HARDWARE REVIEW

Zowie-BenQ XL2430 Monitor Review

by Kieron Davies, April 21st, 2017

It’s always an interesting topic when a company creates a gaming peripheral “For eSports”. It often raises the question of “why is this monitor good for eSports but not for other forms of gaming?” and that is certainly a valid question. As far as mice and keyboards go, there isn’t really much that can be associated with eSports that aren’t the demand of every gamer out there. Having the need for a good sensor, a low response time and don’t have key ghosting. But what about monitors?

Well, Zowie has sent us another of their ‘made for eSports monitors’, this time in the form of the 24” XL2430. Is it a frame only eSports fanatics can appreciate or is it just as well rounded as other gaming monitors? Let’s take a look.

First things to comment is the size of the monitor, at 24” I’ve always argued that it is the perfect size for gaming, especially in competitive titles. You get to see everything without having to turn your head, but it’s not too small that it makes images feel squished. Obviously, the monitor’s native resolution is 1920×1080 giving us an HD picture which makes every game look good, but something about 24” for a screen size just seems to be the goldilocks point for a monitor.

As far as how the monitor looks, the design is typically BenQ. Sleek, black, with a bezel of about half an inch and a monitor stand that allows the user to pick and viewing angle they wish. The whole thing together weighs 6.8KG which means transporting it to a LAN event shouldn’t be an issue for the budding eSports stars.

For competitive FPS players refresh rate is everything to them, as you’d expect from a monitor built for competitive gaming, the XL2430 runs at 144hz as standard. There is no screen tearing, no noticeable delay thanks to the 1ms response time and gives everything an overall smoother feel in a game like CS:GO which in that game is key.

The monitor has several display modes, which is something we’ve come to expect from a Zowie/BenQ monitor. The presets consist of FPS 1 and 2, RTS, Gamer 1, 2 and 3, movie and standard. You’re able to customise the settings and save profiles for them, however, I generally found myself playing on FPS 1 mode. This gave a good colour contrast and white balance to my games. I tried FPS 2 and nearly burned my retinas out. I have quite a sensitivity to bright lights and with the right settings, this monitor could be used as a lamp in a room. This is helped by 1000:1 contrast ratio which most of Zowie’s gaming monitors boast.

When changing the settings on the XL2430, the thing that surprised me the most what actual buttons on the monitor, rather than the pseudo-touchscreen that we’ve come to get used to. Real life buttons are a godsend, as it becomes so much easier to change settings and turn your monitor on and off. In touch panels on other displays, you needed to prime the buttons to illuminate so you could see where they, then press them until they finally responded not always on the first go. With this monitor, you press a button that protrudes maybe 2mm from the bezel of the monitor and all the settings are there and very easy to navigate.

Blur reduction is a feature that I’ve not really used before on a gaming monitor, when it’s switched on all it seems to do is dim the screen, I’ve not really noticed any blur, so I guess it’s working, I just don’t see what the difference between blur reduction and turning the brightness down is. However with the reduction turned on I did find myself spotting enemies in CS:GO and H1Z1 to be very easy even at a distance. The other features designed to help spot enemies work together well enough for blur reduction to be turned off, and trust me when I say most FPS gamers will want to do this. Blur reduction can actually give you input lag of a few milliseconds, which doesn’t sound much but it can be the difference between the clutch and the choke. I tuned the monitor using the tools at blurbusters.com in order to find the sweet spot for input delay and visibility. Your monitor setup is as unique to you as your DPI and sensitivity, so I would suggest anyone buying a monitor with these features uses it.

Black eQualizer is perfect for FPS gamers especially as it helps brighten the darker areas of your game without overexposing the brighter areas. This means that someone camping in a vent or a dark corner will not be nearly invisible as the game intended it to look because let’s face it, competitive FPS players don’t want that, they want to be able to see everything, and black eQualizer is definitely something to help achieve that.

Colour vibrance is another feature geared to helping the game look good but also help you see things on the screen, the XL2430 gives you 20 different colour vibrance settings. Generally, I found that around 9 to 12 was the sweet spot for most games, but if you like your vibrant colours, setting number 20 will blow your mind.

Flicker free is something that every gaming monitor should have as standard, which is why the XL2430 has it. Flicker can cause eye strain, which when you’ve been staring at a screen for 10 hours (game responsibly kids) can cause headaches and worse. Flicker free helps to reduce the flicker on your monitor so you can game for hours longer (responsibly).

Zowie e-Sports monitors have a selection of input options, I chose to use DVI-D because I’m old fashioned and to deliver my desired picture quality as DVI has a better range of resolutions and framerates. Also, the monitor being 144hz is one of the major eSports selling points, which is only available via DVI or display port. There are no audio outputs except for the 3.5mm headphone jack which almost nobody will use, and a 3.5mm microphone jack to match. However, the monitor does come with 2 USB 3.0 ports which is definitely a welcome feature and also a port for the standard profile changer which has been a feature with almost every BenQ gaming monitor. There is also a headphone holder, which is a small piece of red plastic on a spring. Because this is behind the screen, I forgot to use it about 99% of the time when packing up for the night.

As far as the display inputs are concerned you have a wide choice; D-sub, DVI, 2 HDMI and DP1.2 are all available choices.

The catch for most yet again is the price when it comes to the monitor, at the time of writing this review the XL2430 is £329.99 on Amazon. It’s not the most expensive gaming monitor by a long shot, but it’s also not the cheapest. Is it worth the purchase? I would say so. With enough features and customizability to tweak the monitor perfectly to your gaming style, whether you’re a sniper on CS: GO, a support on League of Legends or a goalie in Rocket League, there are enough features to cater to every level of e-Sports gamer.

Zowie has been in the e-Sports business for a long time, they are used by the best, and they have probably helped shape some of the best out there. The XL2430 is the monitor for those potential e-Sports stars who want to take their gaming prowess to the next level.