Gadgetory

welcome back to hard rom boxes it turns out that entry-level 4k gaming monitors are pretty cheap these days you can find plenty of options for s than $500 us and some of the absolute cheapest options are available for less than 350 bucks today I'm not looking at the absolute cheapest 4k monitor on the market but one the cost around 450 dollars and promises HDI in addition to one millisecond response times the monitor is the Ben QL 2870 you it's nothing fancy it's a 28 inch 3840 by 2160 TN panel at 60 Hertz basically just your regular 4k monitor specs it does support freesync but the refresh rate range is just 40 to 60 Hertz so it doesn't support low framerate compensation which is a bit disappointing Ben Q also makes a big deal about this panel supporting HDR and specifically HDR 10 but well I guess we'll talk about HDR later the design this is an entry-level monitor so I wasn't expecting anything fancy but the L 2870 U is a bit of a chunky beast not just in the overall thickness of the panel but also in the bezels and 18 millimeters in thickness this is definitely not a slim bezel display and to make matters worse the panel itself isn't flush with the bezels instead it's set back about four millimeters I appreciate been cues choice not to include a lot of gamer junk but the large bezels and recessed display make it look pretty cheap the displays out of construction is also a cheap basic plastic with a bog-standard finish the stand uses an uncommon I guess you'd have to say t-shaped design and the front section at first glance looks like it might be metal but on closer inspection its basic plastic with a brush texture the rest of the stand uses black glossy plastic which is an absolute nightmare to keep dust and fingerprint free in terms of adjustability again everything is very basic is the stand only supports tilt adjustment though there is a visa mounting support for inputs we get two HDMI 2.0 ports and DisplayPort 1.4 plus a headphone jack and yes there are built-in speakers you also might have noticed this lump below the BenQ logo on the that's an ambient light sensor that forms part of Bank whose brightness intelligence plus technology or bi+ basically with this mode enabled the monitor will automatically adjust brightness color temperature to fit your surroundings that's pretty neat for those that like this sort of functionality but personally I prefer a static brightness and especially static color temperatures such that color accuracy is maintained the bi+ mode is enabled through a button on the front panel which also doubles as an HDR button but don't get fooled the SGR mode is either force enabled when windows HDR and WCG setting is enabled or it can be toggled to simulate HDR when the monitor is receiving an SDR input and my simulate I mean mess with the colors and saturation to make the image less accurate the rest of the displays controls are accessed through a row of basic buttons so no directional toggle which makes the OSD hard to navigate there's a healthy selection of color controls to be found in the OSD but a lot of bank use other features I'd never bother enabling like the low blue light mode the super resolution mode or the plethora of display modes let's talk about HDR because the e-l 2870 use support of HDR is listed as practically the first item on bankers website it's also one of the few 28 inch 4k TN monitors to support HDR which I suspect is why it's been marketed around $100 more than the cheapest monitors of equivalent specs but in reality that helps when he hit 70 U is not an HDR monitor it fails to support the three pillars of good HDR which are increased brightness increased contrast and increased color space and it fails almost every item in my HDR display checklist which I discussed in this video one of the corners will have that there I could do a comprehensive analysis of this monitor in the HDR mode but the checklist really tells the whole story this panel is only capable of 300 nits of peak brightness which isn't even enough to get the panel display HDR 400 certified 300 minutes is not enough to convey bright highlights or flashes so you'll be left with an SDR viewing experience in that regard the panel does not support local dimming of any kind a local dimming is key for LCD panels as it allows very bright and very dark areas to coexist on the screen at the same time essentially raising the contour ratio of the panel without local dimming this monitor is stuck in its basic a thousand to 1 contrast ratio which isn't high enough to convey the high dynamic range aspect of HDR the panel can adjust its entire backlight on-the-fly similar to traditional dynamic contrast modes but this is only useful when lighting changes between scenes or frames not when lighting differs within the frame and the backlight can't even get that bright anyway so again an SDR experience and finally the panel doesn't support a gamut larger than srgb so you're getting SDR level colors rather than the wider gamut supported by true HDR displays BenQ does this 10-bit color support which is true and this is the most basic requirement of H John is really the only requirement to support HDR 10 and windows WCG mode and it's only 10 bit processing anyway the panel itself is 8 bit plus FRC I did test the HDR mode briefly but it was immediately clear this panel can't match true HDR displays as you would have seen in the checklist anyway thank you really shouldn't be marketing this monitor as an HDR monitor and recommend anyone buying it just keep it on the STR mode moving on from that let's look at SDR performance because there's a chance