Verdict

Pros

• Good overall image quality
• Ideal ratio of resolution and size
• Very good value

Cons

• Basic feature set
• Only 91% sRGB
• Very soft screen surface

What is the BenQ GW2270?

The GW2270 is a low-cost 22-inch monitor with a 1080p resolution and IPS LCD screen. With modern touches such as a low-blue light mode for reduced eye-strain and a low-power backlight, it should prove an ideal option for those requiring decent image quality but few frills and extras.

BenQ GW2270 – Design and Features

In keeping with its low asking price, the GW2270 sports a simple design – plain black plastic makes up its base, back and surround.

There’s no sign of the super-thin bezels of the Philips 258B6QJEB or the sharp angles of the Asus ROG Swift PG27AQ. Nevertheless, the GW2270 is smart unit whose curved rear makes for a neater finish than the Philips monitor.

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The most obvious omission is the lack of any height adjustment in the stand. As a result, you’ll have to resort to a monitor arm, desk stand or a stack of books to set it at your ideal height. It does have a 100 x 100mm VESA mount for attaching to various mounts, though.

All you do get in the way of adjustment is some forward and back tilt, so you’ll at least be able to get the screen perpendicular to your line of sight. Not surprisingly, there’s no means of pivoting the display into a portrait orientation either.

Another sign of cost saving is that the screen itself isn’t finished in a hard-wearing plastic. Instead its surface is fairly flexible and so it’s easy to press in and make the liquid crystal beneath distort.

However, this isn’t of huge concern since these screens are designed to cope with some gentle distortion. For a monitor that will be used in an environment that’s more challenging than your typical clean and tidy office, you may want to look elsewhere.

Connectivity comes in the form of two HMDI ports and a VGA port; there’s no DisplayPort or DVI included. However, this should be ample for the vast majority of situations.

Also missing are a speaker or headphone jack, nor are there any of the extras you see included with gaming monitors. However, something that isn’t always a given at this price is a built-in power supply, which I’m happy to see. As a result, any old kettle lead (IEC 60320 C13/C14) will do the job.

BenQ GW2270 – Setup

This monitor arrives in a surprisingly small box, in the main a result of the stand being unattached from the monitor and arriving in two pieces. However, assembly is a fairly simple affair with only a couple of captive screws with a flip-up finger grip required to tighten everything into place.

Surprisingly the control system for the onscreen display (OSD) setup menu consists of six buttons, which is something of an extravagance for such a modest monitor – BenQ could easily have got away with using three or four and just rejigged the menu.

The benefit is an easy-to-use OSD, with quick access to brightness, input source, low-blue light modes, as well as the full menu.

Jump into the latter  and it’s largely well laid out and easy to navigate, with plenty of options accessible. However, the left and right cursors being reversed is a slight oddity.

As you’d expect, there are no professional colour settings of the sort that you’d find in a high-end monitor, but you can set up key options such as colour balance, gamma, contrast, brightness and so on.