For accurate, high-quality photo editing, you need a monitor that’s robust enough to reflect the rich colors and details of your work.
Unfortunately, such displays can often be fairly expensive, forcing many starting photographers to work with inferior equipment because of a tight budget.
This is where BenQ’s SW242Q monitor might just come to the rescue. It offers high visual quality, precision color tools and decent resolution for an impressively low price.
With the SW242Q, BenQ has designed a 24.1-inch 2K display that’s specifically aimed at both photo enthusiasts and pro photographers.
This monitor comes with the company’s proprietary AQCOLOR technology, third-generation uniformity and a neat feature called Paper Color Sync to help photographers print their images more accurately.
Basically, the BenQ SW242Q comes packed with features that usually only get included in the brand’s larger, pricier monitors
This is also at least technically an HDR monitor. Its 16:10 panel delivers a wide color gamut through support for 99% of the Adobe RGB color space and 98% of the DCI-P3 spectrum. The display also has support for HDR10 and HLG standards.
For most users, the above HDR features will be more than enough for excellent color editing.
The one single catch is that the SW242Q only outputs a maximum of 400 nits of peak brightness. This could be a problem for HDR video editing, but not for photos.
When it comes to photo workflows, the truly important thing is color accuracy, and for that, the BenQ SW242Q delivers nicely.
The above color space specs are one part of that, but another is BenQ’s guarantee of Delta E of under 1.5 for optimal color accuracy.
The SW242Q monitor also features third-party certifications from Calman and Pantone for the quality of its color rendering. This includes Pantone SkinTone validation.
A further tool that BenQ has given the SW242Q for precise and consistent color performance is Palette Master Ultimate, which delivers hardware calibrations for continuous color accuracy.
The BenQ SW242Q’s specific display resolution is also excellent.
It’s not 4K but with 2,560 x 1,600 pixels spread across a 24.1-inch display, you’re not going to have problems with rendering fine details in any photo you edit or anything else you do with the monitor.
BenQ’s SW242Q is also fine for working with SDI and HDMI devices and accepts SDI capture cards. You can also keep things simple by using a single USB-C cable to transmit video, audio, data and 90W of power at the same time.
Built into the SW242Q are dual HDMI 2.0 ports, one DisplayPort 1.4 port, The above-mentioned multi-purpose USB-C port, a couple of USB 3.1 downstream ports and one non-PD USB-C port that doesn’t charge outwards.
Physically, the monitor’s panel can tilt from -5 to +20 degrees and can swivel 30 degrees in either direction. It also supports 90-degree rotation for portrait or landscape orientation as needed.
The SW242Q’s stand can be adjusted by as many as 120 millimeters and of course the SW242Q supports VESA wall mounting.
BenQ is now directly selling this affordable and remarkably robust monitor for $480. However, you can get it even more cheaply at $437 on Amazon.
For photo editors who want quality without spending a fortune on their workflow display, it’s hard to recommend a better option at this price.