this monitor could still be as standout you know non HDR display as we're still talking about an entry-level product this monitor does use a TN panel so viewing angles the average though surprisingly not terrible as I expect you for this technology brightness is acceptable for most indoor users at around 285 myths which falls a touch short of BenQ 300 nits claim contrast ratio though it's one of the weak aspects of its performance of just 822 one or thereabouts TN is the worst technology for contrast ratio and that's on show once again with these mediocre out-of-the-box results default color performance is average not terrible not amazing just fine for an entry-level display a grayscale delta a average of 3.0 is again hits pretty average but like with a lot of monitors the CCT average is a little wacky out of the factory the most disappointing aspect is the default gamma of below 2.0 which really should be to point to as shipped performance is similar in saturation and color checker tests with Delta averages between 3.0 and 4.0 no standout issues here just a typical out of the box experience when this sort of display it is possible to improve performance through tweaking a few OSD settings using these settings here which mostly focus on user color changes I was able to improve the grayscale delta-e to 1.90 and largely fix the gamma curve although gamma is slightly too high now it's also very difficult to fix the CCT curve without full calibration hence the weird shape is seeing here saturation and color checker tests do improve thanks to these tweaks but we're still not in the territory of a fully calibrated display at least when looking at the color checker results that said this is a pretty decent result from me OSD calibration plenty of displays don't allow you to get to this point as you might expect running a full calibration using spectral cows Kalman 5 software tightens up most areas of this displays performance we get much better gamma and CCT curves both saturation and color checker tests are tightened to a delta a average under 2.0 that said as you can see from the saturation chart blue performance remains a little loose despite calibration the good news is calibration doesn't impact the contrast ratio significantly falling to around 800 and one-to-one which is better than other TN panels I've tested calibrated power consumption is also decent for a display of this size at 52 watts as we displayed uniformly well the e/l 2870 u isn't exactly the most uniform display though high grade uniformity is typically reserved for professional monitors rather than budget displays like this one still I'd like to see a more uniform backlight especially as this isn't a curved display edge uniformity is slightly better than some curve displays I've reviewed but it's not as fantastic as other flat panels now we get into the interesting stuff response times Ben Q has used a TN panel here and claimed one millisecond response time so I guess it's a typical figure 40 and displays however in practice average grade gray response times aren't even close to 1 millisecond I recorded a 6 point 5 3 millisecond average and there were only a few transitions that approached 1 millisecond 50% white to black was around 1.3 milliseconds and full white to full black around 2.0 milliseconds but most other transitions were well above the 5 to 6 millisecond mark so once again we've got a manufacturer using an unrealistic minimum grader gray metric than an average this TN monitor is also pretty slow in general a 6.5 millisecond average puts it well in the territory of VA and IPS displays but without the benefit of those panels like increased contrast ratios and superior viewing angles transitions were within the 16.7 millisecond refresh rate window but the results are still very disappointing for a TN panel it gets even worse when you factor in the input lag the e/l 2870 u is the slowest display I've tested so far with a significant amount of input lag I'm not quite sure what the panel is doing perhaps Bank you simply opted for a cheap and slow scale I guess whatever is the case there's a lot of input lag which is not great news for gamers there's not a whole lot more to say on the Ben QL 28 7 to you it's on the cheaper end of 4k monitors with the TN panel and basic design and across our performance tests this monitor ranges from average to poor it's possible to calibrate the monitor to a reasonable enough standard using OSD controls but uniformity is poor as our response times an input lag particularly for a tiered display the e L 2870 U is currently available for four hundred and forty dollars which is to be honest a bit too expensive for what this monitor offers I don't see any compelling reason to buy the spend cue option over 300 to $350 monitors with near identical specs from Samsung LG or others especially considering this monitors chunky and unimpressive design if HDR was legitimately functional and worked well then perhaps you could justify spending an extra hundred bucks to get HDR but this isn't a true HDR monitored despite bank use advertising so it's definitely not worth even considering its HDR support in your purchasing decision it's a disappointing conclusion really I like budget displays and it's great to see such cheap 4k monitors on the market these days but budget conscious shoppers should have their eyes on the plethora of $300 options instead that's it for this review of the bank UEL 2870 you if you like this review consider giving it a like subscribe for more monitor reviews and consider supporting us directly through our patreon page I'll catch you next time