For professional photographers, color accuracy is a major factor when selecting a monitor for photo manipulation. Equally important is having a panel that will display a wide range of colors and the right mix of color controls necessary to calibrate the screen. With the BenQ SW2700PT ($649.99), you get all three, as well as some photo-centric features, including a shading hood, an SD card reader, and a fully adjustable stand, all at a price that won't break the bank. This 27-inch monitor uses Advanced Hyper-Viewing Angle (AHVA) panel technology to deliver very accurate colors, and displays 99 percent of the Adobe RGB color space. It also offers excellent viewing angles. It's our top pick for midrange, big-screen monitors.
Design and Features
The SW2700PT ($529.99 at Amazon) boasts a 27-inch WQHD (2,560-by-1,440-resolution) matte panel based on AHVA technology, which is similar to In-Plane Switching (IPS) technology in that it offers rich, accurate colors and wide viewing angles. The monitor uses a 14-bit Look-Up Table (LUT), which allows for precise color management and very smooth color gradation, and it offers hardware calibration, which lets you adjust color settings in the monitor's processing circuitry rather than altering your GPU's output. You'll have to supply your own colorimeter, but you can download BenQ's free proprietary Palette Master Element calibration software to calibrate the monitor and save those settings as a preset.
There's nothing fancy about the way this monitor looks. It uses a plain, matte-black cabinet with 0.75-inch bezels, and has five function buttons, a Power switch, and a power LED under the lower bezel. The side bezels each have two removable clips that are used to attach the included shading hood. The monitor is supported by a rectangular stand with a sliding hinge that gives you 5 inches of height and 23.5 degrees of tilt adjustability. It also allows you to pivot the panel 90 degrees for Portrait-mode viewing. The base offers a 70-degree swivel range, and has a round recess that holds the included On-Screen Display (OSD) Controller, the same puck-shaped gadget that we saw with the BenQ BL3201PH ($999.00 at BenQ) . It plugs into the back of the monitor and lets you select one of three preprogrammed picture presets and change picture settings without having to use the above-mentioned function buttons.
The rear of the cabinet holds three video connections: a full-size DisplayPort input, an HDMI input, and a DVI dual-link input. The HDMI port is version 1.4 rather than the newer 2.0 version. They are joined by a USB 3.0 upstream port, a headphone jack, and a mini-USB port that is meant for the OSD Controller. An SD card reader and two USB 3.0 downstream ports are mounted on the left side of the cabinet, where they are easily accessible.
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The SW2700PT offers a generous selection of settings. In addition to Brightness, Contrast, and Sharpness settings, there are 10 Color Mode settings, including Standard, sRGB, Adobe RGB, Photo, B+W (black and white), and Low Blue Light (to reduce eyestrain). There are also two Calibration settings and two Custom (user-defined) settings. Color Temperature settings include 5,000K, 6,500K, and 9,300K presets, as well as a user-defined preset. You can fine-tune color output using the Hue and Saturation settings, both of which have slider adjustments for red, green, blue, magenta, cyan, and yellow color values, and adjust the Black Level to help bring out shadow detail in dark areas of an image. Other settings allow you to customize three of the function buttons and three of the OSD Controller buttons, and select an aspect ratio. However, this monitor does not offer an ECO power-saving mode.
The SW2700PT ships with a shade hood, DVI, USB, and DisplayPort cables, a Quick Start Guide, the OSD Controller, and a resource CD containing drivers and a User Guide. BenQ covers the monitor with a three-year warranty on parts, labor, and backlight.
Performance
The SW2700PT is an impressive performer. As illustrated on the chromaticity chart below, red, green, and blue colors (represented by the colored dots) are all perfectly aligned with their ideal CIE coordinates (represented by the boxes). This indicates excellent color accuracy right out of the box. Indeed, color quality was outstanding in my test images and while displaying scenes from Marvel's Avengers: Age Of Ultron on Blu-ray. The panel's ability to display inky blacks provided a nice dark background and helped punch up colors in testing.
Gray-scale performance is also quite good. The SW2700PT correctly displayed every shade of gray on the DisplayMate 64-Step Gray-Scale test and delivered sharp highlight and shadow detail. Colors remained true, and the picture suffered no loss of luminance when viewed from extreme side, top, and bottom angles. While this monitor is not geared toward gamers, its 5-millisecond (gray-to-gray) pixel response did a relatively good job of handling motion with minimal ghosting, and the panel's 9.5-millisecond input lag (the amount of time it takes for the monitor to react to a controller command, as measured by the Leo Bodnar Video Signal Lag Tester ) matched our fastest performer, the BenQ XL2430T gaming monitor ($470.69 at Walmart) .
The SW2700PT consumed 43 watts of power in testing, which is a bit higher than the Acer K272HUL (38 watts) and the Asus MG279Q ( at Amazon) (37 watts), but pretty much in line with its sibling, the BenQ XL2730Z ($754.62 at Amazon) (42 watts).
Conclusion
With the BenQ SW2700PT, you get features that usually command a much higher price, including a 14-bit LUT, hardware calibration, advanced color settings, and wide color-gamut coverage. Moreover, its 27-inch AHVA panel aced our color-accuracy and gray-scale performance tests and matched our current leader in our input-lag test. A fully adjustable stand, shading hood, and side-mounted USB 3.0 ports round out an overall impressive feature set. I'd prefer an HDMI 2.0 port rather than the older HDMI 1.4 port that this monitor offers, but that's a minor gripe and doesn't prevent the BenQ SW2700PT from becoming our Editors' Choice midrange, big-screen monitor.
BenQ's SW2700PT is a reasonably priced 27-inch monitor designed for photographers. It's an excellent performer and is packed with photo-friendly features.
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Sign up for other newslettersAbout John R. Delaney
Contributing Editor
