When comparing BenQ ZOWIE XL2720 vs Samsung CHG90, the Slant community recommends Samsung CHG90 for most people. In the question“What are the best monitors?” Samsung CHG90 is ranked 7th while BenQ ZOWIE XL2720 is ranked 23rd. The most important reason people chose Samsung CHG90 is:
The Samsung CHG90 offers much higher versatility than the overwhelming majority of the competitors on the market because of its picture quality, HDR support, gaming performance, and the amount of on-screen real estate.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Has a remote
You can move between different display modes with a click of a button because using the configurable fast-access switch attached to the base of the monitor.
Pro Reduces the eye strain
The ZOWIE XL2720 causes noticeably less eye strain than the majority of competitors in its price range because the monitor is flicker-free and has a mode that reduces the intensity of blue light.
Backlight flickering and high-intensity blue light emitted by LEDs are among the main factors related to eye fatigue that is caused by extensive use of computer monitors.
Pro Decent ergonomics
You can adjust the monitor’s tilt angle, swivel angle, and height so you won't have much trouble configuring it according to your setup.
Pro Responsive OSD buttons
The five capacitive OSD buttons are built very well and react quickly each time you press them.
Pro Highly responsive
The monitor's input lag stays at the fantastically low value of 3.2 ms making the ZOWIE XL2720 one of the most responsive gaming monitors in its price range.
A monitor’s input lag represents the delay between your GPU generating a frame and the frame starting to appear on your monitor.
Pro Intuitive OSD
The OSD is organized in a user-friendly way so all of the settings in the menu are only a couple of clicks away. Additionally, you can customize the OSD menu.
Pro Displays motion well
The monitor's excellent motion handling capabilities allow the BenQ ZOWIE XL2720 to display fast-paced content free from motion blur and ghosting because of its panel's high native refresh rate and fast pixel response time.
Motion blur and ghosting effects are eliminated by the panel's quick pixels that need only one millisecond to change their color because of the monitor's full pixel response time of 1 ms. Such fast color change prevents fast-moving objects from leaving artificial trails.
The monitor’s 144 Hz panel refreshes every seven milliseconds making motion appear smooth and fluid.
Pro Good picture quality
Regarding its picture quality, the ZOWIE XL2720 is on par with the majority of gaming monitors in this price range as it offers sufficient contrast ratio, peak brightness, color accuracy, and gamma response.
While the monitor's dark scene performance is mediocre, it can still display vivid and accurate colors and eye-catching intermediate tones. It can recreate average-looking dark scenes with blacks that are neither overly flat, nor profound as the monitor's native contrast ratio is limited to 915:1. The colors pop and appear relatively accurate since the ZOWIE XL2720 combines relatively high peak brightness of 315 nits with almost unnoticeable color accuracy error dE of 2.2. Mid-tones look good and saturated thanks to the monitor's gamma response of 2.06 which is only 6.3% away from the ideal value.
Pro Built-in USB hub
You can connect up to three peripheral USB devices to your computer using the monitor's inbuilt USB 2.0 hub. This would come in handy for those who use a laptop and have a lot of stationary USB devices.
Pro Great for gaming
The BenQ ZOWIE XL2720 is one of the best gaming monitors in its price range because it offers low input lag, flawlessly-handled motion, and high native refresh rate combined with decent overall picture quality.
Pro Excellent for general use
The Samsung CHG90 offers much higher versatility than the overwhelming majority of the competitors on the market because of its picture quality, HDR support, gaming performance, and the amount of on-screen real estate.
Pro Supports HDR media
Combining its color gamut, HDR peak brightness, and native contrast ratio with full HDR10 support, the Samsung CHG90 outperforms the nearly all of its competitors when it comes to the HDR media playback.
When working with HDR media, the Samsung CHG90 can display almost 90% of pure HDR colors of the DCI P3 color space because of the monitor’s wide color gamut. Such DCI P3 coverage is an uncommon feature for a general purpose monitor. DCI P3 is the color space used in HDR media production.
Moreover, the monitor has enough luster to highlight vivid objects in HDR mode where its brightness peaks at around 600 nits.
Additionally, the Samsung CHG90 is among a handful of monitors that support HDR10.
Pro Handles motion quite well
The Samsung CHG90 displays good-looking motion with only some minor traces of motion blur following fast-moving objects on the screen as the monitor’s pixels need only around 10.8 ms to change their color. Such rapid pixel transition is achieved because of the monitor’s full pixel response time of 10.8 ms.
