The IPS Displays: A Blurred Line Between Clarity and Overwhelmingness

As I sat in front of the BenQ XL2546K, I couldn't help but notice how the display seemed to blur together. It's almost as if the individual pixels blended into a single entity, making it difficult to discern any distinct differences between them. This is a common issue with IPS panels, where the colors and contrast can become somewhat uniform, leading to a lack of visual interest.

The Aliens Three Eyeballs: A Unique Feature That May Not Be for Everyone

One of the most notable features of the BenQ XL2546K is its Dayak Plus technology. This innovative feature uses backlight strobing to reduce motion blur and create a clearer image. The display also boasts three individual LED lights, one for each eye, giving it an otherworldly appearance. While this may sound like a gimmick, I was pleasantly surprised by the difference it made in my viewing experience.

Toggling Dayak Plus On and Off: A Matter of Preference

When toggling Dayak Plus on or off, I found that switching to the highest setting, Premium, provided the best results. However, this comes at a slight compromise, as the display exhibits more overshoot compared to the High setting. Nevertheless, both Diac Plus modes are noticeably clearer than having it switched off. The one major downside of Diac Plus is that it does not work with G-Sync or FreeSync, which are otherwise supported on this monitor.

The Downsides of Diac Plus: A Compromise for Clearer Motion Blur

One of the significant drawbacks of Diac Plus is its lack of compatibility with G-Sync and FreeSync. While these technologies are excellent at reducing screen tearing, they are not compatible with Diac Plus. This means that if screen tearing is a major concern for you, it may be worth switching Dayak off to avoid the issue altogether.

Dayak: A Motion Blur Reduction Method That's Ahead of Its Time

The way Dayak works is by using backlight strobing between frame refreshes. The backlight is completely turned off during this time, which is a typical motion blur reduction method. However, what sets Dayak apart from other implementations is its ability to reduce motion blur without lowering the monitor brightness or introducing any noticeable artifacts.

Ergonomics and Comfort: A Perfect Balance

I was impressed by how comfortable I found myself while gaming on the BenQ XL2546K. The ergonomic design of the monitor allowed me to position it at the perfect angle, reducing eye strain and fatigue. The display itself is also designed to be highly adjustable, with a range of tilt, height, and swivel options.

Colors: A Cooler White Point and Excellent Brightness

One of my initial concerns about TN panels was their tendency to produce a cooler white point. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the BenQ XL2546K's performance in this area. The display produces a perfectly balanced white point around 6500 Kelvin, which is essential for accurate color representation.

The Benq Difference: A Closer Look at Colors and Brightness

When compared to other gaming monitors like the 360Hz IPS from Asus, I was impressed by how similar the colors looked on the BenQ XL2546K. The display's brightness topping out at around 350 nits is also noteworthy, as it allows for a more immersive viewing experience. After making some small tweaks in the settings, I was able to achieve a really similar looking image compared to the 360Hz IPS.

TN Gaming Monitors: Still Relevant Despite Advancements

As TN gaming monitors become increasingly outdated, it's clear that they still have their place in the market. The BenQ XL2546K is a prime example of this, offering excellent performance and ergonomics despite its reliance on an older panel technology.

The Top Tier Esports Gaming Monitor: A Must-Have for Serious Gamers

If you're looking for the best esports gaming monitor available, look no further than the BenQ XL2546K. Its unique blend of features, including Dayak Plus motion blur reduction and a high refresh rate, make it an excellent choice for serious gamers. While it may not have 360Hz or IPS, its performance in competitive games is unmatched.

The UFO Motion Tests: A Clear Advantage for Dayak Plus

In the ufo motion tests, I was impressed by how well the BenQ XL2546K performed. The display's Dayak Plus technology provided a clear and distinct image that left me wondering if there was any difference between 240Hz and 360Hz. While this may not be the case for everyone, it's definitely worth considering if you're looking for a top-tier esports gaming monitor.

The Direct Plus Test: A Closer Look at Motion Blur Reduction

In the direct plus test, I saw how effectively Dayak Plus reduced motion blur in competitive games. The display provided a clear and distinct image that made opponents seem almost like they had a glowing outline around them. While this may sound gimmicky, it's an excellent example of Dayak Plus' ability to enhance gaming performance.

