Jethro Hoon
Photographer
Capturing moments,
Creating memories.
BenQ SW271C Review
As a full-time photographer, I find that colour accuracy is one of the key aspects of post-processing an image. I have had countless instances whereby what I thought was colour graded well on my laptop turned out looking so differently when I viewed the photo on a different device. I would end up having to go through rounds of re-editing through trial and error to ensure that the exported photo would have the proper colour when viewed on other devices, which can be quite frustrating at times.
So, when BenQ reached out to me to give one of their latest professional photographer monitors a try, I took up their offer without hesitation. I have always done my colour-grading straight from the screen of my laptop, so I was very excited to see how the SW271C would influence my post-processing workflow.
The moment I fired up Adobe Lightroom and saw it through the SW271C, I knew this monitor was a game-changer.
Key Features
The SW271C is a 27 inch 3840x2160 4K HDR Monitor, and very clearly advertised as a monitor for photographers. It has a wide colour gamut, at 99% Adobe RGB, 100% SRGB and 93% DCI-P3 colour coverage.
Monitor Design
At 27 inches, the SW271C is pretty huge and you would notice this upon unpacking the monitor. Placing it upon my desk, I found that despite its relatively large and sturdy frame, the monitor’s slim design and small base meant that it did not take up as much space as I thought it would.
The stand is height-adjustable within a range of 15 cm, with a swivel angle of 45° on either side. To my interest, I found that you can even flip the monitor 90° into a portrait orientation if you so choose. Very useful for when I find myself wanting to move around and change up my posture after long hours of work.
The shading hoods provided were rather straightforward to assemble together, with each piece interlocking to one another. While these are meant to shield the screen from the glare of external light sources, one of them being the morning light that streams through my window, I feel that with just the matte coating of the screen, it was already sufficient in blocking and diffusing external light. Even directly shining a torch at the screen barely produced a reflection, which was amazing.
That being said, when it came to calibrating the colours of the monitor in the day, with ambient light, the shading hood did make a huge difference when it came to ensuring the calibration would be as precise as possible.
The SW271C uses the latest USB Type-C port to smoothly transmit video, data, audio and power all with just one cable. With a transfer speed of up to 5 Gbps, I was blown away with how efficient it was at smoothly displaying content from my ASUS laptop in 4K resolution. In addition, with the cable now charging my laptop, I could do away with my now redundant charging cable, saving me some desk space and keeping it tidy.
That being said, the monitor also comes with various other ports, including two HDMI ports, which you can use to connect to laptops or other devices that do not support USB Type-C.
Hotkey Puck G2
The SW271C also comes with an external remote, the Hotkey Puck G2. It has three function keys which by default allow users to designate colour modes, but can be customised to create shortcuts to other widely used settings. Additionally, an analog dial in the center of the hotkey puck provides a more responsive way to navigate and adjust settings, making it extra easy to adjust brightness, contrast and volume. I found this extremely useful when I wanted to switch up my settings while editing as the hotkey puck made navigating the monitor menu fuss-free.
AQCOLOR Technology
The SW271C boasts BenQ’s proprietary AQCOLOR technology, designed for accurate reproduction of creative work in graphics design, photography, and video post-production, ensuring the smoothest colour gradations, natural colour transitions and subtle shading. And to top it all off, the monitor has excellent screen-wide brightness and colour uniformity.
All-in-all, I enjoyed perfect and consistent viewing experiences with the SW271C, which made working on my own projects a breeze. It was so much easier to achieve the colours I wanted to bring out the best in each of my photos.
GamutDuo
The SW271C possesses the GamutDuo function, which allows professionals to view their work in two colour spaces simultaneously. This is useful as I can view the same image in both Adobe RGB and the sRGB colour spaces, allowing me to compare their colours in each gamut. While Adobe RGB is necessary to ensure that a photo has its colours rendered true-to-life during printing, it isn’t required if the image is to be viewed on various devices, especially mobile devices. As such, for photos that I simply need to share online, I usually edit them in the sRGB colour space. And if I ever needed a print, I would adjust it accordingly under Adobe RGB. As such, I would imagine that with the GamutDuo function, I can more efficiently prepare the image for both print and for sharing on the internet.
Out-of-Box Guarantee
BenQ goes above and beyond with their care to ensure that every monitor provides its user with the best out-of-box performance. Each monitor is actually manually calibrated before delivery, and comes packed with its own individual calibration report, with brightness, colour gamut and temperature, delta E information, uniformity and a colour Gamma curve all clearly indicated to show performance.
BenQ’s AQCOLOR technology is also Calman Verified and Pantone Validated, further promising that BenQ’s colour accuracy adheres to industry standards. Reading through the details of the report and seeing the certification definitely assured me that I would be getting industry-approved performance out of this monitor.
Hardware Calibration
For professionals who want to fine tune the monitor’s colour output to produce results that might be more stylized to their own preferences, the BenQ Palette Master Element software assists with hardware calibration and is compatible with a wide range of hardware calibration tools including but not limited to X-Rite il Display Pro, ColorMunki Photo and Datacolor Spyder X.
Paper Colour Sync
The SW271C is equipped with BenQ proprietary technology to simulate the printing results, eliminating any differences in colour and contrast between on-screen and print.
You simply select your photo’s color gamut, printer, and photo paper and Paper Color Sync would generate an accurate on-screen preview of the final printed image. With this, one can streamline much of the screen-to-print process, allowing for greater efficiency when it comes to preparing photos for print.
In conjunction with Paper Colour Sync, the monitor has an Advanced Reflectionless Technology (ART) panel, that is a special anti-reflective coating that produces the aforementioned matte screen, thereby reducing glare and reflections, such that looking at photos on screen is like seeing them on paper.
While I did not get to test out this feature, I would say this would be essential to anyone who is in the business of creating and selling prints. After all, colours can make or break an image and this is even more so for a print.
Conclusion
The time I spent these past three weeks using the SW271C has been a blast. The SW271C has exceeded my expectations and has been a life changer for my experience with post-processing.
I truly recommend this monitor to budding professionals in the creative industry. After all, as a photographer, I believe in producing work of the highest quality, be it during a photoshoot or during post-processing of images. After all, if I am already investing so much into top-end camera equipment, I should not be compromising on the quality of my monitor. Rather, investing into an industry-grade monitor would allow me to ensure I am delivering my best in every step of my workflow.
Head over to the BenQ official website to find out more about the full specifications of the SW271C monitor.
Purchase your very own BenQ SW271C here: