When comparing Samsung U28E590D 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 Samsung U28E590D is ranked 22nd. 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
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Great picture quality
The Samsung uses a 10-bit color display panel, resulting fantastic picture quality. It can reproduce more than a billion colors, compared to the 16 million colors of 8-bit panels. The color saturation and accuracy easily compete with more expensive screens, although they are not precise enough for photo-centric work. Contrast levels are average, but the monitor is brighter than other monitors in its price group.
Pro Suitable for watching in bright setting
The brightness measures up to 300 nits after calibration and the matte screen reduces glare, making it easy to view the screen in bright conditions
Pro Good contrast ratio
It delivers a standard contrast ratio of 1:1000, although when properly calibrated, the contrast ratio goes down slightly.
Pro Excellent response time for gamers
This screen offers an excellent response time of only 1 ms, compared to the 5 ms (or more) of other monitors in this price range. Input lag measures at 15 ms, which is second only to dedicated gaming monitors with 10 ms response times.
Pro Multiple inputs (and the option to watch them simultaneously)
This screen's connectivity consists of two HDMI 2.0 ports and one DisplayPort 1.2., which is enough for most users. Samsung offers picture-in-picture and picture-by-picture modes. Meaning that you can view two inputs side by side or one can be scaled down to a small window that you can place on one of the corners.
Pro Good colors
The screen’s 10-bit panel covers 97% of the sRGB color spectrum which is a respectable result for a budget monitor. For professional use, you will have to look for something more accurate. Color saturation and accuracy is excellent and can compete with higher priced models.
Pro Compact, stable and aesthetically pleasing stand
The stand takes little place and has a metallic finish and is quite stable, even if at first this doesn’t seem to be the case
Pro Comfortable on eyes even after prolonged use
This monitor offers a flicker-free backlight, which reduces strain on your eyes. It also includes a setting that reduces the amount of blue light in the screen, making the picture look softer and facilitates nighttime use.
Pro Elegant and minimal look
This monitor is finished in a black plastic with metallic look borders and looks elegant and minimal.
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 Extremely limited Freesync range (54-64hz)
The Freesync feature is almost useless as the range is actually 54-64hz instead of at least 40-60hz.
And no, even using CRU won't help, as any modification to the freesync range will result into the monitor turning complete white (stuck) eventually after awhile.
Con Poor viewing angles
It uses a TN panel which generally has terrible viewing angles. Color shifting occurs at 40 degrees. And even though Samsung’s proprietary “MagicAngle” helps to improve it, there are plenty of other monitors offering better viewing angles.
Con Limited flexibility
The monitor does not offer much flexibility options as it only can be slightly tilted, but you cannot change the height or swivel it at any direction. There is a Vesa mount in the back so you can attach it to a more flexible stand or wall mount.
Con No USB ports
There are no USB ports found on this screen, so there is no possibility to watch media from external storage directly or use the screen as an USB hub.
Con Accessible navigation joystick
Navigation is done with a joystick in the left bottom side of the screen and is easily accessible.
Con Cheap plastic on the back
The plastic on the back of the screen feels a bit cheap.
Con Very limited screen position control
The monitor can only be tilted by 20 degrees, and no swivel or height changing is available, so is very limited regarding screen position control.
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.
