BenQ PD2500Q Review: A Photo Editing Specialist

I pretty soon had to return this monitor due to my eyes hurting and also getting head aches which I have never experienced before with a monitor (and next to no other things either actually).I didn’t notice it to begin with or at least I didn’t think it was anything to do with the screen. But after doing several different activities on my PC, I began to realise just how over saturated and vibrant the colours looked. I take a lot of pictures on my cameras. Many colours simply don’t look like they did in reality on this monitor compared to my previous ones. I strongly disagree that this monitor has sRGB and Rec. 709 colour calibrated with 100% accuracy. This is their claim and I bet if it was tested with the right equipment, it would not be correct. From my impressions, this monitor does what many TV’s seem to. It makes colours pop and stand out but to me isn’t really suitable for standard PC use. Many TV’s have a PC setting on them to make they appear “normal” when used for this purpose as their standard setting just isn’t appropriate for PC use. I feel this monitor could have this problem, but I just can’t get it to look right.I spent over an hour trying to adjust the OSD and found that what some others had mentioned on amazon US reviews of this monitor is that turning the contrast right down to 10 or 15. This helps, but severely limits how bright the monitor can go. The contrast must be a bit on the extreme side on this monitor. Most monitors by default have it at around 70 – 75 by default and that usually seems right. This by default has it at 50 by default and looks like it is already set higher than my old monitor would when set to full. The whites and other bright colours, look incredibly bright, even when the monitor is on 30 brightness or below. Then when you view dark scenes, it is hard to distinguish the different shades. Something just doesn’t seem right about this to me. When playing games or watching films with dark scenes and you see a light on something, it just looks so intense that you can’t really identify things around it. This is the worst monitor I’ve come across in this aspect. There is just too great a difference between bright and dark scenes which I never thought could be a disadvantage until now.Turning the gamma up or down on the monitor doesn’t really help with this problem, however using Nvidia on my PC and turning the gamma down from 1.000 to 0.900 or around there makes it just about useable. Without this, I just find that text is very hard to read on a white background. My issue is very hard to describe, but it is clearly what this monitor is like and isn’t a fault with my specific one. It is a similar problem in a colourful game I play. there is sometimes text that you need to read that is not the most ideal colour or background (bright green text on a yellow background for example) but this monitor basically over exposes both colours that they almost merge and it just looks a total mess. I just can’t find a way to fix this.Even just simply watching the BBC news in the studio didn’t look right, the colours are unrealistic and the studio lights had significantly too much glare.Another issue is apparently the case with a great deal of monitors, but coming from a glossy monitor makes this more apparent, and it is especially bad on this. The colours are slightly warmer on the right side of the monitor than the left. When I look really closely at my old monitor which i have gone back to (Dell S2415H), this issue is there too, but hardly noticeable at all unless you put your head unrealistic close. The gloss finish on this monitor probably helps prevent it being noticeable though. With this BenQ monitor, playing a game with a night scene looks like it is a warm evening light on the right side with a brown tint, while more normal (grey / black) on the left. I’m nearly 3 feet away from the monitor which should be a reasonable distance, but this colour shift is such a distraction. Also very annoying for old footage (or photos) with a 4:3 aspect ratio as the two bars very clearly are a different shade unless you view the monitor from well over a metre away. In my opinion, if this monitor is used for editing, it will make many pictures appear warmer on the right, which I see as a major disadvantage. But I have to say, I’ve bought and returned 2 other 25 inch monitors with the same issue. It really doesn’t seem to be helped by the matte finish which appears to make the problem worse. I wish there were more glossy monitors about.As some others mentioned in the reviews here and on Amazon US, even a simple single colour background can have noticeable difference shades across it. A skype call for example while not using the web cam is simply deep blue. When viewing the centre of the screen at a realistic distance, the right of this blue image totally looses the blue and becomes grey. That is incredibly poor in my view. It is also very distracting using any program with a dark theme which is always my preference as you can always notice the brown tint towards the right. It just looks uneven.The only positives I can see about the picture of this monitor is that it is very good at highlighting faults with your images which will certainly have advantages if you are constantly editing them. But it doesn’t really highlight the image how it originally was captured which I see as a problem. If you manage to get a picture to look perfect on this monitor with editing software, it may help getting the best out of it when printing.I always thought of BenQ to be a budget brand, but the build quality exceeded my expectations with this in all but one area. It is very weighty and feels incredibly well built. Had I kept it, It will have been wall mounted, but I tested the stand and it is all very solid and stable. But there is one part of the monitor that I think is poorly built and it is a rather important part.The matte cover of the display is too soft and flexible. Unless you wipe it with extreme care to have 100% even pressure everywhere, you can actually see from the backlight on a black image where you have been with the cloth. This is nothing related to any water marks being left as there were none visible even with direct sunlight being on the monitor when off. I wondered what these marks were when gaming that was sort of in a zigzag pattern and it will have simply been where the microfibre cloth put the slightest bit of pressure on the screen making the backlight bleed in those areas far more apparent. How hard is it to make the cover of the display out of some tougher plastic? They managed to build everything else but this brilliantly. As I said, if you make a lot of effort to put totally even and gentle pressure on the screen when cleaning, you can remove this. I never touch screens myself, but I can easily see this screen getting spots of backlight bleed (possibly permanent) from where ever those end up pointing something out with their finger. With more and more devices becoming touch screen these days, you likely will get some more people touching PC monitors too, and this one will suffer badly from this over time if even carefully cleaning it causes issues. Of all the areas that there are, this is not a good one to cut costs.I’ll also add that others made a point about the LED being on the extreme side. I certainly agree. Dell always have very small and discrete power LEDs on their monitors. They also have an option in the OSD to turn it off. This is indeed ridiculously bright. Enough to partially illuminate your room as another reviewer points out. I don’t find this to me a major disadvantage. While I had it, I just put some black PVC tape over it. But it could certainly be an area they could improve for future models.Overall, I’m certainly not very impressed with this monitor for the price of it.