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.

Colours looked so good, in fact, that we could barely tell the difference between the EW2740L and our reference monitor in our solid colour image tests. Reds, greens and blues all looked equally bright and vibrant and whites were clean and bright. The monitor’s ultra-low black levels of 0.09cd/m² were also impressive, and our solid blacks were deep and inky across the screen with no signs of backlight bleeding.

The monitor’s contrast levels were also excellent. We measured a huge contrast ratio of 2,478:1 and could see a very high level of detail in all our high contrast test photos.

Adjusting the picture yourself is easy. Its touch-control buttons were responsive and intuitive to use and its onboard menu has a very simple layout. In addition to its User and Low Blue Light picture modes, you can also choose from Standard, Cinema, Game, Photo, sRGB, Eco and M-Book, but we’d recommend using either Standard or User for everyday use. There are also brightness, contrast, sharpness, gamma, colour temperature, hue and saturation controls, and the option to turn on its Super Resolution feature, which boosts the monitor’s pixel density. We wouldn’t recommend using this during everyday use, but it may help improve low resolution video.

The BenQ EW2740L is an excellent 27in monitor. With good image quality and lots of picture options, the EW2740L is great value and its MHL support makes it stand out from other monitors of this size at this price. The EW2740L’s small range of ports means it’s not hugely versatile if you want to plug it into lots of devices, but if you’re looking for a large monitor at a great price you should invest in a BenQ EW2740L.