BenQ PD3200U Designer Monitor (AQCOLOR Technology, 32 inch, 4K UHD, sRGB/Rec.709, KVM)

Product Information

Moving on to color accuracy, the BenQ managed to steal victory from the jaws of defeat with a near-perfect score. With an average color error of 1.23, to the HP Dreamcolor’s 1.68, and the LG 27UD88-W’s 3.97, the BenQ wins by a significant margin.

That means the monitor will outlast your current desktop hardware, and will see you through at least a couple years of hard use. A good screen size and resolution combination in our view (3840 x 2160 and 32”), plus HDMI 2.0 and an ergonomically flexible and solidly built stand Low input lag and well-optimised pixel overdrive allowed the monitor to put in a convincing 60Hz performance While the Dreamcolor features a wider color gamut, both displays feature near-perfect color accuracy, rich, high-contrast displays, and simple, professional designs. The BenQ PD3200U is missing that “looking out a window” quality the Dreamcolor possesses, but it’s much more affordable.

A large 4K screen for your desk

Finally, we assessed the contrast performance of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. This film contains many scenes where strong contrast is called upon, with bright lightsabers and explosions lighting up much darker surroundings. The monitor again put in a decent performance. It didn’t capture the atmosphere in the way that a model with significantly stronger contrast might (such as a VA model), but it didn’t appear washed out in a reasonably well-lit room either. Setting up the monitor was easy, with the stand going together with just 1 thumbscrew. You’ll definitely want to get the panel itself mounted to the stand before moving it onto your desk, however, as the VESA style latch is difficult to line up blindly. The monitor also handily comes with a KVM (Keyboard Video Mouse) switch, which lets you plug in a second PC and switch between the two while using a single monitor, keyboard and mouse. It’s a great productivity tool to have, and it means that if you use multiple machines you can potentially clear up your desk by using the BenQ PD3200U and getting rid of any secondary monitors, keyboards or mice. Images and video files also looked excellent on the BenQ PD3200U. This is where the factory calibration really comes into its own, as we’ve often had monitors in for review on which we’ve had to fiddle around with some of the settings to get the optimum image quality. That wasn't necessary with the BenQ PD3200U, as it looked fantastic straight out of the box. The bottom line; a solidly built screen with a convincing performance in key areas, but some issues that could prove problematic to some users depending on their GPU and sensitivity to screen surface texture.

Looking at contrast and color gamut, you can see this monitor scores well, but doesn’t quite compete with the top contenders in this arena. The HP Dreamcolor z32xfeatures a wider color gamut, hitting 98 percent of the sRGB space, and 92 percent of the AdobeRGB color space. Even the LG 27UD88-W beat out our BenQ PD3200U, hitting 77 percent of the AdobeRGB space, to the BenQ’s 75 percent. That means the BenQ capable of reproducing color nearly perfectly. Any score below 1.0 is considered to be perfect, so with 1.23, the BenQ comes awfully close. Let’s see if we can shave it down with calibration. Post-calibration Quality

But what about performance for non-professional applications? We hooked it up to a gaming rig with a mighty Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti graphics card, which does a pretty decent job of pushing games at 4K resolution, and they really did look superb. The UHD resolution on a 32” screen also brings with it a very pleasing pixel density of 139.87 PPI (Pixels Per Inch). This brings with it excellent clarity and detail when viewing images or indeed when playing games. As with images, getting the best out of this requires that the game itself offers suitably high-resolution content. You always benefit from extra clarity, a reduced need for anti-aliasing and that sort of thing anyway – but truly admiring game content at this resolution requires suitably high-resolution textures and particle effects as well. This is something we explore in more detail in the aforementioned article and indeed in our BL3201PT/PH review. Although they are in no way representative of what you see first-hand when using the monitor, we’ve included a few photos of the monitor running a range of game titles. Particularly with the details cranked up (which brought out GTX 1070 to its knees, unfortunately), these titles looked quite stunning in many respects and certainly benefited from the high resolution and pixel density on offer here. To be fair, that’s the kind of improvement we saw from the HP Dreamcolor z32x also, which improved on its initials core of 1.68 by hitting .84. It’s important to point out that even though the Dreamcolor’s overall color error is lower than the BenQ’s, once you get under 1.0, the variances are rather minor. The LG 27UD88-W also improved, going from 3.97 to 2.34, but that’s still a little outside what you’d want from a professional monitor. The average static contrast on the BenQ PD3200U with only brightness adjusted was 972:1, which is quite good and in line with expectation based on the specifications. Under our ‘Test Settings’ we recorded 959:1, which is quite pleasing. The contrast dropped somewhat following the application of the ‘Low Blue Light settings’, to 637:1 – 719:1 depending on the setting used. This is more pronounced than the drop we measured on the BL3201PT/PH (981:1 minimum) but quite acceptable given that these modes serve their purpose well regardless of the contrast dropping a bit. The maximum luminance recorded on the table was 299 cd/m², whilst the minimum white luminance was 54 cd/m². This gives a luminance adjustment range of 245 cd/m² with plenty of usable values to choose from for a range of lighting conditions and preferences. will limit the appeal to some users and there were slight traces of trailing and overshoot here and there

