The panel type is IPS, with a native contrast of 1000:1. This ensures viewing angles are very good, which is essential for a screen of this size, as when sitting in front of it at a desk it really does take up almost all of your peripheral vision. While the Dreamcolor features a wider color gamut, both displays feature near-perfect color accuracy, rich, high-contrast displays, and simple, professional designs. The BenQ PD3200U is missing that “looking out a window” quality the Dreamcolor possesses, but it’s much more affordable. On the right-hand side of the monitor are two HDMI 2.0 ports, a DisplayPort 1.2, mini DisplayPort, SD card slot, two USB 3.0 ports and a 3.5mm audio port. With HDMI 2.0 you can now use HDMI to display 4K visual at 60Hz, which means you can also plug a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X into the monitor and use it as a display for those.

We also made some observations when viewing our Blu-ray movie test titles. Here, there were no noticeable weaknesses attributable to either slower than optimal pixel responses or overly aggressive pixel overdrive. The pace of action here is limited by the 24fps or so at which the content runs – which limits fluidity and also reduces the pixel responsiveness requirements. We also observed some higher frame rate movie content (60fps), which as you’d expect highlighted exactly the same sort of behaviour that our game testing did. There were again no obvious weaknesses, just a whiff of faint powdery trailing or overshoot here and there. Certainly nothing we found distracting and nothing that should bother even sensitive users. If it does, they’d likely be unhappy with any 60Hz sample and hold monitor. A sensitive camera and a small tool called SMTT 2.0 was used to measure input lag for the PD3200U. The monitor was compared to various screens of known latency, taking over 30 repeat readings to maximise accuracy. Using this method, we calculated 7.05ms (under 1/2 a frame) of input lag. This value is influenced both by the signal delay (element you ‘feel’) and pixel responsiveness (element you ‘see’). It indicates a low signal delay, which will come as welcome news to users sensitive to this sort of thing. That means the monitor will outlast your current desktop hardware, and will see you through at least a couple years of hard use. Loading up our testing rig to play Destiny 2 at 4Kwas nothing short of spectacular. Similarly, 4K video looks incredible on this display. Even at 60Hz, its maximum refresh rate, everything appears silky-smooth and richly detailed. Very dim with strong shade depth and excellent variety. As the name implies, specifically set up for work within Rec. 709.The UHD resolution on a 32” screen also brings with it a very pleasing pixel density of 139.87 PPI (Pixels Per Inch). This brings with it excellent clarity and detail when viewing images or indeed when playing games. As with images, getting the best out of this requires that the game itself offers suitably high-resolution content. You always benefit from extra clarity, a reduced need for anti-aliasing and that sort of thing anyway – but truly admiring game content at this resolution requires suitably high-resolution textures and particle effects as well. This is something we explore in more detail in the aforementioned article and indeed in our BL3201PT/PH review. Although they are in no way representative of what you see first-hand when using the monitor, we’ve included a few photos of the monitor running a range of game titles. Particularly with the details cranked up (which brought out GTX 1070 to its knees, unfortunately), these titles looked quite stunning in many respects and certainly benefited from the high resolution and pixel density on offer here. The monitors interpolation process (i.e. ‘Full’ selected for ‘Display Mode’) gives significant softening to the image. Things are slightly sharper than when relying on GPU scaling and the softening is by no means the most extreme we’ve seen, but it is nowhere near as sharp as running the resolution natively on a screen of similar size. Contrary to popular belief, the monitor does not display 1920 x 1080 perfectly by 1:4 mapping onto the 3840 x 2160 pixels of the screen. Instead, exactly the same interpolation process is used as is used at other resolutions. This is the case regardless of the input used (HDMI, DP or MiniDP). The softening was more noticeable than on this model’s predecessor, unfortunately, although would potentially be a lot less noticeable if you’re sitting some distance from the screen. For example, using a games console with a controller. Even so, it seems this model is much better suited to running its native resolution on a range of devices (including new games consoles, via HDMI 2.0) than it is to running any non-native resolution.

