[Erotaku]

Hi there lads and lasses,

Before saying anything. I would love to thank every member who makes this website alive and running. You guys are simply the best and this website is better than the best. While it doesn’t cover a review on every monitor out there, there is still a generous amount of that and each review is so well done and amazing beyond any words of praise. Hence why I intend to use your referral amazon link whenever I buy anything in the hopes of supporting your amazing work in any way I can (which will happen later on at Q4 2018, sorry!)

Anyway, back to my question. I simply need a monitor with the best image quality at 1080p resolution. It will mainly be used for watching Anime and using it as a second monitor. I have looked for the best VA panel as it offers the highest contrast which results in a more colourful experience. I don’t need any fancy features. 1080p resolution, 60 hz refresh rate, VA panel, 27″ size ideally and a price of less than $250 unless I can really justify the extra. All I care about is the maximum vivid, colourful experience.

It has been a number of days and I have researched about this for way too long now. So I guess it’s time to rely on professionals this time. I hope it’s not too much to ask for. Also thank you very much in advance, for everything.

[PCM2]

Hi Erotaku and welcome!

Thanks very much for your kind words and sharing your desire to help support this resource. I’m glad to read such positive thoughts about the website . 🙂

For movie watching I certainly prefer VA panels over the other panel types. The strong contrast and respectable colour performance delivers the most ‘cinematic’ feel of the monitor types, I feel. This is especially true if you enjoy watching movies in a dimly lit room, where the relatively lacklustre contrast of other LCD panel types becomes readily apparent. VA models also tends to have agreeable (smooth & ungrainy) screen surfaces, whilst the range of VA models available with generous colour gamuts is also increasing.

Given the criteria you’ve laid out on your uses, my main recommendation for you would be the BenQ EW277HDR. I’ve recommended this to various users for a range of uses, from gaming on both PC and console to watching movies (including anime) and the feedback has been extremely positive. This echoes my feelings in the review. The combination of strong contrast, pleasing colour reproduction (with generous colour gamut) and light matte screen surfaces really delivers the sort of vivid experience you’re after. Many shades get a nice boost in saturation, but the shade variety is maintained so that things don’t look completely weird or out of place. This worked really nicely for Futurama which we tested in the review, for example, and made such content very enjoyable and engaging to watch.

[Erotaku]

Thank you for taking the time to respond!

I have checked your recommendation page and I have read about the BenQ EW277HDR. I guess it’s a mistake on my own part for not mentioning this but I have decided against it since it’s quite pricey for a targeted feature that I will never be taking advantage of, which is HDR. My main media consumption will be Anime and even when I watch normal movies from time to time. They will 100% not be in HDR format.

However, I have noticed that this monitor has an alternative non-HDR and cheaper counterpart, BenQ EW2775ZH. Would this monitor have all the strong elements that the HDR version had?

Otherwise, your recommendation is quite solid and I think for Anime, it would be awesome to say the least. Anime is very colourful and I do agree that a VA panel will serve me well there. Thank you once again and I will be looking forward to your answer.

[PCM2]

Whilst I agree that HDR is nothing more than a marketing gimmick on that model and any other of that sort of price, it doesn’t actually add significantly to the price. Given that I feel the feature is next to useless and make that clear in the review, I would never recommend it based on that. The EW277HDR is worth its price even if you discount the feature entirely. It isn’t just ‘HDR’ that sets it aside from the EW2775ZH, for example, it is the superior backlight which provides a vastly broader colour gamut that comes closer to DCI-P3 and extends much further past sRGB. That’s what you need for the sort of experience you’re after.

And just in case I’m not stressing the point enough regarding how good I feel the value of this model is, I recently recommended it to a user who was put off because he thought it was too cheap. He was very pleased with the image quality, because it punches well above its weight in that department and gives some much more expensive models a run for their money.

[Erotaku]

Oh I had no idea. I have always thought of HDR to be another marketing gimmick too. Though, I knew that people still use it for media consumption for some odd reason. I’m glad we are on the same page. I will put my eyes on this monitor then!

Out of curiosity, if I ever find myself unable to buy this monitor. Which one would be your second best but cheaper recommendation? I really hope I’m not asking for too much at this point.

Edit: I will most likely do the impossible to get my hands on this monitor though. It sounds way too good and I don’t want to pass this chance up. Just saying 😀

[PCM2]

My fallback would probably be the Samsung C27F591FD, which was featured as a recommendation before I reviewed the BenQ. Some points of comparison to bear in mind. It still delivers quite a rich experience with good vibrancy, but it’s not quite as vibrant or well-rounded as the BenQ overall.

