When comparing Planar Helium PCT2785 vs BenQ ZOWIE XL2411, the Slant community recommends BenQ ZOWIE XL2411 for most people. In the question“What are the best monitors?” BenQ ZOWIE XL2411 is ranked 12th while Planar Helium PCT2785 is ranked 30th. The most important reason people chose BenQ ZOWIE XL2411 is:
The most in-depth settings of the monitor are usually just 5-10 clicks away.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Decent black levels, good contrast ratio
The black levels are respectively low at 0.16cd/m², which helps the contrast ratio achieve 1100:1 which is much lower than the advertised 5000:1, but still quite good.
Pro Pretty fast response times make the system feel quick
The response time is 12ms, which isn't lightning fast, but it's still quick enough to make the system feel more responsive than cheaper monitors. While not fast enough for high-level gaming, this monitor won't make your system feel slow or unresponsive.
Pro 'Massive tablet' design is unique, and versitile
It really does look like a massive tablet with a kickstand - but that's not a bad thing. There's no stand visible, leaving the front looking very clean. The stand can angle anywhere from 15-70 degrees which allows for flexible use, or it can be folded in and used flat on the desk or even mounted using the VESA mounting holes.
Pro Built-in speakers, webcam, and mic
This monitor has many peripherals built-in, and unless you use them heavily they will do the job just fine. Unless you feel the need for dedicated hardware, the built-in stereo speakers work well enough, and the webcam and mic are acceptable quality for occasional recreational use (for business calls or other uses where quality is important, you'll want to upgrade to dedicated hardware).
Pro Intuitive OSD
The most in-depth settings of the monitor are usually just 5-10 clicks away.
Pro Flicker-free
The backlight of this monitor does not cause flickering. Instead of using the conventional PWM backlight dimming technique, this monitor dims its backlight by the aid of DC voltage, which eliminates the unwanted effect of flickering. Monitor flickering is one of the primary sources of fatigue and eye strain and should be taken very seriously, especially by those who spend a lot of time in front of a monitor.
Pro Can fight glare
The panel of the ZOWIE XL241 has enough brightness to fight glare, making it an excellent monitor for bright rooms.
Pro High refresh rate
You'll receive faster picture updates than your rivals who play on slower panels because of the monitor's native refresh rate of 144 Hz, which is among the highest in this price range.
The monitor's native refresh rate tells how much frames its panel can show each second while working at the native resolution. The faster is the panel, the more frames it can process and display.
Pro Well-handled motion
The ZOWIE XL2411 can reproduce clear motion, free of artificial motion blur and ghosting effects as each pixel of the monitor can change its color within only one millisecond. It is on par with what the best monitors in this price range offer.
Note that the overdrive feature is used to achieve such fast pixel response. In some cases, pixel overdrive makes the pixels overshoot their target values which causes artificial effects. Nonetheless, this can be avoided by not setting the overdrive setting to its maximum.
Pro Lag-free
This monitor offers a responsive and lag-free gaming experience because of its fantastically low input lag of only 3.2 ms. In terms of input lag, the XL2411 outperforms every single competitor in its price range.
The monitor's input lag corresponds to the delay between a video card producing a frame and the frame being processed by a monitor. Lowe input lag means controls feel more responsive onscreen when gaming.
Pro Good picture quality
When it comes to picture quality, the BenQ ZOWIE XL2411 does have a lot to offer as the monitor's contrast ratio, peak brightness, and color accuracy are on par with what the best gaming monitors in this price range offer.
This gaming monitor can display eye-catching dark and bright scenes, full of luminous, and accurate colors. Dark scenes look good because of the monitor's native contrast ratio of 1090:1, which is high enough to make blacks appear truly deep. Bright scenes look genuinely luminous because of the monitor's high peak brightness of 350 nits, which combined with the panel's excellent color accuracy reproduce vivid and life-like colors.
Pro Good for gaming
The BenQ ZOWIE XL2411 has enough juice to be one of the best gaming monitors in its price range. It combines low input lag, fast pixel response time, and high native refresh rate with excellent overall picture quality.
Cons
Con Disappointing color accuracy
The MVA panel (multi-domain vertical alignment: in-between of TN and IPS technologies) doesn't reproduce colors very accurately. It scores just 82% of the sRGB color gamut, while other panels offer high 80s and even above 90%. This display's weakest points are with the green and cyan shades, while reds and blues appeared just fine.
Con Dim display
The display doesn't get very bright - at just 172cd/m² this panel is very dim. Many monitors can achieve 300cd/m² or higher brightnesses.
Con Takes much more power than similar monitors
Without using the ECO mode, this monitor requires about 50 watts to power it. This is double than other monitors. There are different levels of ECO modes, however these dim the display and barely get down to the power level of other monitors when they are all enabled.
Con Lacks adaptive syncing
This monitor is not compatible with neither AMD’s Free-Sync nor Nvidia's G-Sync, which might be a deal breaker for newer systems.
Con Default settings are useless
To get the most out of monitor's picture quality, you'll need to spend some time adjusting its settings. Luckily, all the key setting values are available on the Internet.
The monitor's default color profile, FPS1, is useless as it degrades colors.
Con Lacks connectivity
Connectivity-wise, the BenQ ZOWIE XL241 offers only the bare minimum. You won't get anything apart from a humble HDMI 1.4 port, DVI-DL port, D-Sub port, and a 3.5mm headphone port.