WYP
News Guru
Price: £255 - AccessoriesWhole eBay + £50 UK Import Tax
Introduction
With 1080p now being the norm and 4K simply being out of reach, both a cost and a performance perspective. This leaves most people looking for a greater than HD experience finding themselves looking into 1440p monitors.
Recently I found myself watching my old monitor’s colour and sharpness degrade and began searching for something new, quickly finding IPS panels and the recent phenomenon of Korean panels to be of interest. After reading through countless post on the differing monitors and sellers available I eventually decided on the QNIX DP2710 (which uses a Samsung 1440p PLS Panel (a variant of IPS)) with the seller AccessoriesWhole.
I decided that I would purchase a checked panel, so that there was less risk of buying a monitor with dead or stuck pixels. AccessoriesWhole was the only seller which promised no dead/stuck pixels, where other sellers usually allow up to 5 faulty pixels for a pixel perfect monitor.
Specifications
Up close
The monitor has a nice sleek look, with a reflective stand and bezel. This may turn it into a fingerprint and dust magnet in the future but at present it looks great.
The monitor came well packaged (unlike many sellers which ship the monitor as is with only the stock monitor box for protection). The monitor itself had all the plastic coverings and protections that you would expect allowing the monitor to travel half the world and remain in perfect condition.
The included accessories include; a Dual link DVI cable, an audio jack, the monitors power brick and power cable. The seller also added a UK power adaptor so that I could use it here in the UK. The Power Brick itself is powered by the standard kettle lead that most pc components use, so the buyer can buy a new cable if they are uncomfortable with the supplied adapter.
Unlike many Korean panels, this model has more than just a single DVI connection; it also has an OSD and a Scalar. The scalar allows them to include Inputs like; Dual Link DVI, VGA, Display Port, Audio in/out ports and HDMI. The addition of these features does add to the cost of the monitor but it adds greatly to its usability, like when plugging in devices which do not support 1440p (games consoles, laptops etc).
The stand is easily the weakest point of the monitor, but it is no worse than most other monitors out there. It is only able to tilt backwards and forwards, but it does have standard VESA mounts if you wish to buy a better stand or use it with a monitor arm.
General use
Typing/ Reading or Writing Text
As many of you know I write up content on the News Section of the forums, which alongside all my reports/ other written work for University means I have to read and write content very frequently. Moving from my Samsung 1080p monitor to this IPS 1440p panel presents a night and day difference; text simply look AMAZING on this monitor with the combination of sharper text and much cleaner backlighting.
Having used this Monitor for a while now I also have noticed a lack of eye strain when compared to looking at my old monitor over extended periods of time, another definite plus for the QNIX DP2710.
Viewing Media
Simply put the move to an IPS panel offer a greatly improved look at media using this monitor (Streaming Movies, Blu-Rays etc). Here the 1440p resolution makes no real improvements over 1080p given that there is little to no content delivered at a higher resolution than 1080p, this will change over time as more and more forms of media move to higher resolutions (like YouTube and Netflix going 4k this year).
Gaming
IPS monitors can be a mixed bag for gamers, those who are competitive gamers will not like how additional input lag from the monitor will affect their performance while others who mostly play single player games will benefit from the additional colour quality and not notice (or care) about the small amount of additional lag (I don’t notice the difference).
The quality of the colour of this monitor aids immersion in games greatly, lately I have been playing some Skyrim and I have found myself Wowed by the environments again and again, something I find surprising in what now is an older game.
The resolution change aids in immersion, I found myself noticing things in games that I had never noticed before and found that moving to 1440p also helped reduce the amount of aliasing in games. Aliasing is not removed but less noticeable, AA will still be required to remove all the aliasing.
All games will give you an improved experience with the higher resolution, but from playing a wide range of games I can say that some will give a much greater benefit than others, 3rd person, RPGs and RTS games in particular.
Gaming Benchmarks
Here I have tested a selection of games at 1080p and 1440p. This will show you how you’re your framerate will drop with such a large resolution increase. Please note that performance changes will vary from GPU to GPU, this is intended to give you guys a rough idea on performance changes.
The system used for the testing is as follows;
The games tested were; Batman Arkham City, Bioshock Infinite, Sleeping Dogs, Tomb Raider and Unigine’s Valley Benchmark.
In games the average framerate drop was around 30-35% for both minimum and average framerates for most games tested; this drop is unsurprising given the increase in pixel count of almost 80% over 1080p.
Tax, shipping and the Seller
All I can say about AccessoriesWhole is that they are a great seller; they shipped the monitor almost immediately with the package arriving only a week after purchase.
The monitor had no dead pixels or any backlight bleed, unlike what many horror stories across the internet would tell you. I will say that if you are interested one or more of these Korean Panels should spend the extra money get a checked panel to ensure you get no dead pixels.
