Review: Benq FP241WZ monitor

A widescreen TFT with a Black Frame Insertion mode to boost perceived response times

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Price: £672.99

Manufacturer: Benq 207 216 0039

Specifications: 24in LCD monitor

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Verdict

Pros: Large screen; ergonomic adjustments; BFI; six video inputs
Cons: BFI adds a lot onto the price; no speakers
Overall: An excellent monitor with a unique feature that demonstrably works, but it's probably too subtle a difference for most users

Paul Monckton, Personal Computer World 04 Jul 2007

In terms of features, the 24in FP241WZ from Benq ticks all the boxes and adds some new ones of its own.

With a total of five video inputs, it will connect to just about any video source. With all these connections, the picture-in-picture (PiP) function is a welcome addition.

The core specifications are, in fact, identical to those of Benq’s existing model, the FP241W. What that extra ‘Z’ brings you is a new technology designed to enhance the quality of moving images.

Faster response times make for clearer, sharper moving images with greater contrast and hard-core gamers need the best possible display if they’re going to win. Similarly, with moving video faster response times can help to deliver a more realistic image.

With its 6ms response time, the FP241W is already fast. However, the FP241WZ adds Black Frame Inserting (BFI) technology, which further decreases the effective response time by exploiting the way the human visual system perceives motion.

While displaying video, completely black frames are interleaved with the image data, allowing your visual system to effectively ‘forget’ the previous video frame without it blurring into the next one. This introduces some flicker, but much like the flicker present in cinema film, it becomes un-noticeable when smoothed out by persistence of vision.

If BFI is enabled with a static desktop image, the flickering becomes distracting, which is why there are three levels of BFI and an 'off' mode. There’s no way to make BFI come on automatically, so you're left to enable it manually, which soon gets annoying.

This extra BFI technology comes at a premium of around £100 but it really can make a noticeable difference under certain circumstances. Those that demand the very fastest response from their display would be hard-pressed to find better than this.

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