Review on BenQ BL2420PT 23.8" Widescreen DisplayPort Monitor - 2560X1440 Resolution, IPS Panel, Built-In Speakers, USB Hub by Gary Thornton

Out of the box, this is not a very good monitor for photo editing. Significant detail is lost in the shadows and highlights, making it very difficult to determine if any part of an image is truly overexposed or underexposed. In fact, my 15 year old Sony monitor shows better detail in the farther parts of the histogram than this monitor. You can choose from different settings (Standard, Picture Mode, Low Blue Light, CAD, SRGB, Film, etc.). But no explanation for what they do. It was very frustrating when I wanted my "designer" monitor to see my photos exactly as they really were. The monitor does not come with a manual or a download link. Eventually I googled and found this. This provided detailed information for a range of monitors in this range and was somewhat helpful but not exhaustive. "Picture Mode" is simply for viewing images. In the end, after some fiddling, it turned out that "SRGB mode" was the best, and you MUST change the "HDMI RGB PC-Range" as well, which otherwise cuts glare and low light by default. After I fixed that, image fidelity improved significantly. It's still not top of the range, but I reckon it's the best you can get for a monitor in this price range. My other doubts are rather minor. You can easily adjust the height and angle of the monitor, but the maximum height is too low for optimal ergonomics and tall people. I'm 5'11" and had to use an extra monitor stand to get the center of the screen at eye level. The ability to tilt the monitor 90 degrees is handy, and the components snap into place with virtually no screws, which is nice The menu system is decent, but in a dark room it can be difficult to tell which light to hit first (super minor). Low blue light mode is good. Basically, switch to that when you surf the web a lot to reduce eye strain (you lose color fidelity, but for web browsing it doesn't matter) for such a monitor, of course, you don't want to use VGA (although you can, and many dual- Monitor users might be tempted to do this) ) I've tried this and the maximum resolution for VGA seems to be about half that of DVI or HDMI, so choose your cable connection wisely.