Conclusion

The BenQ XL2546K is an exceptional gaming monitor that offers excellent performance, ergonomics, and features. Its unique blend of technologies, including Dayak Plus motion blur reduction, make it a must-have for serious gamers. While some may bemoan the lack of 360Hz or IPS, I argue that this monitor's focus on competitive games is exactly what sets it apart from its competitors.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: endespite how fast ips gaming monitors have become a lot of esports enthusiasts and pro gamers are still choosing this as their first preference and the more that i used it the more i began to understand why this is the benq xl 2546k and it has the best motion blur reduction technology that i've ever seen on a gaming monitor i'm not kidding when i say that this thing has near perfect motion clarity but it does have some drawbacks it does still use a tn panel which is something that i said i'd never go back to after using fast ips alternatives and it is only 1080p so when we have options like 360hz ips and 240hz 1440p is this thing really still worth buying well spoiler alert the answer is yes but to understand why we're going to need to take a closer look on the surface zowie gaming monitors are still a fair bit off in terms of visual design compared to brands like lg the xl 2546k looks simple clean minimal but it does have very thick bezels and is entirely plastic so design wise it's pretty simple not flashy but i don't think that'll bother many people who are seriously interested in it personally i'd much prefer this over a ton of rgb or gamery logos as for ergonomics though they are absolutely brilliant i now know exactly why the xaoi xl series have been the tournament standard in esports for so long not only do you have a significant amount of adjustability allowing the display to be low and tilted or raised quite high you even have measurement guides to indicate the precise height so it's always the same there is also a small handle at the top of the stand as well which is great for portability but probably won't see much use from most of you but i do really appreciate the hidden headphone hanger that flips out from the left side the base of the stand is also quite small which is super helpful if you game with the monitor really close like myself and this is one of the particular features of the xl2546k versus the 2546s and other gaming monitors out there the stand has also been intentionally designed so that it can be used offset like this allowing for a really close but still comfortable mouse and keyboard position it looks really weird at first if you're not familiar with this kind of positioning but this is actually my preferred way to use this monitor it does also come with barn doors for the left and right side to reduce monitor glare from incoming light potentially useful if you game in a bright room or for tournament use but otherwise not really necessary but let's talk about why you should really be interested in this monitor and it's because of zowie's motion blur reduction technology called dynamic accuracy or dayak for short and if you're skeptical of this being any good then you 100 have the right to because most uh gaming monitor motion blur reduction technologies are just not that good they usually come with the big compromise of really low monitor brightness or they have really distracting artifacts that make that setting just completely pointless so let's just take a quick preview of what we're working with here using the moving ufo test from blurbusters.com we can visibly represent how much motion blur you can expect from a moving image on a given display as a reference here's the 360hz ips monitor from asus the pg259qn basically the fastest ips monitor that you can buy right now then we have a really solid 240hz ips option from msi that's a lot more affordable and then we have the benq xl2546k with diac plus in full force the difference is seriously unbelievable and this is as close to the true reference image of the moving ufo that i've ever seen you can now see the separation in the ufo lights whereas with the ips displays it kind of just blurs into one and then same with the aliens three eyeballs where you can even discern the individual pupils as for toggling dayak plus on or off i'd recommend switching it to the highest setting which is premium it does have slightly more overshoot compared to the high setting although both diac plus modes are noticeably clearer than having it switched off the one big downside of diac plus though is that it does not work with g-sync or freesync which are otherwise supported on this monitor with diac off so if screen tearing does bother you you might want to switch dayak off for those slower games personally i never really noticed screen tearing above 200 frames per second but it is one of the small compromises of dayak and i wish it was supported so the way that dayak works is with backlight strobing that is between frame refreshes the backlight is completely turned off and this is a pretty typical motion blur reduction method and nothing that we haven't seen before the difference in my experience though is that dayak is the first implementation of this that i'd actually use again the monitor brightness was not lowered at all and i did not notice any monitor artifacts i'll also note that the backlight strobing is not visible to the human eye and i did not experience any eye strain or headaches or negative effects from it even after long periods of gaming on this display now in terms of colors i didn't expect much being a tn panel and that's exactly what i was greeted with out of the box most notably the white point was quite a bit on the cooler side however after a bit of tweaking and calibration which is quite easy to do just through the monitor settings i was able to get a really solid looking image which was plenty bright with a perfect white point right around 6 500 kelvin again diac plus did not affect the brightness of the display at all topping out at around 350 nits in the end here are the settings that i used with these i was able to get a really similar looking image compared to the 360hz ips from asus and i seriously did not expect to be saying that but after those few small tweaks in the settings the display looks excellent i even went back and viewed some of my own content which i know exactly what the colors should look like there and the color grades looked exactly as i remembered so here's the thing tn gaming monitors are definitely becoming outdated moving forward but if there's still one reason to buy a tn gaming monitor it's the xl2546k and if you don't take my word for it that's fine just know that the 2546 and its variants are the most popular gaming monitor choice among cs go valerian and rainbow six siege pro players the big question though what's better when it comes to a top tier esports display the best motion clarity that you can get or a higher 360hz refresh rate well it's a tough one to answer for sure but for what it's worth i've already mentioned in my review of the 360hz pg259qn that i can't consistently tell the difference between 240hz and 360hz however you can at least notice a slight benefit in-game from dayak plus opponents in valorem for example move almost as if they have a clear glowing outline around them and overall clarity just looks a touch better and one thing absolutely worth adding here is that although the ufo motion tests are clearly in the benq's favor and the direct plus is just a clear step forward in terms of motion clarity it's not like those ips displays are a blurry mess as soon as you start moving they are still totally suitable for competitive use and again many pro players do use them personally i would love to see benq offer a 360hz ips model with the same perfectly tuned diak plus backlight strobing i think that would be an absolute god-tier monitor and i also think that then the difference between 240 and 360hz would be a bit clearer to see for now i'll just say that this is absolutely a top tier esports gaming monitor that's still worth considering despite it not having 360hz or ips the colors are still excellent when tuned correctly the ergonomics are pretty much as good as it gets and as far as i'm concerned a diet plus here is just unbeatable as i mentioned there definitely are some backlight strobing alternatives out there that do come close but they either don't run at 240 hertz they lower the brightness too low to be usable or the artifacting is just way too distracting so there it is the most popular esports gaming monitor that you can buy right now and clearly for very good reason if you're interested in picking this one up i will have it linked down below in the description as always a huge thanks for watching and i will see you all in the next onedespite how fast ips gaming monitors have become a lot of esports enthusiasts and pro gamers are still choosing this as their first preference and the more that i used it the more i began to understand why this is the benq xl 2546k and it has the best motion blur reduction technology that i've ever seen on a gaming monitor i'm not kidding when i say that this thing has near perfect motion clarity but it does have some drawbacks it does still use a tn panel which is something that i said i'd never go back to after using fast ips alternatives and it is only 1080p so when we have options like 360hz ips and 240hz 1440p is this thing really still worth buying well spoiler alert the answer is yes but to understand why we're going to need to take a closer look on the surface zowie gaming monitors are still a fair bit off in terms of visual design compared to brands like lg the xl 2546k looks simple clean minimal but it does have very thick bezels and is entirely plastic so design wise it's pretty simple not flashy but i don't think that'll bother many people who are seriously interested in it personally i'd much prefer this over a ton of rgb or gamery logos as for ergonomics though they are absolutely brilliant i now know exactly why the xaoi xl series have been the tournament standard in esports for so long not only do you have a significant amount of adjustability allowing the display to be low and tilted or raised quite high you even have measurement guides to indicate the precise height so it's always the same there is also a small handle at the top of the stand as well which is great for portability but probably won't see much use from most of you but i do really appreciate the hidden headphone hanger that flips out from the left side the base of the stand is also quite small which is super helpful if you game with the monitor really close like myself and this is one of the particular features of the xl2546k versus the 2546s and other gaming monitors out there the stand has also been intentionally designed so that it can be used offset like this allowing for a really close but still comfortable