When comparing LG 38UC99-W 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 LG 38UC99-W is ranked 29th. 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 Excellent general purpose monitor
Impressive amount of on-screen real estate, excellent picture quality, exceptional connectivity, and great color accuracy puts the LG 38UC99-W above nearly all competitors in the market.
Pro Supports 85W charging over USB-C
You can charge your laptop and have display output through a single cable thanks to the monitor's USB-C port.
Pro Features On-Screen controls
You can access all the general features of this monitor using your mouse and a keyboard thanks to the LG’s On-Screen Control software.
Additionally, the On-Screen Control offers many screen split presets.
Pro Perfect for multi-tasking
Having enough display real-estate to fit three vertically aligned Google Docs windows comfortably, the LG 38UC99-W is an excellent tool to boost up the productivity in everyday office duties, CAD/CAM applications, and many other fields.
Pro Excellent for watching movies
Acing the near-cinematic aspect ratio of 21:9, the LG 38UC99-W is an excellent companion to watch movies because you won't see the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen when watching most movies.
Pro Has a pair of good speakers
The LG 38UC99-W features a built-in 20 Watt stereo speaker system which sounds fairly well compared to the 4-10 W speakers the competitors at this price point offer.
Pro Exceptional connectivity
This monitor beats most of its premium competitors in terms of connectivity because it features a USB-C downstream port which has multiple parallel functions. First, you can use it to access the monitor's onboard USB hub. Second, it can be used for charging a USB type C compliant laptop. Finally, you can use it to receive video and audio signal from a computer.
Additionally, the LG 38UC99-W has two HDMI ports, a DisplayPort, and an inbuilt Bluetooth module.
Pro Supports dual linkup
You can connect this monitor to two computers so that each machine use half of the on-screen area. This might come in handy for those who frequently use a stationary desktop computer and a laptop.
Pro Great picture quality
Only the best monitors can match the LG 38UC99-W's contrast ratio, peak brightness, gamma, and color accuracy, as the monitor features one of the finest IPS panels in the industry.
The LG 38UC99-W displays beautiful pictures, with deep and rich blacks, vibrant and accurate colors, and good-looking intermediate tones. Despite the fact that the monitor's native contrast ratio is only 1000:1, the dark scenes look deep and intense as the backlight of the 38UC99-W can drop below the brightness level of 0.15 nits, which only the best monitors can do. Colors pop and look vivid, as the 38UC99-W can sustain its brightness above the 300 nits mark. The mid-tones look lifelike thanks to the monitor's near perfect gamma value, which is only 1.3% off from the ideal value.
Moreover, the monitor's color inaccuracies can't be seen by the human eye because it only has an average color error dE of 2.12.
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 Very expensive
For the same price as this monitor, you can buy three decent 27-inch ultrawide monitors.
Con Bluetooth indicator is inconvenient
The monitor's Bluetooth indicator occupies the on-screen workspace. Unfortunately, there is no way to remove the indicator while using the Bluetooth speaker option.
Con Has an external power brick
The external power supply unit of the LG 38UC99-W might cause inconvenience especially if you want to mount this monitor on a wall since the PSU is quite bulky.
Con Wobbly
The stand isn't rigid, so you might observe some minor wobbling if your work desk is flimsy,
Con OSD is quite messy
The on-screen-display of the LG 38UC99-W does not have any programmable shortcut keys and is quite hard to navigate.
For example, to enable or disable the motion blur reduction feature, you’ll need to press more than 15 keys because the menu goes very deep.
Con Unsuitable for gaming
Gaming just doesn't feel responsive because of the monitor's massive input lag.
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.