[Erotaku]

You have been amazing, to say the least! Thank you very much and I wish you all the best. I will also do my best to support you whenever I can. I’m a huge monitor nerd and your website is like a paradise to me. Thanks again =)

[takake]

Hey, just stumbled onto this post. I have to say, you have nearly convinced me to get the BenQ monitor straight away. However, I have read that IPS panels provide better contrast and colours. Is this true? Would you recommend this monitor over other IPS models? If so, do recommend. I am looking for a monitor exclusively for anime and movies. Thanks!

[PCM2]

IPS-type panels provide more consistent colours and are therefore better for applications which require strong colour accuracy. Pixel responsiveness is generally stronger as well. But they offer much weaker contrast and have ‘IPS glow’ to contend with. The colours are also more vibrant on the BenQ EW277HDR compared to competing IPS models due to the colour gamut being generous, strong contrast and a lighter screen surface (compared to matte IPS-type models of this resolution, at least). As covered in the review, colour consistency is also very good on the BenQ for the panel type. Not up to IPS levels, but fine for non-colour critical applications really.

[PCM2]

I’ve noticed a lot of people still view this thread and would like to provide some updated thoughts based on my own continued experience with various models. I’ve actually got on very well with a lot of recent IPS models I’ve used for movie watching. It really depends on your personal preferences, the sort of content you watch and the lighting conditions. If you’re sitting in a reasonably well-lit room or failing that have some monitor behind the monitor, such as a bias light, I feel IPS-type options can be very attractive. The VA options still have an edge in contrast and some would prefer them for an atmospheric look to darker scenes, but there are ways to mitigate the weaknesses of IPS-type models in that respect. For colour reproduction IPS models certainly have an edge. A long-running test of ours is Futurama – as with anime, it features large areas of individual shade and tends to highlight the colour consistency advantages that IPS-type panels have. Our panel types article has also been updated to focus on this more specifically, with some visual examples. The SpyderCHECKR24 system introduced there is employed in our more recent reviews and gives a very nice visual representation of colour consistency weaknesses and also the influence of colour gamut.

I’ve also found that a lot of VA models I’ve used more recently than the EW277HDR actually have a ‘worse’ (less light, more grainy) screen surface. And that many IPS-type alternatives are more attractive than those VA models in that respect. Furthermore, there have been a lot of wide gamut IPS options introduced to the market since this thread was created. We’re currently updating our recommendations section and it will include pages dedicated to uses such as movie watching. There are a number of IPS options you’ll see feature there and which I consider nice models for movie watching, alongside some VA options. Some examples of models I consider good for movie watching (again, depending on content and preferences) would include the BenQ EX2710, Philips 328E1CA and BenQ EW3280U. All models we’ve reviewed after I last posted in this thread.

[Erotaku]

Oh man. It has been three years since I have made my OP, eh? As for your update, I am certainly glad to see it happening. I have been using a 144hz 1440p VA gaming monitor for a little bit over a year by now. I am absolutely pleased with the contrast levels, and the deep black levels. However, yea I think it does falls short in other areas. What are they? I can’t put into words. I need an IPS monitor to test it alongside my current one to be able to tell. But I strongly feel IPS is somehow superior.

I am actually wishing for a glossy finished panel. I have a cheap laptop with one like that, and it looks way too good even when it’s only 1080p. I have asked around about such a thing, and it was only a thing for mac monitors. So yea, it doesn’t seem like it will ever hit mainstream monitors anytime soon; if ever.

But I digress. I would absolutely love to see your updated list that reflect the change of heart mentioned above. I will actually be in the market for buying a new 1080p (or 4k 60hz since they are cheap now) monitor for media consumption (yep, anime again. I haven’t watched that in a long time). And your recommendations will serve me very well once again. So, I will be very much looking forward to that.

[hvermannsen]

I’m also in the market looking for a monitor for this purpose. I will be using the screen for coding (so text clarity is my top priority), watching movie (VA contrast really helps here since I use the screen in the dark a lot) and some light gaming (mostly slow games like Darksouls or Monster Hunter) so I don’t really need high refresh rate. I’m using the C24G1 atm and quite satisfied overall, but I do want a bigger screen and QHD, so the CQ27G2 seems like a reasonable step up, though I kinda want to see if there are other options before I pull the trigger. 27″ VA options are quite limited for me, with higher priced monitor than the CQ27G2 not offering anything I really need, which made me think that I should go for 32″. Many display at that size have characteristic that I’m looking for (VA, VRR refresh rate at 75HZ), the only questions I have left is to go for 4K or not since QHD is a lot cheaper. The Philips 328E1CA unfortunately isn’t available in my area, so I was wondering if there are alternative for that one.

