CCFL Versus LED: Is There A Downside To Going Green?

BenQ And Dell Power Draw

There’s no point in trying to be clever about explaining why we only have one BenQ model here. Its presence (as well as Viewsonic’s later) serve to help corroborate our observations of the semi-matched pairs from Asus, Dell, and Samsung. BenQ and Viewsonic would be more useful with their CCFL or LED twins, respectively, but there simply weren't any available to test.

From a power perspective, BenQ’s EW2420 is the highest energy consumer among our LED models. Could this be a result of the VA technology BenQ implemented to deliver a superior viewing experience? Perhaps. We’ll see if BenQ’s VA panel delivers on its visual promises in a bit. For now, it’s interesting to note that the BenQ is the only monitor we tested that showed higher power draw at 100% brightness running video and a white Word screen than a black screen saver.

Now, how about those Dells? We saw earlier that the pair showed identical power specs on paper. Dell’s 30 W maximum draw turns out to be a little pessimistic, as the highest draw we saw from either unit was 26.4 W from the ST2320L at a black screen. At 50% and 80%, the two displays are essentially identical on energy use. At 100%, though, the CCFL-based ST2310 averages about 2 W less than the ST2320L in each test.

How is this possible? Whereas every other CCFL monitor in this roundup uses four lamps, the ST2310 only uses two. The fact that we had to get this explanation from Dell, and couldn’t observe a visible difference at first glance, may give you a hint as to what’s coming.

Apart from Dell competing with itself, you’ll notice that both Dell monitors easily trounce their competition on power consumption, often by 10% to 20%. We don’t have an explanation on why Dell’s monitors are so much more efficient than rival brands, but it’s clear that the company’s growing reputation in the display space is well-deserved.