BENQ GW2250HM review

The deep contrast and vibrant colours were particularly welcome when we were gaming, especially when playing cartoon-style titles such as Orcs Must Die 2. VA monitors are known for having slower response times than TN models, and BenQ quotes a relatively sedate 16ms black-to-black for the GW2250HM – far more than the 2-8 milliseconds we’re used to seeing from TN panels. However, this didn’t seem to make a difference in games; we couldn’t see any ghosting when running around and strafing past various objects in a first-person shooter.

Our calibration tests showed up some problems, though. When fresh out of the box the monitor could only produce a colour gamut within 80% of sRGB, which is one of the lowest results we’ve seen. Before calibration we used the monitor’s own colour settings and a colorimeter to try to get as close as possible to an accurate colour balance and brightness level, but we could either have accurate colours and adequate brightness, but not both; to get adequate brightness we had to oversaturate the colours. After calibration we saw a more accurate 93% of sRGB colour gamut, but this is still far off the 97%+ we see from even cheap TN panels.

The GW2250HM’s pre- and post-calibration colour gamuts

The monitor’s lack of brightness caused problems in our photo tests, and led to detail being lost in dark areas. A photo of a hut on a beach showed a beautiful blue sea, but the parts of the hut in shade had very little detail. When we showed the same photo on an Iiyama TN panel we could see all the detail of the hut’s wooden panelling. The lack of brightness also led to some detail being lost in darker scenes in games, but we could compensate for this to a certain extent by turning the monitor’s gamma settings up to maximum.

BenQ’s GW2250HM is a reasonable monitor for such a low price, and its excellent contrast makes it a lot of fun in games. However, the monitor’s fairly low brightness and questionable colour accuracy mean it’s really no good for imaging work. If you’re after a monitor for cheap thrills and aren’t too fussed about accurate image editing, it’s a good buy.