BenQ has introduced a new IPS Black monitor with some very powerful visual editing specs and a very reasonable price tag for what it offers.
While the right equipment for capturing great photos is something any photographer should take seriously, editing and sorting images also has its own needs.
This is where a high-quality monitor becomes crucial since it lets you see with high fidelity what your camera captured so vividly.
Whether the BenQ PD3225U delivers this or not may vary by user need, but it certainly offers specs that promise high performance.
For starters, BenQ’s PD3225U has been dubbed a “design monitor” by its manufacturer, with certain promises of top-notch image quality that come with that.
It also features Thunderbolt 3 connectivity, 98% P3 color space coverage, and the crucial feature of IPS Black technology.
This last spec, (developed by LG, a company known for producing high-quality IPS 4K TVs aside from its famous OLED panels) was announced at CES 2022 and has also been implemented before.
It previously appeared in the 2023 Dell UltraSharp 32-inch monitor and was shown to deliver 35% deeper black levels than what you’d get from any ordinary IPS display. It also doubles average contrast ratios. For photo and video editing, these are crucial qualities.
To briefly summarize the background technology, IPS stands for in-plane twisting and this display type uses liquid aligned in parallel to define colors as the liquid crystals shit along these horizontal lines.
A notable aspect of IPS panels is that they offer excellent viewing angles specifically because their crystals align horizontally instead of vertically, as opposed to VA and TN panels, whose viewing angles are poorer.
IPS also tends to offer much better color reproduction compared to other panel types except OLED.
However, because of the same horizontally aligned crystals in these displays, their contrast levels and black reproduction have generally been weak. The IPS Black in the new PD3225U changes that.
This means that users who need a high-performance monitor at a non-OLED price can enjoy both superior color and contrast/black level results on the same screen.
And, according to BenQ’s own benchmarks, the PD3225U does deliver impressive contrast results.
The company claims a ratio of 2000:1, which is not only very good by the standards of IPS but also compared to any other display technology except OLED.
The PD3225U’s manufacturer is also claiming that this display is an ideal display for Mac users in particular. They claim this partly because of the above-mentioned Thunderbolt 3 connectivity but also because the PD3225U comes with Color Match for Mac devices through its internal M-book mode.
It can even be connected to MacBook Pro displays with matching color without having to use a calibrator according to BenQ.
BenQ has also given this monitor certifications such as Calman Verified, Pantone Validation and Pantone SkinTone Validation.
Price-wise, for all of the above specs, the PD3225U is fairly cheap too at just $1,099. Compared to what any OLED display will cost you or even what many other LCD monitors cost, this isn’t steep for the performance offered.
BenQ has also given its display a 4K resolution with a 60p refresh rate and claims a rather excellent 98% DCI-P3 color space coverage. This goes up to 99% for the Rec. 709 and sRGB color spaces.
On peak brightness, the PD3225U only reaches up to 400 nits, making it an HDR400 monitor compared to the much more noticeable brightness qualities of HDR600 and above.
However, BenQ promises consistent luminance from corner to corner on the 32-inch screen due to the brand’s Uniformity Technology.
Despite this, its other specs and color rendering make the PD3225U a monitor that’s likely to be superb as an affordable photo editing display.
Other specs in the PD3225U from BenQ include dual HDMI 2.0 ports, one DisplayPort 1.4 slot and support for up to 85W of power delivery.
It also comes with a secondary Thunderbolt 3 port that can handle 15W charging, a headphone jack, a single USB Type B upstream port and two downstream USB ports of which one is USB-C and the other USB 3.2.
The BenQ PD3225U monitor will be released by its manufacturer on March 21 and is now available on preorder for $1,099.99.
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