Iiyama ProLite B2783QSU review

The Iiyama ProLite B2783QSU is one of the cheapest 2,560×1,440 monitors I’ve reviewed, but as is so often the case with budget-orientated products, there are a few compromises. At 27in, the screen is the standard size for this resolution. Iiyama has done a good job of thinning down the bezels, with the top, left and right bezels all just 9mm thick. The bezels are all finished in plain black plastic, while the bottom bezel gets a brushed metal-style black plastic coating. It’s an understated business-focussed monitor with no showy features.

The stand is typically robust, with 130mm of height adjustment, portrait mode for document editing, and a versatile turntable with plenty of flexibility. Perhaps most important is the generous amount of tilt on offer, but you’ll need this as Iiyama has used a TN panel to keep costs down. TN is the least expensive screen panel technology and is great for budget screens, but this is clearly a cheap panel even by TN standards. Image quality is fine when you’re looking at the monitor straight on, but things start to go awry as soon as you’re outside of its very narrow viewing field.

Vertical viewing angles are the biggest problem; sit just a fraction too low or too high and either the top or bottom of the monitor will become noticeably darker. This means that if you’re a bit of a fidget, you’ll need to tilt the screen slightly whenever you change position to get a decent view. Horizontal viewing angles, meanwhile, are fine, although if you’re showing something to a colleague on the screen, they’ll see patches of dark yellow appear at the far edge of the monitor.

There are other problems, too. As I was moving my cursor and different windows round the screen, there was some noticeable ghosting taking place. I noticed it when playing games, too, which was rather off-putting. It’s not too drastic – when I compared it to an IPS monitor, for instance, the difference was fairly minimal – but it’s still an annoyance that’s hard to ignore once you’ve noticed it. 

The screen’s basic performance is actually surprisingly good for such a cheap screen. Out of the box, sRGB colour gamut coverage was a near-perfect 99.7%. Actual colour accuracy was very good, too, with an average delta-E of 2.51. Delta-E scores lower to zero are better, and aside from a rather wayward red delta-E of 6.77, the B2783QSU does a fine job. Of course, such good performance on the most challenging colours is a slightly moot point if you can only see them when you’re looking at the screen dead-on.

Black levels are pleasingly low at 0.37cd/m2, while a peak brightness score of 372cd/m2 is extremely impressive. The backlight is able to sustain this brightness over the whole surface of the screen, with the top-right corner just 13% darker than the centre, which is acceptable for a monitor at this price.

There are single HDMI, DVI and DisplayPort inputs at the rear of the monitor, but Iiyama has also included a two-port USB3 hub to help reduce desk clutter. If you use DisplayPort, you’ll be able to use this monitor’s elevated 70Hz refresh rate for slightly smoother cursor movement and gaming, although I honestly couldn’t tell the difference between the 60Hz and 70Hz setting.

Using the DisplayPort also unlocks AMD FreeSync, the adaptive sync technology that eliminates frame tearing when you’re gaming. However, this will only be useful if you’re using a PC with an AMD graphics card, and your game is running faster than 48fps, which will require some fine graphical tuning to get right. That said, you won’t find a FreeSync monitor with a resolution this high for less. Likewise, its pixel response time of 1ms and 10ms input lag figures are both very low.

The Iiyama ProLite B2783QSU is a tricky monitor to judge. It’s one of cheapest monitors I’ve seen with a 2,560×1,440 resolution, but you pay for this low price in the form of compromised viewing angles and noticeable ghosting effects, which means this isn’t the best screen for gaming. If you’re purely after more onscreen real estate and don’t mind such problems, it’s a decent buy. If image quality is important to you, you should look at spending a bit more, or sacrifice adjustability and get the AOC Q2778VQE.