BenQ RL2460HT 24-Inch Monitor Review: Is Gaming Good At 60 Hz?

OSD Setup And Calibration Of The BenQ RL2460HT

Pressing control keys on the side of the RL2460HT made us really miss the slick S Switch controller from the XL2720Z we reviewed last month. Other than that, the menu system is exactly the same. The OSD is fixed in the lower-right corner of the screen. It’s pretty large, but won’t interfere with our test patterns.

OSD Tour

Clicking any button brings up this quick menu.

We’re showing you the default setup. However, the top three keys can be customized to provide quick access to other functions like brightness and contrast or color temp preset. Selecting Menu brings up the main OSD.

The RL2460HT won’t pick up where you left off; it always starts with the Display submenu. Options on that screen only apply to analog signals. You can size, position, and sync the image when you use the VGA input.

Now we get to the important stuff.

A majority of the calibration controls are in the Picture menu. Selecting any of them brings up either a vertical slider or a set of options. The icons on the extreme right show the function of each button and change depending on what you’re doing.

Brightness controls the backlight (as it does on every computer monitor we’ve tested). There is no separate black level control. Contrast won’t clip detail at its default setting of 50, but we lowered it to improve grayscale accuracy at 100-percent brightness.

Sharpness’ default setting is 5, which produces an obvious edge enhancement in our test patterns. Dropping it to 1 fixes the problem.

Instant mode bypasses video processing to improve input lag. We were able to leave it On for all our tests.

Black eQualizer adjusts gamma at the low end of the brightness scale. If you’re having trouble seeing shadow detail, raising this control can help.

Low BlueLight is a feature unique to some BenQ monitors. It has the same effect as lowering the Blue slider in the color temp window. It goes from 0 to 10 and each click higher reduces blue, thereby making the image warmer in tone. It’s designed to combat eye fatigue, though a proper calibration yields the same result.

There are five gamma presets, but only numbers 2 and 3 come close to our standard of 2.2. There are tradeoffs to consider either way you go. We'll explain the differences in more detail on page six.

Choosing the User Mode color temp brings up a traditional set of RGB sliders. They are very precise and only require small adjustments to create excellent tracking. Depending on the gamma preset you choose, you’ll have to calibrate grayscale differently.

AMA stands for Advanced Motion Accelerator. It works like TraceFree to reduce ghosting behind moving objects. We saw better motion resolution in the games we tried. But in Windows, vertically-scrolling text suffered from a color fringing artifact.

The Picture Advanced menu is where you’ll find the picture modes and aspect ratio options. Aside from the common sRGB, Movie, and Standard modes, you get more gaming-oriented settings like RTS, FPS, and Fighting. In our experience, sRGB and Standard are the most accurate right out of the box.

If you’re watching a broadcast video source, you may see noise around the edge of the image. Using the Overscan feature zooms in 1.5 percent to remove that artifact.

Full uses the entire screen to render an image, no matter what resolution you specify. The other choices create a windowed picture that is meant to mimic different sized and shaped monitors. We saw this on the 27-inch XL2720Z and thought it was pretty cool. If you have a game that is optimized for a different size or aspect ratio, BenQ can accommodate it without distortion.

Like the XL2720Z, our press sample RL2460HT was set for video levels (16-235) rather than PC (0-255). If you don’t change this, detail in games and productivity apps may not be visible. You’d only use the video setting for a source like a Blu-ray player or cable TV receiver.

After choosing your options and/or calibrating the RL2460HT, you can save the configuration to one of three user memories. From there, it’s easy to call up different setups with just a couple of button clicks. We’d like to see this feature on all computer monitors.

The audio volume and mute controls govern both the speakers and headphone output. Like all built-in transducers, BenQ's sound small and tinny with a distinct emphasis on the upper-mid-range. The headphone connection is much better, offering a low noise floor and good fidelity.

Audio Select lets you choose between the HDMI, DisplayPort, and analog signal sources.

The OSD options include 17 languages, a display time of up to 30 seconds, and a complete lock-out feature. To restore it, press any button for 10 seconds.

The final screen contains the signal information. You get resolution, refresh rate, and active input, but not the firmware version.

BenQ RL2460HT Calibration

We explored three different picture modes to find the best starting point for calibration. The RL2460HT arrived in our lab set to Fighting. While that preset's grayscale and gamma accuracy are alright, the color gamut has some significant errors. sRGB is a good choice, but it locks out the gamma presets and color temp adjustments. We settled on Standard because it measures fairly well out of the box and allows a fairly precise calibration with little effort.

The gamma presets introduced some unique challenges during our tests. The default setting of Gamma 3 has excellent tracking, but rides above the 2.4 level. Gamma 2 is closer to 2.2. However, it suffers a dip at 10 percent and a peak at 90 percent. Changing presets also upsets the RGB, Brightness, and Contrast adjustments to where you’ll have to re-calibrate depending on the gamma you choose. We preferred the image quality of Gamma 2. We'll publish both configurations so you can make up your own mind, though.

The difference between both configurations is small. Either one represents a high level of accuracy. We suggest saving them to the user memories so you can make a side by side comparison.