When comparing LG 25UM57 vs BenQ SW2700PT, the Slant community recommends LG 25UM57 for most people. In the question“What are the best monitors?” LG 25UM57 is ranked 6th while BenQ SW2700PT is ranked 21st. The most important reason people chose LG 25UM57 is:
The fact that a monitor of this price range has a 5M:1 contrast ratio is simply astonishing. This means users get cinema-like picture quality right at their desk.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Cinema-like picture quality for an affordable price
The fact that a monitor of this price range has a 5M:1 contrast ratio is simply astonishing. This means users get cinema-like picture quality right at their desk.
Pro Good sound quality with no need for external speakers
This monitor's speakers are as good as those found on small TVs. They're located in the back and come with an audio jack for headphone connectivity.
Pro Immersive
The 2560x1080 resolution creates an immersive setup. This applies even for work tasks: multiple documents can be displayed side-by-side with no legibility sacrifice. It's equivalent to having two monitors with 1280x1080 screens.
Pro Advantageous for all uses
This monitor's ultrawide screen has advantages for all uses. When it comes to movie watching or gaming, the screen size contributes to a truly engaging experience. As far as general productivity goes, the ultrawide screen makes it easy to have different applications or documents open side by side.
Pro Great for watching movies
The 21:9 aspect ratio comes in handy when watching movies. This is the default aspect ratio at which almost all of the films are shot. Hence, you can watch your movies without having two black bars at the top and bottom of the screen.
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 Limited connectivity
This monitor has two HMDI ports, which is pretty good. However, it misses other display inputs such as DVI or Display Port, making incompatible with older computers.
Con Lack of support for ultra-widescreen in (old) games
A handful of games do not support 21:9 aspect ratio by default. Some examples are Overwatch, Fallout 3, and Starcraft 2. If this is important for you, it is recommended you test this issue before getting this monitor. But there are solutions: you can either install fixes (only available for some games) or play in windowed mode, using a different aspect ratio.
Con Slow response time
A response time of 5 ms on a gaming monitor is pretty awful. Considering its refresh rate, it is understandable but not acceptable. Note that this response time is from gray-to-gray.
Con 720p and 1080p videos are sandwhiched
This monitor's aspect ratio means that many online videos, such as those from Netflix or YouTube, will have black spaces on the sides, which can be annoying.
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.
