BenQ XL2730Z 27-inch FreeSync Monitor Review

Color Gamut And Performance

For details on our color gamut testing and volume calculations, please click here.

Don’t be too alarmed by the above chart. It’s only the beginning of our story about the XL2730Z’s color gamut. We’re showing you the default FPS1 mode to demonstrate why it’s not the best choice. There are major hue errors in the secondary colors (cyan, magenta, yellow). Red is mostly under-saturated and blue is over-saturated at every level.

The Standard mode offers far better color accuracy, as shown here. Luminance levels are nearly perfect. Blue is properly lowered to compensate for that oversaturated primary. Our only beef is that red doesn’t track its saturation points particularly well. For that, we thought we’d try and change the gamma preset.

Well, we improved the red and blue saturation points. But now color luminance is lowered, which makes the image a tad dull. We’ll venture outside of our normal calibration procedure and try the Color Vibrance slider.

While the average DeltaE value is a tad higher, we prefer the look of this last chart. All color saturations are close to their targets and luminance values are just slightly elevated. The resulting image is nicely saturated without any detail clipping or unnatural coloration. This was achieved by returning the gamma preset to 2 and upping the Color Vibrance slider to 11.

Now we return to the comparison group:

The numerical result is represented by the third chart above, the one with slightly-low luminance values. Even though red and blue saturation are a little off-target, the average DeltaE error is lower. We still prefer the final chart, and that one has an error of only 2.21dE.

Gamut Volume: Adobe RGB 1998 And sRGB

Thanks to an over-saturated blue primary, the XL2730Z exceeds 100 percent of the sRGB gamut volume. To take advantage of this bonus color, you have to match your camera and printer. As far as gaming monitors go, though, this metric is less important.