BenQ E2200HD and E2400HD - 1080P FullHD LCDs

BenQ E2200HD Specifications

Like many other inexpensive LCDs, BenQ uses a TN panel on the E2200HD. As you will see on the next page, that means viewing angles (particularly in the vertical dimension) are compromised compared to other panel technologies. As discussed in our last 24" LCD roundup, however, TN panels also have some advantages over other panel technologies, particularly S-PVA. The biggest advantage is that internal processing lag (also called input lag) does not appear to be a factor on TN panels. We should also mention that while we feel TN panels are not as nice as S-IPS panels, particularly on laptops where vertical viewing angles really matter, for desktop use they work fine.

The on-screen display (OSD) for the E2200HD offers all the usual options including controls for brightness, contrast, aspect ratio, color correction, and several preset viewing settings. Personal preference plays a role, but we found that using the "Standard" viewing mode and "Normal" color setting provided the most pleasing experience. Worth note is that the dynamic contrast option is not something we like to enable on any LCD so far; this can dynamically alter the backlight brightness depending on the content currently being displayed, and we find this more distracting than just sticking with a static brightness setting. It also tends to mess up any color accuracy calibration.

You can see the various options available in the menu system in the above gallery. One of the nice features is that pressing the "Enter" button on the bottom right will quickly switch between the three video input options without the need to enter the regular OSD (although you can also select video input inside the OSD if you prefer). Quick access to volume settings is also available via the third button, and the fourth button switches between the five viewing presets.

The E2200HD has two aspect ratio options, Full and Aspect. "Full" is supposed to stretch whatever resolution you're running to fill the whole screen. "Aspect" should maintain the aspect ratio of whatever resolution you're using and fill as much of the screen as possible, leaving you with black bars on the top/bottom or left/right sides. Overscan is also available on certain resolutions, specifically 1080P and 720P; we wouldn't recommend using it even if it's available, but feel free to disagree. As usual, aspect ratio control doesn't always function properly on every resolution with every input, so we created a summary of our testing of common resolutions.

Resolution support was exceptionally good on the E2200HD. The only oddity is that one resolution we would expect to work perfectly -- 720P -- didn't even show up on our test system using a DVI input. Even after adding that resolution, however, there were still problems with 720P DVI support, and those problems extended to the HDMI and VGA inputs as well. For whatever reason, the aspect ratio control is wrong regardless of what you set it to when using 720P DVI. It only fills the center portion of the display, and if you select "Full" it stretches the output horizontally but not vertically. 720P is better on HDMI and VGA, but it's squished horizontally to fill a 16:10 AR, leaving black borders on the left and right. It's unfortunate, since 720P support can be important for certain devices (i.e. Xbox 360, PS3). The remaining resolutions all work properly; the only two issues we noticed are that 1280x768 and 1360x768 both had the wrong aspect ratio as well; both stretched to fill the same area as a 16:10 resolution instead of 5:3 and 16:9 respectively.

The built-in resolution scaler works well on all of the inputs when you're not using native resolution, but the closer you are to native resolution the more likely you are to see artifacts. Specifically, 1680x1050 doesn't stretch as well as lower resolutions and if you were to display a black on white grid, you would notice that certain lines are thicker and others are thinner. Obviously, you're best off running at native resolution if possible; if you want to run at a lower resolution (i.e. to get higher frame rates in a game), we would recommend 1440x900 or 1280x800 over 1680x1050 due to the scaling artifacts.