Additionally, the monitor doesn’t suffer from any noticeable ghosting.
Furthermore, the motion looks smooth because of the monitor's 144 Hz native refresh rate, which ensures that the Samsung CHG90 displays a new frame every seven milliseconds.
Pro Has a curved screen
The Samsung CHG90 offers a highly immersive experience as you can literally feel its 1800R curve surrounding you.
Pro Fights glare
The Samsung CHG90 works very well in bright rooms with lots of windows as its light matte coating and high peak brightness does an excellent job of fighting glare and heavy reflections.
Pro Highly responsive
The Samsung CHG90 is among the most responsive monitors on the market as its input lag measures at an amazingly low value of 4.6 ms.
A monitor’s input lag is significant in gaming as it shows how much time a monitor needs to process a frame generated by a computer’s graphics card.
Pro Supports FreeSync 2
FreeSync eliminates tearing and reduces stutter because it allows the Samsung CHG90 to synchronize its refresh rate to the framerate of your AMD graphics card.
FreeSync 2 is an advanced AMD technology which combines adaptive synchronization with HDR. AMD claims that only the best HDR monitors would be compatible with FreeSync 2.
Pro Suitable for web designers and photographers
Because of its full sRGB coverage, the Samsung CHG90 is an excellent tool for media artists, such as web designers and photographers that work in the sRGB color space.
Additionally, Samsung CHG90 is suitable for those who make videos for web applications, like YouTube and Twitch, as those also use the sRGB as a default color space.
Pro Massive amount of display real-estate
The Samsung CHG90 is a fantastic tool for productivity as its 49-inch 3840x1080 display offers enough real-estate to place three Google Docs side by side comfortably. The monitor will also come in handy for those working with massive Excel sheets because of its large on-screen area.
Furthermore, the monitor’s picture-by-picture mode allows the Samsung CHG90 to display pictures from different sources simultaneously. Such a feature will make your life much easier if you use a laptop alongside your desktop computer.
Additionally, you can manage and organize your workspace using Samsung’s Easy Setting Box.
Pro Good for gaming
The Samsung CHG90 offers better gaming performance than the overwhelming majority of 40”+ competitors, as this 144 Hz monitor offers highly responsive gameplay with reasonably well-handled motion.
Additionally, due to the monitor's aspect ratio of 32:9 you’ll have a wide field of view in games like CS: GO, DotA 2, League of Legends, and Star Wars Battlefront.
Pro Good picture quality
The monitor’s native contrast ratio, peak brightness, gamma, color accuracy, and color uniformity are superior to what the overwhelming majority of competitors on the market offer.
It can display amazingly beautiful images, with a wide range of vivid and accurate colors, rich and intense blacks, and some eye-catching intermediate tones that look genuinely accurate. Colors pop,and look crisp because of the monitor’s peak brightness of 331 nits, which, combined with the CHG90’s high color uniformity, makes the colors appear consistent across the entire panel. Dark scenes look deep because of the monitor’s native contrast ratio of 3756:1 which makes its blacks appear truly dark. Mid-tones look life-like as the monitor’s gamma is less than one percent off from the ideal value.
Additionally, the Samsung CHG90 can display a higher variety of colors than the majority of its competitors because it uses a true 10-bit panel that allows it to reproduce more than a billion colors.
Furthermore, the monitor’s color inaccuracies are so insignificant that the human eye can't see those since the panel’s average color error dE is only 1.13.
Pro Good for HDR gaming
With the Samsung CHG90, you’ll be able to experience true HDR effects in games that support it like ARK: Survival Evolved and Battlefield 1.
Cons
Con Lacks adaptive sync
The BenQ ZOWIE XL2720 is not compatible with either Nvidia's G-Sync or AMD's FreeSync.
Con Lacks speakers
The ZOWIE XL2720 does not have inbuilt speakers.
Con Expensive
Priced just a bit below the $380 mark, this is a pretty costly 27-inch FHD monitor.
Con Some games might not support 32:9
Games that support only the aspect ratios of 16:9 or 21:9 will have vertical black bars on the sides of the Samsung CHG90, as the monitor’s native aspect ratio is 32:9.
However, the majority of new titles do support a 32:9 aspect ratio.
Con Flickering can cause eye strain
The Samsung CHG90 flickers because it uses a PWM signal to dim its backlight. Monitor flickering can cause severe eye fatigue after extensive use.
Con Not suitable for consoles
The current generation consoles don’t support an aspect ratio of 32:9 and will leave massive black bars on the sides of the screen if connected to the Samsung CHG90.