[PCM2]

It sounds like the CQ27G2 would be an appropriate choice if you like the experience the C24G1 offers overall but seek a higher resolution for productivity purposes, improved text clarity and allowing you to bump up the screen size. Just be aware of the wider gamut, which as explored in the review and in this thread will boost saturation and vibrancy. The 2560 x 1440 (WQHD) resolution gives a significant boost over 1920 x 1080 (Full HD) for productivity. 3840 x 2160 (‘4K’ UHD) takes things further in that respect and if you watch ‘4K’ video content the resolution could be attractive for that as well. It’s worth being aware that the drop in refresh rate also affects how things look and feel on the desktop – perhaps try running your current monitor at 60Hz and see if you can adapt to that.

As for alternatives to the Philips 328E1CA, the main one which is also covered elsewhere on the forum is the Dell S3221QS. It’s not quite as responsive, but given your uses and what you’ve said I don’t think you should find this problematic. The experience is otherwise quite comparable to the Philips overall. You also gain better stand ergonomics and some (very basic) HDR support.

[hvermannsen]

I have been using another monitor (HP Pavilion 23fi) at 60Hz for the past few week and I found no issues, so 60Hz is probably good enough for me. Unfortunately the Dell S3221QS is also not available in my region (and even if it does I’m not sure I could swallow 500 bucks for that). Shopping around and I see that my options for 32 inch are the LG UN500-W and the BenQ 3270U, which both have reviews over at Rting. I just found a decent deal for the LG 32UN500-W so I might just pull the trigger on that one. Will update my impression on it if I have some time.

[PCM2]

As promised, our recommended movie monitor section is now live. As with the other recommendations section this will be updated over time as I test or gather a significant volume of positive user experiences on different models. I realise there are relatively few HDR options available there, for example. It’s partly because the models I’ve tested myself with what I deem to be the most impressive HDR performance are generally very expensive, difficult ot get hold of or have a 2560 x 1440 (WQHD) resolution. I’ve tried to keep the recommendations there to Full HD or UHD to better match the content – plus an UltraWide section for suitable content. But as I say in our reviews of 2560 x 1440 models there’s still only slight softening when viewing Full HD content in the native resolution.

For pure movie usage I tend to recommend Full HD or UHD (or UltraWides if you like that sort of experience and content). But if movies are just part of what you enjoy using your monitor for then I’d certainly recommend looking further afield to our reviews and even consider some of the models in the gaming recommendations section. A lot of models are tricky to place in one specific basket or use case, there’s a lot of crossover really.

[Rens]

Dear PCM2,

I’ve been reading a lot of your posts regarding monitors for movie consumption and I also viewed the recommendation section you described above. All of which has been very useful and I want to thank you for that. I do have one remaining question that I could not find a clear answer to on this site and other forums such as reddit. The general consensus I’ve found is that 1080p content looks slightly worse on a 4k monitor, but since the video itself is usually lossy to begin with this slightly worse image is not really a problem for most people. My question is if you have any experience with losslessly ripped 1080p blu ray movies on a 4k monitor, will this look worse? I ask this because I’m looking at buying a 32 inch 4k monitor which I will use for general document use, web browsing and online video calls but also primarily for watching losslessly ripped 1080p blu ray movies that I have on a hard drive. I currently use an old 1080p tn gaming monitor for all of this so I’m due for an upgrade 🙂

If this is not the correct tread to ask this my apologies and thank you in advance.

[PCM2]

Hi Rens,

You’re welcome to ask that question here. This is the ‘disclaimer’ given in the reviews of ‘4K’ models with respect to this:

“As usual, if you’re running the monitor at 3840 x 2160 and viewing 1920 x 1080 content (for example a video over the internet or a Blu-ray, using movie software) then it is the GPU and software that handles the upscaling. That’s got nothing to do with the monitor itself – there is a very small amount of softening to the image compared to viewing such content on a native Full HD monitor, but it’s slight and shouldn’t bother most users.”

You’re correct that any softening is somewhat more noticeable if the content itself is higher quality. But I did include ‘Blu-ray’ in this ‘disclaimer’ on purpose and still consider this to be a very small amount of softening which won’t bother most uses. It’s really very subjective though and something you’d have to see and judge for yourself. I wouldn’t worry about this aspect though and you shouldn’t let that put you off giving a ‘4K’ UHD model a go for movie content. Even if a lot of that content is 1080p.

[Author]

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