My brief experience with the BenQ EW3270U Monitor

I purchased this monitor five days ago from Amazon UK, but which I’m now having to send back due to a couple of issues. I have been in contact with BenQ, and they appear to be of the opinion that my problems do not stem from a faulty monitor. If they are right, and given that the main problem occurs on both my 10-year-old desktop PC and a 3-year-old laptop, then we can conclude that this particular model of monitor (the BenQ EW3270U) has compatibility issues with certain computers.

I’ll start upfront by saying I was delighted with the quality of the picture. It was bright, detailed and very large. And I have no idea what people are talking about with the angles issue. It seemed absolutely fine to me. If only the monitor didn’t have other issues, I would have been very happy indeed.

Most often, buying a monitor is a straightforward process. Yes, it’s a hassle inserting the cables, since where they are plugged in to the monitor are unerringly awkwardly placed. And yes, on first switching it on it is necessary to adjust certain settings like brightness, contrast, and the size of the text. But that should be just about it and perhaps only takes 30 mins or so to unpack it and set everything up. Then the only thing to worry about is the actual quality of the picture and the frame rate when playing games and videos.

It didn’t happen like that, on the contrary, it was very stressful.

First things first, after I opened the box it came in, I discovered there was no power lead. That was immediately concerning as I wondered whether someone had bought this specific monitor before me, encountered problems, and sent it back, but neglected to include the power lead. So I immediately was worried. And I had to hunt around my flat trying to find another power lead. This took some considerable time until I eventually managed to find one.

So then I set my new monitor up and switched on. Now, I normally have my monitor at a very low brightness level. Initially it was way way too bright, so I quickly pressed the control to access the brightness and contrast controls… only to discover they were greyed out. This was further stress as I had no idea what to do in order to get these controls to function. To cut a long story short, I did eventually manage to get the brightness and contrast controls working, but I have no idea what specific action of mine achieved this goal. Incidentally, I note that in the questions on the Amazon page for this product, someone else mentions this brightness issue being greyed out. This suggests it might be a common problem with this specific model .. unless, of course, that someone sent his monitor back and was then sent on to me without Amazon resolving the problem!

Anyway, I was a bit concerned with this brightness issue, but felt everything was probably going to be OK at that point.  And the picture was very nice and large.

But then the next day dawned…  I use Microsoft Excel connected to a program that sends data from the net onto my spreadsheet and updates that data on a continual basis. I use Excel and this program constantly, and have done so with virtually no problems for many years. This day, Excel after being connected to this program was crashing after 2-3 minutes every time.  Initially, I never realised it had anything to do with the new monitor. I assumed it had to be an issue with my PC and software. But I eventually hooked up my old monitor again, and lo and behold, the problem disappeared! Moreover, although manually changing values in Excel had been laggy with my new monitor, this disappeared on hooking up to my old monitor.

I also discovered that this precise same problem occurs with my laptop too, although far less frequently.  Again, this problem disappears either using the laptop’s own screen or my old monitor.

So, mysteriously, my new monitor was managing to crash software on both of my computers! Initially, this seemed bizarre to me. I had imagined that a monitor is simply a passive device that displays the information from the output of a computer. However, this is definitely not the case. For one thing, powering up my PC or laptop with the new monitor changes the resolution of the screen. So it seems the monitor sends a message to my PC or laptop telling it to modify certain settings in order to make it compatible with this new monitor. We can surmise that it is this change in the settings that is somehow precipitating the problem – not only on my PC, but also occasionally on my laptop too.

I attempted to resolve the problem by:

1. Turning off hardware acceleration within Excel.
2. Making sure I had the latest graphics driver for my GTX670 graphic’s card.
3. Changing to a lower resolution and changing scale and layout.
4. Trying both the appropriate BenQ monitor driver and generic monitor driver.
5. Purchasing a DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable and using that instead of a HDMI cable to hook my PC up to the monitor (why they don’t include this cable with the monitor I do not know).

Incidentally, the HDR and automatic brightness setting were both turned off.

None of these measures apart from “5” made a blind bit of difference. The DisplayPort connection did make the problem occur less frequently, but it still occurs.

Even at this stage, I felt I could somehow sort the problem out. I contacted BenQ since it seemed to me that they would certainly be familiar with this issue and would make the appropriate recommendations. My only concern is that they might have responded by telling me that the monitor isn’t compatible with my PC or laptop. I certainly didn't expect the response I actually got, where I was simply fobbed off and incorrectly told me the monitor is passive, and no help was given whatsoever!

I now suspect that with the missing power cable, someone did indeed have this specific monitor before me and perhaps sent it back due to the very same problems I’ve experienced.

So I have now boxed it up and am going to send it back.