The monitors interpolation process (i.e. ‘Full’ selected for ‘Display Mode’) gives significant softening to the image. Things are slightly sharper than when relying on GPU scaling and the softening is by no means the most extreme we’ve seen, but it is nowhere near as sharp as running the resolution natively on a screen of similar size. Contrary to popular belief, the monitor does not display 1920 x 1080 perfectly by 1:4 mapping onto the 3840 x 2160 pixels of the screen. Instead, exactly the same interpolation process is used as is used at other resolutions. This is the case regardless of the input used (HDMI, DP or MiniDP). The softening was more noticeable than on this model’s predecessor, unfortunately, although would potentially be a lot less noticeable if you’re sitting some distance from the screen. For example, using a games console with a controller. Even so, it seems this model is much better suited to running its native resolution on a range of devices (including new games consoles, via HDMI 2.0) than it is to running any non-native resolution. The anti-glare layer is typical of desktop monitors with a 3H hardness rating and a matte finish that prevents reflections from harming image quality. We didn’t see any evidence of graininess or loss of clarity. The high pixel density is well utilized. The Asus ROG PG27UQ and the Acer Predator XB272-HDR are slated to arrive in Q2 2017, that starts tomorrow (and no, not an April Fool's joke) . That puts it some time in the next 90 days though I expect we will see them released right around the big outer shows in May.

As above but more effective in reducing blue light. The image appears noticeably warmer, especially when you first change to this mode and your eyes haven’t adapted. On the right-hand side of the monitor are two HDMI 2.0 ports, a DisplayPort 1.2, mini DisplayPort, SD card slot, two USB 3.0 ports and a 3.5mm audio port. With HDMI 2.0 you can now use HDMI to display 4K visual at 60Hz, which means you can also plug a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X into the monitor and use it as a display for those.

In Standard mode, the PD3200U consumed 44 watts of power (it does not offer a power-saving ECO mode). That's more efficient than the same-size BenQ PV3200PT (57 watts), the BenQ BL3201PH (56 watts), and the 34-inch Dell U3417W (56 watts). Conclusion Loading up our testing rig to play Destiny 2 at 4Kwas nothing short of spectacular. Similarly, 4K video looks incredible on this display. Even at 60Hz, its maximum refresh rate, everything appears silky-smooth and richly detailed.So, if you’re looking for an excellent high-resolution monitor with accurate color reproduction, which can also do a good job of displaying films and games in your downtime, the BenQ PD3200U is a great choice. Final verdict The 10-bit IPS panel has a maximum resolution of 3,840 by 2,160 and covers 100 percent of the sRGB and REC.709 color gamut. It has a 16:9 aspect ratio, a 1,000:1 native contrast ratio, a 4-millisecond (gray-to-gray) pixel response, and a 350 cd/m 2 peak brightness. The embedded 5-watt speakers are loud and offer a smattering of bass, but they can't stand up to the 9-watt speakers that come with the Dell U3417W. The BenQ PD3200U features a number of ‘Picture Mode’ presets; ‘Rec. 709’, ‘sRGB’, ‘CAD/CAM’, ‘Animation’, ‘Standard’, ‘Low Blue Light’, ‘Darkroom’ and ‘User’. There are also a number of setting that can be adjusted manually, including ‘Gamma’ which can be set to various values between ‘1.8’ and ‘2.6’. Unlike on the BL3201PT/PH and many other BenQ models, these values have been given specified gamma values rather than being numbered sequentially. We won’t go through all of the preset modes and setting individually, as that would be quite tedious. If you’d like a better idea of what some of the modes like ‘Animation’ and ‘CAD/CAM’ do then refer to the calibration section of our BenQ BL3200PT review where these are looked at in a bit of detail.