Two weeks after I received my monitor I finally received my invoice for tax charges from FedEx, this totalled at £50, a considerable additional charge for buying this monitor. This charge will vary from country to country (with our Cousins in the USA having no Taxes on shipments from Korea).
Conclusion
Firstly there is the monitor itself, it is effectively the same monitor as the ASUS PB278Q 2560x1440 Monitor used for Tiny Tom Logan’s GPU reviews, it has the same inputs (DVI, VGA, HDMI and Display Port) and the same Samsung made PLS panel.
With the ASUS currently costing £450 on amazon and the QNIX panel costing £305 (which includes a £50 cut from the HMRC), this makes the QNIX monitor seem like good value but there is one key difference, this difference is the stand quality, this QNIX monitor lacks a good stand, and while it is adequate and reasonably stable, it would benefit from a stand which allows for more adjustability, like height adjustment or the ability to use the monitor in portrait mode, not just tilt.
Another factor is risk, if you buy a monitor from Korea and it arrives broken or faulty, good luck sending it back without it costing an arm and a leg, this is why I purchased a checked “pixel perfect” panel and did research into the Korean Sellers as an added measure of security before purchase.
I cannot say enough how important it is to check out your seller before buying, and the importance of their pixel perfect policy. Most if not all these stories are from people who either did not check their seller’s pixel perfect policy properly, or not go pixel perfect at all, or bought from a lower rated seller.
Now back to the Monitor itself, the image quality of this monitor is fantastic, offering great colour reproduction, deep blacks and wide viewing angles (particularly when compared to my old TN panel).
Pixel wise it is almost 80% larger than a 1080p panel and size wise it is 27”, which is only 4 inches larger than most common 23” 1080p monitors, this extra size and increased pixel density makes text look sharper, which is great for anyone who looks at text for extended periods of time.
While gaming this additional colour depth and pixel density placed me in a higher level of immersion than I had ever experienced, by making landscapes look breath-taking and reducing any aliasing in-game. You will need a lot of additional GPU power to game at this resolution, which had prompted me to run my GPUs overclocked for the first time for gaming and not just benchmarking.
In summary what you get is a cheaper alternative to more locally sourced 1440p PLS panels, offering the same colour quality and resolution at a more affordable price, with the only drawback with this monitor being the limited options given by the stand. All in all, this monitor represents a great value, provided the buyer is willing to take a chance on it.
Performance: 9/10
Price: 8/10
Presentation: 7/10
I give this monitor the UNOFFICIAL OC3D Forums Value for money Award
Introduction
With 1080p now being the norm and 4K simply being out of reach, both a cost and a performance perspective. This leaves most people looking for a greater than HD experience finding themselves looking into 1440p monitors.
Recently I found myself watching my old monitor’s colour and sharpness degrade and began searching for something new, quickly finding IPS panels and the recent phenomenon of Korean panels to be of interest. After reading through countless post on the differing monitors and sellers available I eventually decided on the QNIX DP2710 (which uses a Samsung 1440p PLS Panel (a variant of IPS)) with the seller AccessoriesWhole.
I decided that I would purchase a checked panel, so that there was less risk of buying a monitor with dead or stuck pixels. AccessoriesWhole was the only seller which promised no dead/stuck pixels, where other sellers usually allow up to 5 faulty pixels for a pixel perfect monitor.
Specifications
Up close
The monitor has a nice sleek look, with a reflective stand and bezel. This may turn it into a fingerprint and dust magnet in the future but at present it looks great.
The monitor came well packaged (unlike many sellers which ship the monitor as is with only the stock monitor box for protection). The monitor itself had all the plastic coverings and protections that you would expect allowing the monitor to travel half the world and remain in perfect condition.
The included accessories include; a Dual link DVI cable, an audio jack, the monitors power brick and power cable. The seller also added a UK power adaptor so that I could use it here in the UK. The Power Brick itself is powered by the standard kettle lead that most pc components use, so the buyer can buy a new cable if they are uncomfortable with the supplied adapter.
Unlike many Korean panels, this model has more than just a single DVI connection; it also has an OSD and a Scalar. The scalar allows them to include Inputs like; Dual Link DVI, VGA, Display Port, Audio in/out ports and HDMI. The addition of these features does add to the cost of the monitor but it adds greatly to its usability, like when plugging in devices which do not support 1440p (games consoles, laptops etc).
The stand is easily the weakest point of the monitor, but it is no worse than most other monitors out there. It is only able to tilt backwards and forwards, but it does have standard VESA mounts if you wish to buy a better stand or use it with a monitor arm.
General use
Typing/ Reading or Writing Text
As many of you know I write up content on the News Section of the forums, which alongside all my reports/ other written work for University means I have to read and write content very frequently. Moving from my Samsung 1080p monitor to this IPS 1440p panel presents a night and day difference; text simply look AMAZING on this monitor with the combination of sharper text and much cleaner backlighting.
