BenQ GL2580HM – Image Quality

For a basic TN LCD monitor, this display is astonishingly good. Unlike so many such monitors, the poor viewing angles of the TN technology don’t result in an image that constantly feels like it’s shifting and changing as you move your head by even the slightest amount.

Tilt the screen up and down and you get the tell-tale lightening and darkening of the image, but in normal use it’s hardly noticeable.

What’s more, it appears to produce surprisingly rich colours, there’s plenty of contrast, and the colour balance looks spot on. There’s no red, green or blue tinge to it, and the gradient of colour from light to dark feels right.

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Viewing angles: From below the display looks darker; from above it’s lighter

I fired up my colorimeter and tested the monitor’s colour performance – and, sure enough, it proved rather impressive.

BenQ GL2580HM – Non-calibrated image quality metrics

• Max Brightness: 265 nits
• Contrast: 712:1
• Gamma: 1.99
  
• Colour temperature: 6915K
• Delta E average: 0.14
• sRGB coverage: 92.2%
• DCI-P3 coverage: 71.4%

Its colour temperature of 6915K is close enough to the ideal of 6500K that most users would never feel the need to adjust the colour balance. Its colour space coverage is also decent, managing 92.2% of the sRGB colour space. Its Delta E score of 0.14 is excellent. In other words, this monitor is quite capable of producing nearly all the standard computer sRGB colour space and it can pick out all the fine differences between those colours too.

Meanwhile, a gamma score of 1.99 is a little way off the ideal of 2.2, but switching to the next option down in the OSD’s gamma setting soon sorted this out.

Maximum brightness is a little low at just 265 nits, but this is more of an academic consideration: most of the time, we recommend using a monitor at a much lower brightness.

The only slight letdown is contrast, which is just 712:1. We generally like to see closer to 1000:1, even on basic TN displays. However, it still looks decent, and I only really consider 600:1 and lower to be truly detrimental to image quality.

BenQ GL2580HM – Calibrated image quality metrics

• Contrast: 782:1
• Gamma: 2.21
• Colour temperature: 6463K
• Delta E average: 0.13
• sRGB coverage: 91.9%
• DCI-P3 coverage: 71.4%

All told, aside from changing the gamma setting, this display is ready to roll right out of the box. However, if you do have a colorimeter and can calibrate the display then it can do even better.

Tweaking the colour balance from 100 x 100 x 100 (RGB) to 99 x 100 x 96 pulled the colour temperature to 6460K – just 40K short of the ideal 6500K figure. This also improved contrast to 779:1 and Delta E to 0.13.

Trying the 75Hz refresh rate and Premium AMD setting didn’t revolutionise this display’s gaming performance. However, if gaming is a key concern then this display will do better than similarly priced displays that have IPS LCD panels, or those that are limited to just 60Hz.

Why buy the BenQ GL2580HM?

There’s much to like about this display. It has an attractive design plus it includes a number of practical features, such as its internal power supply, decent selection of connectivity and included speakers. It also offers surprisingly good image quality for a basic TN LCD panel, and generally it feels a step up from the very cheapest 1080p monitors.

Add to this the fact that it can run at 75Hz and it has just a 2ms response time, and it can even offer a slightly better gaming experience than some.

However, it’s also a touch close to the price of other monitors that include more desirable IPS LCD panels, such as the LG 23MP68VQ-P. They also tend to be slightly smaller 23-inch screens, but since they offer the same resolution, they’re much of a muchness.

All told, the BenQ GL2580HM isn’t a display that overly excites – but it isn’t one that will do you wrong either.

Verdict

For a budget 1080p monitor, the BenQ GL2580HM has plenty going for it – even if it doesn’t truly excel at any one thing.

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