BenQ BL2205PT PC Monitor Review

A no frills business display with very little to fault

by hodg100
Tech Review

Recommended
BenQ BL2205PT PC Monitor Review
MSRP: £119.95

What is the BenQ BL2205PT?

The BenQ BL2205PT monitor is sold for business use and, as such, it’s really a no-frills package with no particular pretensions; it’s not designed for gaming or photography and it has no real special audio or video features either. As the product name doesn’t quite suggest, this is a 21.5-inch display and it currently (March 2016) can be picked up for a whisker under £100.00, online, and of course you can take VAT off if you’re buying for a business. The competition in this sector is pretty ferocious so let's see if the BL2205PT can hold its corner.

Specifications

The BLP2205PT utilises an LED backlight to illuminate the 21.5” Full HD (1920 x 1080) TN panel with an aspect ratio of 16:9 and a claimed maximum brightness of 250cd/m2 with a native contrast ratio of 1000:1. Pixel response time is claimed at two milliseconds, grey-to-grey, with promised viewing angles of 170 degrees horizontal and 160 degrees on the vertical plane.

Design & Connections

The no-nonsense ethos of the product carries in to the design with a plain, understated, all-black look featuring a narrow black bezel around the matte screen. There are a series of downward running menu buttons on the right-hand side which has one assigned to power, one to the menu system and three others which can be user assigned as menu shortcuts. To accommodate different environments and needs, the BLP2205PT features flexible installation options that should cater for almost any required height, or angle. Assembling the screen with the stand is a small matter of putting four screws through the backplate and finding the corresponding holes in the back of the monitor; you then tighten a finger screw on the base and you are good to go.
BenQ BL2205PT
BenQ BL2205PT

The entire screen is then adjustable up and down by 15cm, courtesy of two groves at the back of the stand and it’s also further able to be manipulated back and forward/up and down on a tilting mechanism where the back of the panel meets the supporting stand. The base stand also swivels generously so it’s easy to share the screen as well as being positionally flexible and most will be able to find a sweet-spot for their needs. All inputs are downward facing at the back of the panel and include D-sub (VGA), DVI , a DisplayPort v1.2, a headphone jack and an audio line-in‎, if you want to improve on the sound quality, which is very poor but, to be fair, most business monitors don’t need anything like decent audio performance. We’re slightly surprised there is no HDMI port, given the number of HDMI-only equipped Windows Mini-PCs that are coming to market but, then again, most ‘business class’ examples will likely have DisplayPort connectivity.

Menus

Pressing the uppermost button, on the back of the bezel at the right hand-side, brings up the menu system of the BL2205PT which is split into 5 areas – Display, Picture, Picture Advanced, Audio & System. It has to be said, navigating using the button system is a laborious task so setting shortcuts for any controls you are likely to use a lot – e.g. Brightness - is a blessing. The Picture Menu contains all the standard user controls – Brightness, Contrast, Sharpness and, if you select the User picture mode from the Advanced menu, you can also adjust other parameters such as Gamma, Colour Temperature, Hue and Saturation. Frankly, the idea of manually calibrating this monitor brought me out in hives so it’s lucky we had the necessary (see below) to do it via software.
BenQ BL2205PT
BenQ BL2205PT

Features

The BL2205 features BenQ’s proprietary Flicker-free Technology and a Low Blue Light Mode which aims to reduce the strain of blue spectrum light that has been linked to eye strain and headaches. On a personal note, I have suffered with ocular migraines in the past, one hundred percent linked with PC use, so it was interesting to check out, although a sensible brightness setting, along with a calibration goes a long way in helping, For less advanced users prone to eye-strain and headaches, we can highly recommend engaging the mode for protracted use. The Low Blue Light Modes is preconfigured to one of the hot keys and provides default 30% reduction for multi-media, 50% for Web-surfing, 60% for ‘Office’ and Reading gets a 70% reduction. You can alter those but we would say they were fairly well configured in the factory. The BL2205PT also features an anti-glare panel which is nothing particularly special but it is effective at keeping refelctions at bay which, again, helps preserve the peepers. The BL2205PT has also passed Windows 10 certification and is fully compatible with both colour systems.

Colour Accuracy

The BL2205PT ships in the sRGB Picture Mode which is definitely not as accurate as we would like. Considering BenQ is naming a viewing mode after an actual industry standard, you would expect it would make a better job of adhering to it but, as we can see from the charts below, it slightly misses the mark.
BenQ BL2205PT
The RGB Balance Graph, to the left, describes the greyscale tracking/white balance performance, which is the backbone to providing accurate images. If you think of the greyscale as the canvas, then any tints in it will adversely affect the other colours placed on it. In the case of the sRGB mode, the white balance is lacking in blue energy and the relative excess of both green and red gives a noticeable greeny-yellow tinge. If you look to the centre of the charts, you can see the average delta Error (dE) for greyscale is nearly seven when, with static images, we want to get that number to two or below. On moving images, you could probably get away with a dE of 3 but, either way, the out-of-box sRGB mode is too far out. In terms of colour accuracy, the BLP2205T does better but errors approaching four are still undesirable, if less noticable than with the greyscale.