Having used this Monitor for a while now I also have noticed a lack of eye strain when compared to looking at my old monitor over extended periods of time, another definite plus for the QNIX DP2710.
Viewing Media
Simply put the move to an IPS panel offer a greatly improved look at media using this monitor (Streaming Movies, Blu-Rays etc). Here the 1440p resolution makes no real improvements over 1080p given that there is little to no content delivered at a higher resolution than 1080p, this will change over time as more and more forms of media move to higher resolutions (like YouTube and Netflix going 4k this year).
Gaming
IPS monitors can be a mixed bag for gamers, those who are competitive gamers will not like how additional input lag from the monitor will affect their performance while others who mostly play single player games will benefit from the additional colour quality and not notice (or care) about the small amount of additional lag (I don’t notice the difference).
The quality of the colour of this monitor aids immersion in games greatly, lately I have been playing some Skyrim and I have found myself Wowed by the environments again and again, something I find surprising in what now is an older game.
The resolution change aids in immersion, I found myself noticing things in games that I had never noticed before and found that moving to 1440p also helped reduce the amount of aliasing in games. Aliasing is not removed but less noticeable, AA will still be required to remove all the aliasing.
All games will give you an improved experience with the higher resolution, but from playing a wide range of games I can say that some will give a much greater benefit than others, 3rd person, RPGs and RTS games in particular.
Gaming Benchmarks
Here I have tested a selection of games at 1080p and 1440p. This will show you how you’re your framerate will drop with such a large resolution increase. Please note that performance changes will vary from GPU to GPU, this is intended to give you guys a rough idea on performance changes.
The system used for the testing is as follows;
The games tested were; Batman Arkham City, Bioshock Infinite, Sleeping Dogs, Tomb Raider and Unigine’s Valley Benchmark.
In games the average framerate drop was around 30-35% for both minimum and average framerates for most games tested; this drop is unsurprising given the increase in pixel count of almost 80% over 1080p.
Tax, shipping and the Seller
All I can say about AccessoriesWhole is that they are a great seller; they shipped the monitor almost immediately with the package arriving only a week after purchase.
The monitor had no dead pixels or any backlight bleed, unlike what many horror stories across the internet would tell you. I will say that if you are interested one or more of these Korean Panels should spend the extra money get a checked panel to ensure you get no dead pixels.
Two weeks after I received my monitor I finally received my invoice for tax charges from FedEx, this totalled at £50, a considerable additional charge for buying this monitor. This charge will vary from country to country (with our Cousins in the USA having no Taxes on shipments from Korea).
Conclusion
Firstly there is the monitor itself, it is effectively the same monitor as the ASUS PB278Q 2560x1440 Monitor used for Tiny Tom Logan’s GPU reviews, it has the same inputs (DVI, VGA, HDMI and Display Port) and the same Samsung made PLS panel.
With the ASUS currently costing £450 on amazon and the QNIX panel costing £305 (which includes a £50 cut from the HMRC), this makes the QNIX monitor seem like good value but there is one key difference, this difference is the stand quality, this QNIX monitor lacks a good stand, and while it is adequate and reasonably stable, it would benefit from a stand which allows for more adjustability, like height adjustment or the ability to use the monitor in portrait mode, not just tilt.
Another factor is risk, if you buy a monitor from Korea and it arrives broken or faulty, good luck sending it back without it costing an arm and a leg, this is why I purchased a checked “pixel perfect” panel and did research into the Korean Sellers as an added measure of security before purchase.
I cannot say enough how important it is to check out your seller before buying, and the importance of their pixel perfect policy. Most if not all these stories are from people who either did not check their seller’s pixel perfect policy properly, or not go pixel perfect at all, or bought from a lower rated seller.
Now back to the Monitor itself, the image quality of this monitor is fantastic, offering great colour reproduction, deep blacks and wide viewing angles (particularly when compared to my old TN panel).
Pixel wise it is almost 80% larger than a 1080p panel and size wise it is 27”, which is only 4 inches larger than most common 23” 1080p monitors, this extra size and increased pixel density makes text look sharper, which is great for anyone who looks at text for extended periods of time.
While gaming this additional colour depth and pixel density placed me in a higher level of immersion than I had ever experienced, by making landscapes look breath-taking and reducing any aliasing in-game. You will need a lot of additional GPU power to game at this resolution, which had prompted me to run my GPUs overclocked for the first time for gaming and not just benchmarking.
In summary what you get is a cheaper alternative to more locally sourced 1440p PLS panels, offering the same colour quality and resolution at a more affordable price, with the only drawback with this monitor being the limited options given by the stand. All in all, this monitor represents a great value, provided the buyer is willing to take a chance on it.
Performance: 9/10
Price: 8/10
Presentation: 7/10
I give this monitor the UNOFFICIAL OC3D Forums Value for money Award
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