BenQ EW2740L review

The BenQ EW2740L is a Full HD 27in VA monitor with an MHL-compatible HDMI input. This means you can connect an MHL-compatible or tablet to the monitor and use it as a controller while you you’re your mobile’s content on its big screen. Conveniently, the monitor will charge your device while it’s connected.

Setting up the BenQ EW2740L is simple. All the monitor’s ports are easily accessible on the rear of the monitor and all you need to do is plug your device into the second HDMI input. There’s also a VGA input and separate headphone and microphone jacks.

We tested the monitor with an HTC One X+ smartphone. At first, the phone’s layout remained in its usual vertical position, appearing as a strip down the centre of the screen. This is a little different to other MHL monitors we’ve tested, which automatically default to a horizontal orientation to maximise the available space. Thankfully, the phone rotated automatically depending on the app we had open, allowing us to watch YouTube videos and browse our phone’s photo gallery from a more natural horizontal position.

It’s a handy feature to have if you don’t want to spend hours peering at a tiny screen at home, and BenQ’s flicker-free backlight also means you won’t strain your eyes looking at the monitor for extended periods either.

The most important part of any monitor, though, is its overall image quality. When we first turned it on, the 1,920×1,080 monitor was set to its Low Blue Light picture mode. As its name suggests, this gave the screen a very cool and dim appearance, but there are four sub settings for this mode that provide different colour temperatures. We weren’t expecting great things from the Low Blue Light picture mode, but our colour calibrator surprised us when it said the EW2740L was displaying 92.4 per cent of the sRGB colour gamut. This is great for a VA display, as we normally only see gamut scores of around 80 per cent for these types of monitors.

After calibration, the EW2740L increased to an impressive 98.2 per cent of the sRGB colour gamut. With these settings, our colour gamut was practically touching every single colour boundary, producing much brighter and more natural-looking colours onscreen.