BenQ Zowie XL2566K 24.5 Fast TN in 360Hz Gaming Monitor, Motion Clarity DyAc⁺, 1080p, XL Setting to Share, Custom Quick Menu, S Switch, Shield, Smaller Base, Adjustable Height & Tilt, Black

Product Information

This is a TN Film panel and absolutely designed for gamers, so it’s unlikely you’d want to be doing any colour critical work on it anyway, but we would have liked to have seen a ~100% sRGB gamut in this day and age on any screen. Keep in mind also that this screen would give you no support for wider colour gamut content which is increasingly common nowadays (including HDR content) so you’re limited to a more traditional ~sRGB standard gamut here. That also means that you cannot work with wider colour spaces like Adobe RGB (photography) or DCI-P3 (HDR content creation) if you wanted to, although as we say this isn’t a screen aimed at those uses at all. These prices are all very high compared to regular 24-inch gaming monitors. However, the premium reflects the Zowie’s skunkworks nature with its high development costs and super-niche market size. Other 360Hz gaming monitors use IPS technology and still cost more, but they tend to be much larger and have more luxury features that suit gaming and multimedia immersion. At real world speeds, the image is faster, sharper and more clear than anything else on the market. It might not be by much, but, and we’ll labour the point, major championships can be decided by less. If you play FPS games, you need the fastest, clearest screen to perform to your potential and this is it.

There is also a ‘customizable’ AMA setting with a slider from 0 – 20, allowing you to tweak the overdrive to your liking if you want. We have included some measurements at a setting of 12 which we felt was about as high as you could push it within overshoot becoming noticeable. This basically eliminated the small amount of dark overshoot visible in high mode. The ‘High’ mode is perfectly usable though and will be fine for most people we felt. There’s some pursuit camera photos capturing real-world motion clarity in High vs customizable 12 in a moment. The foot of the stand is also nice and small, giving you flexibly in positioning of your screen and peripherals for gaming. Connect your XL2566K to your PC with a DP 1.4 cable. A DP 1.4 cable is included inside the XL2566K box. Only a DP 1.4 port will have enough bandwidth to support 360Hz refresh rate.We measured asuper low input lagon the XL2566K. There was a total display lag of only 2.25ms and with ~0.53ms of that accounted for by pixel response times, that leaves a signal processing lag of only ~1.73ms which is excellent. As a result the screen is perfectly fine for fast paced competitive games if you need from that point of view. Conclusion

Still, the XL2566K is an extremely impressive gaming monitor, and if you’re looking for the fastest, most responsive monitor out there at this point in time then this is it. Some settings can be adjusted to suit individual preferences and this includes the AMA (pixel overdrive) setting. Indeed, the XL2566K comes with presets labelled Premium, High and Off, along with a 30-step customizable slider. Premium achieves a fast response time but inverse ghosting is noticeable. High offers a better blend and will be used by many players. However, it’s so easy to adjust the overdrive settings and see instant results (there’s no change-related lag) that tweaking everything is recommended. We found settings between 11-18 represented a sweet spot where response time and inverse ghosting coexisted well, before causing issues. But when compared to the XL2566K, the limitations of the panel, and the largely inferior PureXP+ blur-reduction technology is obvious. During the BlurBuster test, the XL2566K + DyAc+ performs significantly better, with a much more clear image and little blurring compared to the ViewSonic monitor using its PureXP+ technology. The stand is adjustable in all the right ways: it can tilt, swivel, pivot, and it’s height adjustable, so you’re absolutely certain to find a viewing position that’s comfortable for your posture and desires. All of this works beautifully, and I never had any issues with the monitor (or any ZOWIE monitor) sagging or changing position over time.This is what settings like Overdrive adjust – BenQ calls it Advanced Motion Acceleration (AMA). But, if you apply too-little or too-much charge you can get ghosting (smeary ghost images trailing on-screen objects) or inverse ghosting and overshoot (blur that leads on-screen objects and edges that continue to move after an object has stopped), or both.