HDMI playback from a Panasonic stand-alone Blu-ray player was satisfactory, black levels couldn't be adjusted to an acceptable level. For the price, the BenQ V2400W is a perfectly good mainstream 24-inch monitor. If you want a higher performance or good HDMI output , we'd suggest you look at something with a little more grunt like the Dell 2408WFP.
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No this monitor has excellent performance over the PS3 ans the blacks can adjusted with Video output format: RGB and RGB full range: full. http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1315565
The good: cheapish price for 24". awesome contrast and response time as well as being able to display 16:9( 1:1 mapping or aspect scaling) content without any stretching.
The bad: not so brilliant viewing angles, common to all TN panels.