As a photographer who shoots professionally, the biggest challenge is to make sure what you see and what your client sees is exactly the same. Today, we take a look at the BENQ SW2700PT monitor for content maker’s workflow, especially the photographers
The camera may capture the correct colours, and when it comes to mid-workflow, such as viewing and editing your contents in the monitor, that monitor you use may make or break your reputation. There are a few monitors in the market today are specially designed for photographers with excellent colour management. Enter the BENQ SW2700PT
Setup
The whole package itself is pretty solid and heavy. It looks like it’s something expensive waiting to be unfolded. Once we have unpacked it, like the IKEA types of furniture, there is an assembly booklet for your step by step assembly. It took us a good 5 minutes reading time and another 20 minutes to put it up. In the box, you find all of the necessary cords and wires (DVI-DL, HDMI 1.4, Display Port 1.2, AC Power Cord) but also a shading hood and the OSD Controller for quick switching between colour profiles.
Once the assembly unit is done, it just looks handsome and “professional” especially with the shading hood on and will make other standard monitors look like a boy. If your friends or clients were to visit your workstation, the BENQ SW2700PT will already convince them with your professionalism – well at least a good start with a good message that you are serious about colour management.
On the bottom of the display, you will find six different buttons (including a power bottom) to enter the features of the BenQ menu system. It may sound like a town of buttons, but it’s very easy to navigate once you are into it. As for data connectivity, you will find most of your port connection options. This includes USB 3.0, HDMI, DVI-DL, DisplayPort 1.2, a headphone jack and a micro USB port for the OSD controller. On the left side of the monitor, you will find two USB 3.0 ports and an SD card reader that supports SD card formats.
Once it’s all set and connected to your workstation (we are using a Mac), everything just
Apart from the conventional horizontal viewing style, the BENQ SW2700PT could be used as
Performance
Every monitor produces different colours, and they differ from the technology used. Also, perceptually what we see may be slightly different from what others are seeing. To mitigate this, we have to come to a common viewing reference. We have to view the images on a calibrated monitor with passing specifications, i.e. 100% sRGB at the very least, with fairly high colour accuracy, so that when we look at the same screen, we can comment based on the same reference. We don’t know what we cannot see, hence the question of colour gamut arises.
The measure of colour accuracy defines how close to the reference those colours are. As a professional photographer, the need to have a professional LCD monitor is paramount to exceed clients viewing capability and to accommodate a wide variety of images in sRGB/Adobe RGB/CMYK for printmaking or display on various devices.
For the wide colour gamut, the specification is over the top to price ratio. It covers 99% of Adobe RGB while maintaining the full coverage of sRGB at the gamma of 2.2. These colour spaces are important for photography work to give accurate reference and output result as what was captured in the digital camera. Secondly, the monitor has an OSD controller switch which allows us to switch profiles on the fly; it has few common settings which conveniently default to Adobe RGB, sRGB and black & white just to name a few. They can also be customised to other settings depending on the colour management workflow. This monitor also has a very impressive greyscale performance. The uniformity of luminance across the screen is good on the monitor.
In addition, the screen resolution of 2560 x 1440 (16:9 ratio), with a pixel density of 109 ppi and a pixel pitch of less than 0.25mm renders images with high precision and sharpness. It also nullifies the need to scale the interfaces as texts, icons, and user interface is sized correctly without having to strain the eye. The IPS grade, the matte panel with anti-reflective coating ensures a large viewing angle without colour shift. The monitor also comes with a 3-panel hood to block off stray lights, further enhances viewing comfort at the right viewing distance, typically within 3 feet. A higher resolution screen may not necessarily have a high colour gamut. This monitor is just amazing!
The BENQ SW2700PT is a 10-bit display which means that it can produce over 1 billion colours. Most displays on the market only offer 8-bit specs, so you can expect colour gradients to be much smoother and less pixelated.
To conclude the review, in my opinion, this is one monitor every photographer or videographer
PRO & CONS
Turn Ons
Almost perfect colour gamut
Value for money
Flexible and smooth stand
Excellent viewing space
Turn Offs
Side SD and USB ports
No speakers
Available now at RM2,849 from BENQ’s official store, or visit BENQ’s website for more details and information.
Specifications:
- Product Color: Black
- LCD Size: 27″
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Resolution: 2560×1440
- Brightness: 250 cd/m2
- Native Contrast: 1000:1
- DCR (Dynamic Contrast Ratio): 20m:1
- Panel Type: IPS
- Viewing Angle: 178 /178
- Response Time: 5ms
- Display Colours: 1.07 Billion
- Color Gamut: AdobeRGB 99% sRGB 100%
- Input/Output Connectors: DVI-DL+ HDMI 1.4 + DP1.2 + Headphone Jack
- Dimensions: H:566.7 x 652.8 x 322.8 – L:445.2 x 652.8 x 322.8
- Net Weight: 8.3kg (without hood)
- Gross Weight: 11.88kg