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Review: BenQ EX3200R

by Tarinder Sandhu on 19 January 2017, 16:01

Tags: BenQ

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qaddah

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Conclusion

The reviewed EX3200R is something of a halfway house - part movie screen and part gaming monitor - and does both jobs well.

Choosing the right gaming monitor requires careful thought on budget, resolution, screen size, refresh rate and adaptive framerate technology.

BenQ's main thrust into this market rests with the Zowie brand and XL-series of screens. The reviewed EX3200R is something of a halfway house - part movie screen and part gaming monitor - and does both jobs well.

Punchy colours, great uniformity and a solid gamut lead to a good movie experience, while the 144Hz top-end refresh rate is great for fast-paced games such as Doom. No one monitor is going to be all things to all people, but if you're in the market for a large, do-it-all screen, and can stomach the £460 asking fee, the BenQ EX3200R has plenty of potential and few obvious weaknesses.

The Good
  
The Bad
Solid colour reproduction
Excellent uniformity
FreeSync works very well
Curve makes sense for movies
  
Expensive
No speakers



BenQ EX3200R

HEXUS.where2buy*

The BenQ EX3200R is available to purchase from Novatech.

HEXUS.right2reply

At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.


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HEXUS Forums :: 6 Comments

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Posted by Pleiades - Thu 19 Jan 2017 17:30
Link goes to a different monitor.

1080 @ this size and price? No thanks.
Posted by globalwarning - Thu 19 Jan 2017 19:45
Pleiades
1080 @ this size and price? No thanks.

Seriously… Anyone who's ever tried using monitor over about 27" with only 1080p knows this is a terrible idea. I'm calling Hexus out for not once mentioning that as a problem with this monitor…

It's also interesting to note that, while the review does point out that BenQ markets this as a Movie watching and productivity monitor, more than a gaming monitor, paying all that extra money for a monitor with so many wasted FPS for movies (144-24fps) and for a grainy computer desktop doesn't even make any sense. Why not pay less for a 60Hz non-free sync monitor at a higher resolution? I'm really not sure what the market based is for this product.
Posted by globalwarning - Thu 19 Jan 2017 19:49
“The reviewed EX3200R is something of a halfway house - part movie screen and part gaming monitor - and does both jobs well.”

How, in 2017, where “full HD” is now a minimum standard, does Hexus define “well” for gaming and movie watching?
Posted by Irien - Thu 19 Jan 2017 20:42
Whilst I agree with the sentiment of the thread for general work, in defence of Hexus, movies on blu ray remain 1080p, so that's the resolution you want for watching them (or 4k). For gaming, whilst people talk about mid-range graphics cards doing 1080p just fine, the truth is that modern games with (more-or-less) maxed out settings can struggle at 1080p even on expensive cards (300ukp+). As such, 1080p is a perfectly acceptable gaming/movie resolution, but equally those purposes are arguably better served by TVs at this kind of size. A 470/480 with freesync would make a nice gaming rig with this, but I'd probably still end up going TV for the convenience of TV-audio.

The irony is that at 31+ inches, we're getting to the sizes where 4k makes more sense (natively - I hate the scaling needed on smaller 4k screens). But of course then the hardware requirements for gaming go up, and there's no 4k blu-ray on PC.
Posted by Sunderas - Fri 20 Jan 2017 15:23
Who the hell still uses monitor speakers?! They are so crappy that I've never heard of someone say “Let me use these instead of buying a reasonable entry level sound system for 20 quid that sounds much better than these..”

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