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Viewing Angles, Uniformity, Response & Lag
EW3270U Viewing Angles
VA panels lag a bit behind their IPS counterparts in the off-axis quality department. While not as bad as TN, you can see a loss of detail to the sides, and even more so in the vertical plane. This gamma change will wash out an image to the point where it's largely unwatchable past the 45° angle mark. Color shifts toward green in both dimensions as well. But in a normal desktop environment, with a single user, there are no issues here. You could even use multiple BenQ EW3270U’s without any image degradation.
Screen Uniformity
To learn how we measure screen uniformity, please click here.
The EW3270U scores a little above our 10% threshold in both the black and white field uniformity tests. The sample we received isn’t expressly bad, but it finished last in our comparisons. In the black field test, the center and lower lef- zones are the brightest. But the screen doesn’t quite achieve the level of light bleed or glow, and even a 5% rise in brightness erases any notice of a problem. The white field test shows a center hotspot, again barely visible. Color uniformity is excellent at a quite unnoticeable 1.87dE range of values.
Pixel Response & Input Lag
Please click here to read up on our pixel response and input lag testing procedures.
The EW3270U is billed as a “video enjoyment” monitor which in our opinion, should include gaming duty. That’s supported by the inclusion of FreeSync over a wide 24-60Hz range. But like all available Ultra HD monitors, 60fps is the upper limit. Unless you have an expensive video card, that isn’t a big deal anyway as you won't be ale drive games at high settings above that, but someday soon it will be a more serious limitation. Hopefully now that we’re seeing DisplayPort 1.4 on the latest monitors, higher refresh rates will be here soon on UHD displays.
Despite that limitation, the EW3270U boasts a decent draw time of 22ms and a usable input lag of 64ms. First-person shooters are comfortable for the casual player, but serious competitive types will need a faster-refresh monitor to remain dominant.
Gaming With FreeSync
We’re still gaming with a Radeon R9 285, so Ultra HD means turning down detail levels to the mid-point. The High preset in Tomb Raider delivers framerates in the high, 40s which means no tearing and control response that’s good enough for our casual skills. There is no motion blur to speak of when using the High overdrive setting. Premium shows a bit of ghosting, but isn’t necessary for smoothness and good motion resolution. We’re glad to see LFC in play here, because there’s no way we’ll see 60fps in any games with our current gaming test system.
Some users make resolution their highest priority, and while we understand that position, we don’t agree with it. Ultimately, a speedier monitor will look better, though it puts fewer pixels on the screen. The EW3270U is one of the more-capable Ultra HD gaming screens we’ve played on, but it won’t compete with a 120Hz QHD or 240Hz FHD display. Panels like that have spoiled us. Ultra HD still has a bit of catching up to do as a gaming category. This monitor however, is a great choice if mega-pixels are important to you.
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