To be fair, that’s the kind of improvement we saw from the HP Dreamcolor z32x also, which improved on its initials core of 1.68 by hitting .84. It’s important to point out that even though the Dreamcolor’s overall color error is lower than the BenQ’s, once you get under 1.0, the variances are rather minor. The LG 27UD88-W also improved, going from 3.97 to 2.34, but that’s still a little outside what you’d want from a professional monitor.

The bottom line; a solidly built screen with a convincing performance in key areas, but some issues that could prove problematic to some users depending on their GPU and sensitivity to screen surface texture. Finally, we assessed the contrast performance of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. This film contains many scenes where strong contrast is called upon, with bright lightsabers and explosions lighting up much darker surroundings. The monitor again put in a decent performance. It didn’t capture the atmosphere in the way that a model with significantly stronger contrast might (such as a VA model), but it didn’t appear washed out in a reasonably well-lit room either. On some monitors faint interlace patterns can be seen during certain transitions, particularly noticeable where light shades (muzzle flashes, explosions etc.) briefly pop up on the screen. These are sometimes referred to as ‘inversions artifacts’. Alternatively, static interlace patterns can be seen with some shades appearing as faint horizontal bands of a slightly lighter and slightly darker version of the intended shade. We did not observe any such artifacts on this monitor. Yes. If you’re a professional looking for a display designed for creative use, you can’t do much better than the BenQ PD3200U — not without spending an extra couple hundred dollars. At this price, the BenQ is a steal. If you need a new workhorse monitor and you’re ready to step up to 4K, give this screen a serious look.

One of the first things I did was drop Window’s scaling down to 100%, instead of the default 150%. At 150%, icons and text, while sharp, are huge. You lose a significant chunk of usable resolution compared to 100%, where things are smaller but still perfectly readable. So, if you’re looking for an excellent high-resolution monitor with accurate color reproduction, which can also do a good job of displaying films and games in your downtime, the BenQ PD3200U is a great choice. Final verdict The greyscale gradient was very smooth overall without obvious banding. There was a small amount of banding at the low end. Some temporal dithering was also evident, although well-masked and not obvious. It is known that the monitor uses a dithering stage (8-bit + FRC) so this wasn’t surprising. Low input lag and well-optimised pixel overdrive allowed the monitor to put in a convincing 60Hz performance You get a good selection of settings with the PD3200U. In addition to Brightness, Contrast, Sharpness, and Color Temperature settings, you can choose one of eight Picture Modes, including REC. 709, sRGB, CAD/CAM, Animation, Standard, Low Blue Light, Darkroom, and User Defined. There's also a DualView feature that lets you view two windows side by side using two different picture modes. As with the BenQ PV3200PT, the PD3200U contains an Ergonomic menu with an Eye Protect setting that uses an embedded sensor to detect ambient light levels and adjust screen brightness. It also has a light meter and a timer that reminds you to rest your eyes, as well as a presence sensor that puts the monitor into sleep mode when you're not there. This monitor doesn't have the individual six-color Hue and Saturation settings that you get with the BenQ PV3200PT and the Dell U3417W, but it does have two sliders for increasing or decreasing overall Hue and Saturation levels.The monitor provides very good color accuracy right out of the box. As shown on the chromaticity chart below, my red, green, and blue color measurements (represented by the colored dots) are closely aligned with their ideal CIE coordinates (represented by the boxes). Moreover, the monitor aced the DisplayMate Color Purity and Uniformity tests and provided a razor-sharp UHD picture while displaying scenes from Marvel's Deadpool on Blu-ray. The panel's ability to display outstanding highlight and shadow detail in my test images is not surprising, given its stellar performance in the 64-Step Grayscale test. As with most IPS panels, viewing angles were wide, with no apparent color shifting or dimming.