When comparing Samsung U28E590D vs BenQ SW2700PT, the Slant community recommends BenQ SW2700PT for most people. In the question“What are the best monitors?” BenQ SW2700PT is ranked 21st while Samsung U28E590D is ranked 22nd. The most important reason people chose BenQ SW2700PT is:
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.
Specs
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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 Excellent for photographers
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.
Pro Fantastic value for money
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.
Pro Highly adjustable base
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.
Pro Supports hardware calibration
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.
Pro Has a USB hub
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.
Pro Minimized eye fatigue
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.
Pro Good for photo editing and printing
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.
Pro Comes with the needed cables
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.
Pro Black and white mode
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.
Pro Factory-calibrated
Each BenQ SW2700PT comes with an official, factory-issued calibration certificate.
Pro Has a shading hood
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.
Pro Fantastic image quality
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.
Pro Controls are handy
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.
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 Needs to be re-calibrated once in a while
Just like any professional-grade monitor that is used for color-critical applications, the BenQ SW2700PT needs some occasional recalibration, as, just like virtually any other monitor, it suffers from hardware ware over the time. To keep it in the best possible shape, consider re-calibrating it each 1-2 months.
Con No speakers
Even a simple pair of speakers are sometimes useful.
