Gadgetory

I think it's safe to say that I speak for the entire PC and gaming media industry when I say that we are sick of hearing marketing people running around saying this product is like optimized for gaming it's the best for gamers I mean you guys probably feel the same way hit that like button if you're tired of this crap I mean what does that even mean for headphones and headsets it's often the manufacturers way of saying hey it's got rubbish sound but you don't care or even notice anyway because you're going to be too distracted by the vibrant colors and flashing lights in the case of motherboards it pretty much means hey this performs exactly the same in every possible way as a non gaming model but it's a different color enjoy and traditionally for monitors it's meant tn paddles they might have crummy color and viewing angles but hey the pixel switch a little faster and they're cheap so uh gaming huh but maybe this is different maybe the XR 3501 is truly a gaming monitor not only because it's just not good enough for anything else but because even the compromises that have been made legitimately make it better for gamers could it be true I guess we'll find out the mastercase 5 by Coolermaster gives you the freedom to truly make your mid-tower pc case your own with a variety of modular parts and accessories click on the link in the video description to learn more so i'm going to split this video into two parts part 1 will be the speeds and feeds the specifications because for the most part a monitor can be broken down into raw numbers with better numbers equaling a better monitor that's more worthy of your hard-earned money so let's kick it off with the physical tour if the industrial design trend towards slim panel assemblies and hyper thin bezels reminiscent of a typical high fashion runway model are your thing then power to you but if you find more beauty in the ronda rousey's of the world then the XR 3501 might be your type this baby is thick and imposing but not exceedingly bulky nor is it by any means unattractive the stand is an elegant looking dark chrome finish affair with a red accent cable management hole through the back end not really much else to say about it it does feature 20 degrees of tilt but no swivel or height adjusts so you'll need a beefy base amount and a transfer kit if you want more flexibility in terms of i/o I give it a c-plus in spite of its size BenQ couldn't put the power supply inside the XR 3501 so they supply an external power brick there is no built-in USB hub and while having both DisplayPort and mini DisplayPort is nice there's no DVI or VGA if you're ever in a jam and the dual HDMI ports are version 1.4 rather than 2.0 meaning that the maximum reported refresh rate of the panel when cooked up via HDMI is 60 Hertz oh and I guess there's also a headphone jack pass-through down there slightly to the right of the i/o you will find the on-screen menu controls which are not very well labelled and it's kind of hard to line up which button corresponds to which dot I found it kind of frustrating to navigate but all the usual options are in there you can control pixel overdrive you can set up Ben Q's black equalizer feature if you want to see a little bit more detail and dark areas of the scene so I guess that leaves us pretty well around to the business end of any monitor and let me tell you there is some business going down there this is a 21 by 9 my favorite for those who've been out of the loop for a while aspect ratio monitor measuring 35 inches diagonally so a touch larger but pretty similar to models that I've used in the past from LG and Acer featuring get this a 2560 by 1088 bit a MVA panel running at a hundred and forty-four Hertz and boasting as good as four millisecond response times Wow and there's more to it too unlike those monitors I mentioned Ben Q has added freesync adaptive refresh rate support a huge plus for the AMD gamers out there and gone super aggro on the curvature of this display with the XR 3501 featuring an industry-leading 2000 R curve that would give a circle of these monitors just over half of the radius of a circle of 34 you see 97's holy crap but is that even a good thing I mean obviously you could curve a display so much that you wouldn't even be able to use it anymore so who has struck the right balance here well I guess I'd say it depends on the use case for productivity and office use I like to feel like there's a world beyond whatever project I'm working on at the moment a subtle curve is good in that case for gaming wrapping the display around me letting it hold me type that is an experience worth having and that's the XR 3501 in a nutshell whether you're into shooters racing games flight Sims whatever it is one hell of an experience the pixel response times aren't anything to write home about if you're coming from a fast TN like the Zeus PG 278 q but the 144 Hertz refresh rate and out standing contrast coupled with practically non-existent backlight bleed and a lack of IPS glow thanks to the AMD a panel more than make up for it in my mind and on the subject of the AMD a panel let's change gears and get empirical for a minute this thing freaked in rocks for color performance these Kalinin five charts show just over srgb Gannett coverage and the best out-of-the-box accuracy that I've seen since I got my hands on my eye one basic Pro to display calibrator I mean we're talking almost nothing with a Delta II of greater than two you could photo edit on this thing right out of the box awesome right hold on there is a big gotcha that I glossed over earlier and I have to come back to now that resolution I mean I get it this is a gaming monitor and in that context this trade-off actually makes a lot of sense because at 34 40 by 1440 there isn't a display interface today that can handle 144 Hertz not to mention that hardly a graphics card in existence would be able to drive that resolution at 144 frames per second but that many pixels at this kind of size is not a Retina display and in fact as I mentioned in my video on the LG 34 um 67 it's quite unpleasant for me to use outside of games because on screen elements look unnaturally large like someone turned the scaling up too high and some graphics even seem to lose fidelity when viewed like this with black lines ending up with weird colored glows around them but with all of that said this is truly a gaming monitor it is intended to be purchased and used by people who will game on it primarily with creating spreadsheets in Excel as a distant afterthought and as such I consider it a smashing success if you're more productivity focused I still love my high resolution LG's if you're somewhere in the middle Acer 75 Hertz XR 341 CK is a great middle ground but if you're a gamer to the core I agree with Ben Q's product design teams choice to go all-in with this lower resolution and super tight curve 144 Hertz panel and the XR 3501 is my new updog gaming monitor especially if you're running an AMD graphics card and you can take advantage of free sync adaptive refresh rates so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know where that button is but if it was awesome get subscribed hit the like button or even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop at Amazon instructions up there buying a cool t-shirt like this one or with a direct monthly contribution through our community forum which you should also join there's lots of cool people over there now that you're done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so click that little button in the top right corner to check out Terrans robot vex IQ video where he gets into like robotics it's actually pretty cool see you guys next time