After measuring all the out of the box modes, it transpired the User Mode delivered the best accuracy out-of-the box..

BenQ BL2205PT
We can see that the red, green and blue energies are now tracking much closer together with just a faint blue-green tint in the whites but gamma (luminance) isn't quite correct, with images generally too dark. As we would have expected, colour accuracy was very similar to the sRGB mode with the better greyscale just giving User the edge and reducing overall errors to 3.45 but, still, we would like it to be better than that.
BenQ BL2205PT
Using Calman RGB PC calibration software, in conjunction with our Klein K10a colorimeter it took just a matter of minutes to get a superb level of picture accuracy. Errors in the greysacle were now reduced to below 0.5 so there was absolutely no visible tint and colour accuracy was also boosted, with an average error of 1.33; that really shouldn't be visible to the human eye and it's certainly more than adequate for a £100 monitor.

Image Quality

If wide viewing angles aren't a pre-requisite then the BenQ BL2205PT makes a very good account of itself over a range of tasks. Text is sharp and clear in all modes but if you work with a lot of it, you might want to notch up the sharpness control a little. Screen uniformity was also very good, although if we moved off to the sides, all four corners looked a little washed out but that, along with the shallow viewing angles shouldn't be a worry for the average user, especially given how easy it is to position the screen. To be fair, we've seen some monitors containing TN panels that have had far worse colour shifts, when viewed off-axis, so we wouldn't really deem it as a major negative unless your use-case specifically calls for generous angles. We are also pleased to report the sample displayed no dead or stuck pixels and no obvious panel banding unless we were watching some fast paced video content, which the BL2205PT isn't really designed for.

Not that it's of vital importance for a display of this type but contrast performance is reasonable; we wouldn't recommend engaging the Dynamic Contrast setting as that masks details in both the dark and bright sections of the image with some rather clumsy global dimming. Without it we measured the native black level at 0.13cd/m2, which is comparable to most other monitors in this price bracket, unless you go for a VA type panel. Peak brightness was measured at 248cd/m2 producing an On/Off contrast ratio of nearly 2,000:1 although, in terms of a moderately lit room, you really wouldn't want light output to be so bright. Before anyone gets the idea this monitor would be a good choice for movies, be warned the BenQ BL2205PT only has choices of 50, 59.94 or 60Hz screen refresh, where the majority of films call for a 24Hz output for optimal viewing.

More relevant, in terms of how this monitor is likely to be used, are how BenQ's Eye-care features work in practice. There's nothing measurable we can show you but, subjectively, we would say there's a significant reduction in flicker over some we've used and the experience of looking it for several hours, continuously, was genuinely a comfortable one. The Reading Mode, in particular, is very gentle, although perhaps a bit too lacking in blue energy so perhaps the Web Surfing mode would be more palatable for most. Whichever way you look at it, pun not necessarily intended, the BenQ BL2205PT is a really good choice for anyone who spends a long time sat in front of their monitor.

Video Review

Conclusion

Pros

  • Very easy on the eyes over extended use
  • Highly adjustable stand
  • Capable of very good accuracy

Cons

  • No HDMI port
  • sRGB mode could be more accurate

BenQ BL2205PT PC Monitor Review

For the not so princely sum of around £100 (March 2016), the BenQ BL2205PT monitor provides really good images and some features designed to make your viewing experience more comfortable. The BenQ also features a highly adjustable stand and a solid set of connections, including DisplayPort 1.2, a D-Sub (VGA) port, a headphone jack and an audio line in. The out-of-box sRGB mode could have been more accurate but by selecting the User mode, things were improved to the point where most wouldn't be able to see any errors but, if you do take the time to calibrate the display, you will be rewarded with images that are extremely faithful to the source. We also really liked some of the Low Blue Energy modes and the absolute lack of detectable flicker so we have no hesitation in bestowing the BenQ BL2205PT an AVForums Recommended Award.

Scores

Design

.
.
8

Connectivity

.
.
8

Out-of-the-box accuracy sRGB

.
.
.
7

Calibrated sRGB

.
9

Black Levels & Contrast

.
.
.
7

Bright Screen Uniformity

.
.
8

Dark Screen Uniformity

.
.
8

Viewing Angles

.
.
.
7

Value for Money

.
.
.
.
.
5

Verdict

.
.
8
8
AVForumsSCORE
OUT OF
10

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