Dell P2217H vs BenQ SW2700PT

The Dell P2217H offers good gaming experience for a general purpose display in this price range because of its reasonably low input lag and good motion handling capabilities.

The monitor feels responsive because of its input lag of 9.8 ms. Only gaming monitors in this price range outperform such result.

Motion looks reasonably clear because only tiny traces follow fast-moving objects on the screen. The monitor's pixels need only six milliseconds to change their color, which reduces motion blur.

This monitor doesn't put additional stress on your eyes as its backlight doesn't flicker. This is important as monitor flickering is one of the leading causes of eye fatigue.

You can leave the monitor on for long periods without having to worry about pixel damage because the Dell P2217H does not have any problems related to image retention.

You won't have any trouble setting this monitor according to the needs of your workspace since the Dell P2217H supports all of the necessary ergonomic adjustments. Additionally, you can easily change its orientation from landscape to portrait, and vice versa.

You can charge external USB devices and connect them to a computer using the monitor's USB 3.0 hub.

The hub consists of four downstream ports that are used for connecting peripherals and a single upstream port that connects the hub to a computer.

The monitor's contrast ratio, peak brightness, color accuracy, and gamma are on par with what the majority of competitors in this price range offer.

The monitor's IPS panel displays good-looking picture, with bright and saturated colors, reasonably deep blacks, and lifelike intermediate mid-tones. The colors pop thanks to the monitor's peak brightness of 250 nits. Dark scenes look pretty as the monitor's native contrast ratio of 1147:1 is high enough to make the IPS panel display good-looking blacks. The intermediate tones are well balanced as the monitor's gamma of 2.18 is only 1% away from the ideal value.

Additionally, color inaccuracies are very hard to spot because of its average color error dE of only 3.2.

While it does not excel in any aspect, the Dell P2217H has enough versatility to be a decent general purpose monitor. It features good picture quality and excellent connectivity, combined with an impressive range of ergonomic adjustments.

The monitor is also suitable for occasional, non-competitive gaming since its input lag and pixel response time are low enough to grant reasonably smooth and responsive gaming experience.

Full Adobe RGB coverage, a dedicated black and white mode, exceptional color accuracy, excellent connectivity, hardware calibration capabilities, great adjustability, and superb picture quality are only some of the features that make the BenQ SW2700PT an ultimate tool for photo editing in this price range.

You’ll be hard-pressed to find the BenQ SW2700PT a matching competitor in its price range because some of it's features unusual for a monitor that costs less than $1000. For example, 99% Adobe RGB coverage, hardware calibration capabilities, the 1 > dE, factory calibration, and the shading hood, aren't the things you'd expect from a monitor in this price range.

It’s dead simple to get the perfect viewing angles with this monitor, as the BenQ SW2700PT supports all the key ergonomic adjustments, including height, swivel, tilt, and pivot regulations.

Hardware calibration is an essential feature of a professional-grade monitor because it allows you to manipulate the monitor’s hardware, instead of simply tweaking the input of your graphics card - something the software calibration does.

You can use the monitor’s integrated USB hub to charge and interconnect peripheral USB devices and access SD cards. It consists of two downstream USB 3.0 ports, an SD card reader, and a single upstream USB 3.0 port that connects the hub to the computer.

The hub is located on the side of the monitor, which is an excellent and easy-to-reach position.

The BenQ SW2700PT does its best not to exhaust your eyes as not only its backlight is flicker-free, it also has an option to filter out the harmful high-intensity blue light.

The BenQ SW2700PT is an excellent tool for professional photographers and photo-editors because it can display the full range of sRGB and Adobe RGB colors within the exceptional accuracy.

With this monitor, you can edit and post-process any photo that is converted to either sRGB or Adobe RGB - the two color spaces that are most widely used in the professional photography.

Additionally, the BenQ SW2700PT lets you see precisely how each photo of yours will look like after it's printed because the Adobe RGB does cover the CMYK, which is the color space that is used by the overwhelming majority of printing houses.

It’s likely that you will not need to buy any extra cables as the BenQ SW2700PT comes with all the key cables, including an IEC power cord, DisplayPort, DVI, and USB 3.0.

This monitor is an excellent tool for those who like their photos in black and white because the BenQ SW2700PT has a dedicated black and white mode.

Each BenQ SW2700PT comes with an official, factory-issued calibration certificate.

The monitor’s shading hood is an excellent solution for minimizing or even eliminating glare and reflections caused by doors, mirrors, and windows, near the monitor.

Additionally, it’s worth noting that even without the hood, the BenQ SW2700PT does an excellent job of absorbing and diffusing reflections and glare because of its high peak brightness and matte screen finish.

Regarding its picture quality, the BenQ SW2700PT barely has any competitor in its price range as the monitor features the ultimate combination of native contrast ratio, peak brightness, gamma response, color accuracy, and pixel density.

It displays a beautiful, life-like image that has deep and rich blacks, vivid and realistic colors, natural intermediate tones and shades, and exceptional sharpness. The BenQ SW2700PT reproduces highly intense dark scenes even though its native contrast ratio is measured at the humble 1121:1. The key element here, however, is the monitor’s ability to reproduce extremely dark blacks that are only 0.01 nits bright - so dim, in fact, that only a professional grade luminance meter can measure it. Colors pop and look vibrant thanks to the monitor’s high peak brightness, which measures around 350 nits. Its color accuracy is indisputable as the SW2700PT’s average color error dE is measured at 0.61 - so small, that the human eye can’t perceive it. The mid-tones and shades are represented flawlessly, as the monitor’s gamma is only 0.09% away from its ideal value.

Additionally, the picture has that extra bit of sharpness and saturation because of the monitor’s high, 2560x1440 pixel resolution.

You can navigate through the monitor’s OSD menu and quickly swap between its color profiles using the BenQ’s remote control called ‘the puck’. It consists of five large navigation buttons and four programmable buttons that can be used to hot-swap three predefined color profiles.