BENQ SW271
– REVIEW –
The photographic monitor
Photographers and amateur photographers don’t think twice before buying an expensive camera or professional lenses, but they often overlook an equally important component, the monitor. More and more often we hear about photographic monitors. But what are they? Do you really need one? Let’s be clear about it, in this review!
Why a photographic monitor?
In the world of photography and beyond, color management plays a fundamental role so that our works are displayed correctly regardless of the media used.
The monitor, therefore, is one of the most important tools we have at our disposal because through it we make crucial changes to our photos in post-production and today, thanks to the collaboration with BenQ, I have the pleasure of trying a monitor designed specifically for us photographers! This is BenQ SW271, which in fact has all the credentials to be called a “photographic monitor”. Let’s see them together!
TECHNICAL FEATURES
IPS panel 16:9, 27 inches
4K 3840×2160 pixel Resolution
Copertura 99% Adobe RGB & 100% sRGB
LUT 3D a 14-bit e ΔE ≤ 2
10 bit depth
Hardware Calibration
HDR (High Dynamic Range)
USB Type-C
GamutDuo
Advanced Black & White mode
Techinicolor Certificate
PACKAGE CONTENTS
Benq SW271
Base
Paraluce
CD-ROM driver & manual
Calibration certificate
Hotkey Pucks
Power cable
USB-C cable
mDP a DP cable,
HDMI 2.0 Cable,
Cavo USB 3.1
____
How it looks like
The BenQ SW271 arrives home in a “huge” box, just think that the it weighs about 16 kg! Once you open the package you immediately realize how much care has been dedicated to the packaging, everything is perfectly in place, safely stored and protected by polystyrene to avoid any kind of problems or damage during shipping.
Out of the box
Once out of the box, the Benq SW271 impresses with its design. The frames are really small, giving the monitor a very modern and elegant look. Available connections include a convenient SD player, 2 USB3.1 ports, HDMI 2.0, 1 Display Port 1.4, and a Type-C USB port compatible with the Thunderbolt interface used on the latest Macs. I really appreciated this last one because it allows you to transmit video and data with just one cable. So you can calibrate with great ease and display brilliant 4K content thanks to an incredible transfer speed.
Ergonomics
One of the features that I immediately appreciated about this monitor is the ergonomics of use that, for those like me, who spend many hours in front of their PC working on their photos, is an aspect not to be underestimated! This BenQ SW271 offers the chance to adjust both the height and tilt quickly and easily and, as a result, your back and eyes will say thank you! Staying on the subject, the anti-glare screen protector included in the package is worth mentioning. In addition to giving it a “professional” aesthetic touch, it helps to reduce reflections caused by surrounding lights and therefore ambient lighting, ensuring even greater color accuracy and helps you avoid unnecessary distractions while working.
In addition, you can rotate the monitor vertically, a feature that promotes the development of vertical photographs taking full advantage of the entire surface of the display. Although I love taking portrait photographs, I don’t find it very practical for me to rotate the monitor every time I rotate it, especially if you use the screen protector (to be mounted and unmounted each time), however it is a very useful feature that deserves to be mentioned, especially if you have a second monitor on which you would like to continue viewing horizontally.
A complete and quality product
But, what is the difference between AdobeRGB and sRgb?
Adobe RGB, on the other hand, is an “extended” color space designed to include many of the colors that can be obtained with CMYK printers, and this means, in simple terms, that thanks to a significant increase in range, mostly true cyan and green, it covers about 50% of visible colors.
Having a monitor that covers this color profile, therefore, allows us to work on our photos more accurately in terms of colors and will be able to prepare them correctly for printing as well.
DeltaE
Calibration
BenQ SW271 arrives factory calibrated, with a report included in the package, but the feature that differentiates it from most monitors on the market is that the calibration is hardware and not software type. This means that the calibration data is stored directly in the monitor inside the graphics chip and not on our computer as a profile to be applied to the output of the graphics card. This peculiarity offers several advantages. It allows you to connect to the monitor any device, PC, Notebook, Macbook, always keeping the same calibration and therefore color fidelity and, first of all and most importantly, ensures a much more accurate calibration than the software type.
The features continue
Hotkey Puck
But its most useful feature is that you can switch between Adobe RGB, sRGB and Black-and-White modes at the touch of a button. The buttons can also be customized to set other modes such as quickly changing the calibration profile we created or changing brightness and contrast, an additional convenience for photographers.
GamutDuo
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
As already mentioned, this is a high-end professional monitor, dedicated to the most demanding photographers and the cost is definitely in line with the features it offers.
If you are looking for a professional monitor that allows you to take a leap forward in the processing of your photos, the BenQ SW271 will not disappoint you! The 99% AdobeRGB coverage, 10bit depth, hardware calibration and 4K resolution, along with all the other features, will change the way of your post-production and further increase the final quality of your images.
Amazon
At this moment on Amazon (sold and shipped by Amazon) it costs about 1100 Euros. I understand very well that this is an important investment, especially for those who have not made photography their job, but I want to say that in addition to having a good camera body or good lenses, even a good monitor like this can contribute in a very significant way to the improvement of your photographs, whether they are intended for the web or print.
There is also the larger 32” version (BenQ SW320) and, for the less demanding in terms of resolution, the smaller 24” FullHD version (BenQ SW240) is also available. You can go directly to the amazon page by clicking on the button below.
THANK YOU BENQ!
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