Professional Gaming Monitor-BenQ RL2455HM
Gaming monitors are becoming more tailored toward competitive gamers. The RL2455HM gaming monitor of BenQ is built primarily to provide real-time strategy players an edge and offers two distinct display modes that are meant to make it easy to spot your characters in the middle of the chaos of games. The 24 inch RL2455HM serves its purpose to make any type of game look better with a crisp and responsive 1080p screen. And all this is available for an inviting $200 price tag.
Design:
The no-frills design of the BenQ RL2455HM keeps you focused on your game. There is nothing in design but a small strip of red on bottom to distract you from its all-black aesthetic. The monitor has the same curved base attractive design as the rest of the RL series but it lacks rubberized controller dock or headphone stand like its 27 inch counterpart, the RL2755HM.
You can tilt the screen of RL2455HM 15 degrees back or forward but that’s all about it. And for those who play close to their screens, this might not be a problem as the RL2455HM is built for competitive gamers. And while BenQ’s XL features far more articulation, are also much pricier.
The RL2455HM is very easy to setup that includes snapping the base, display and stand all into place. The RL2455HM gaming monitor measures 17.1×22.8×7.4 inches and weighs 9 pounds and is easy to move around on the desk.
Ports and Interface:
The BenQ RL2455HM features a standard array of inputs, including two HDMI ports, a D-SUB input and a DVI port. There is a headphone jack and a line-in port for your audio needs. Eliminating some guesswork of plugging your cable into obscured connections, there is a small graphic below each port that you which input is which.
The monitor has a power switch and five physical navigation buttons on the right edge. The RL2455HM features BenQ’s traditional on-screen interface that has tabs for switching among picture modes, pulling up a deeper main menu to tweak settings such as sound, contrast and brightness and changing the size of the display.
Audio:
The 2-watt built-in speakers of RL2455HM work fine but if you want immersive audio, you will need to plug in headphones or speakers.
Buttons:
The BenQ RL2455HM comes with some great button control. It doesn’t designate specific buttons to specific menus like most monitors that are released these days. This means that to bring up the OSD options, you can press any of the buttons on the side and the menu system appears on the screen itself.
For gamers that are in dark or dimly-lit rooms, this is great as it can be a pain figuring out the right button to press on most monitors. The RL2455HM keeps it very simple for you to access its menus with relative ease. Like casing, the buttons also retain matte finish and build construction.
Viewing Angles:
TN panels don’t offer best viewing angles as the gamma curve shifts dramatically when viewing from different angles. The BenQ RL2455HM claims to have a 170/160 viewing angle. When looking at the monitor at eye level and straight on, everything looks great except viewing from angles when the aforementioned gamma shift is apparent. It is the drawback of TN panel not the fault of BenQ as TN panel technology affects numerous monitors. For gamers looking to play solo, the 24 inch screen is great and everything pops and looks perfect as long as you keep it at eye level.
Motion Blur:
Under the right settings, the RL2455HM handles motion decently enough. This gaming monitor features Advanced Motion Processing or AMA. Its aim is to over-drive the panel to push a faster response time to minimize motion blur. The RL2455HM provides 1ms GTG response time. The AMA setting comes in 3 modes: Off, High and Premium.
Black, White and Color Output:
Lucky the gamers who want to tweak almost every aspect of picture, the BenQ RL2455HM features various customization options and several picture modes including, Movie, Standard, Photo, RTS 1, RTS 2, Eco, sRGB and three Gamer profiles. With the exception of Eco, which over-saturates the colors and dims the backlight, all the three modes are slightly different.
You are also able to control color temperature, black eQualizer, hue and saturation with RTS 1 mode, which is the factory default and can be customized. Some modes such as sRGB prevent from making several picture adjustments. You can tweak RGB values by the color temperature controls which is a useful feature if you want to calibrate the display with a colorimeter.
If you are trying to increase the detail in dark scenes without impacting the white level of monitor directly, you will find the black eQualizer to be very helpful. It adjusts the gamma curve for dark gray and brings more detail in darker tones.
Pros:
VESA compatibility
1ms response time
Great picture quality
HDMI inputs
Cons:
Dead pixels
Ghosting
Difficult to reach 75Hz refresh rate, need to overclock on computer
The BenQ RL2455HM is an awesome answer for what basically is a gaming monitor and also more than that. It is a great gaming monitor for console gamers who want a low-lag display. For gamers looking to compliment Xbox One and Playstation 4, the 1080p display will be sufficient.
The crisp 24 inch display offers dedicated and useful presets and is colorful and bright enough to work well with any game. While it lacks physical flexibility, it is one of the best all-around gaming monitors at $200.
The monitor has solid build construction and some great customization options. It is marketed mainly towards serious gamers demanding excellent gameplay response and features such as Smart Scaling and black eQualizer. But its TN panel will turn away those demanding color accuracy. The built-in speakers of RL2455HM don’t go with other high-end specs.
Designed primarily as a gaming monitor, it is extremely important for RL2455HM to provide near lagless gameplay performance which it surely does. The RL2455HM is an amazing monitor for gaming because of its reasonable contrast ratios and super low response times.
Also read: Ultra Fast Console Gaming Monitor-BenQ RL2455HM