mouse and keyboard position it looks really weird at first if you're not familiar with this kind of positioning but this is actually my preferred way to use this monitor it does also come with barn doors for the left and right side to reduce monitor glare from incoming light potentially useful if you game in a bright room or for tournament use but otherwise not really necessary but let's talk about why you should really be interested in this monitor and it's because of zowie's motion blur reduction technology called dynamic accuracy or dayak for short and if you're skeptical of this being any good then you 100 have the right to because most uh gaming monitor motion blur reduction technologies are just not that good they usually come with the big compromise of really low monitor brightness or they have really distracting artifacts that make that setting just completely pointless so let's just take a quick preview of what we're working with here using the moving ufo test from blurbusters.com we can visibly represent how much motion blur you can expect from a moving image on a given display as a reference here's the 360hz ips monitor from asus the pg259qn basically the fastest ips monitor that you can buy right now then we have a really solid 240hz ips option from msi that's a lot more affordable and then we have the benq xl2546k with diac plus in full force the difference is seriously unbelievable and this is as close to the true reference image of the moving ufo that i've ever seen you can now see the separation in the ufo lights whereas with the ips displays it kind of just blurs into one and then same with the aliens three eyeballs where you can even discern the individual pupils as for toggling dayak plus on or off i'd recommend switching it to the highest setting which is premium it does have slightly more overshoot compared to the high setting although both diac plus modes are noticeably clearer than having it switched off the one big downside of diac plus though is that it does not work with g-sync or freesync which are otherwise supported on this monitor with diac off so if screen tearing does bother you you might want to switch dayak off for those slower games personally i never really noticed screen tearing above 200 frames per second but it is one of the small compromises of dayak and i wish it was supported so the way that dayak works is with backlight strobing that is between frame refreshes the backlight is completely turned off and this is a pretty typical motion blur reduction method and nothing that we haven't seen before the difference in my experience though is that dayak is the first implementation of this that i'd actually use again the monitor brightness was not lowered at all and i did not notice any monitor artifacts i'll also note that the backlight strobing is not visible to the human eye and i did not experience any eye strain or headaches or negative effects from it even after long periods of gaming on this display now in terms of colors i didn't expect much being a tn panel and that's exactly what i was greeted with out of the box most notably the white point was quite a bit on the cooler side however after a bit of tweaking and calibration which is quite easy to do just through the monitor settings i was able to get a really solid looking image which was plenty bright with a perfect white point right around 6 500 kelvin again diac plus did not affect the brightness of the display at all topping out at around 350 nits in the end here are the settings that i used with these i was able to get a really similar looking image compared to the 360hz ips from asus and i seriously did not expect to be saying that but after those few small tweaks in the settings the display looks excellent i even went back and viewed some of my own content which i know exactly what the colors should look like there and the color grades looked exactly as i remembered so here's the thing tn gaming monitors are definitely becoming outdated moving forward but if there's still one reason to buy a tn gaming monitor it's the xl2546k and if you don't take my word for it that's fine just know that the 2546 and its variants are the most popular gaming monitor choice among cs go valerian and rainbow six siege pro players the big question though what's better when it comes to a top tier esports display the best motion clarity that you can get or a higher 360hz refresh rate well it's a tough one to answer for sure but for what it's worth i've already mentioned in my review of the 360hz pg259qn that i can't consistently tell the difference between 240hz and 360hz however you can at least notice a slight benefit in-game from dayak plus opponents in valorem for example move almost as if they have a clear glowing outline around them and overall clarity just looks a touch better and one thing absolutely worth adding here is that although the ufo motion tests are clearly in the benq's favor and the direct plus is just a clear step forward in terms of motion clarity it's not like those ips displays are a blurry mess as soon as you start moving they are still totally suitable for competitive use and again many pro players do use them personally i would love to see benq offer a 360hz ips model with the same perfectly tuned diak plus backlight strobing i think that would be an absolute god-tier monitor and i also think that then the difference between 240 and 360hz would be a bit clearer to see for now i'll just say that this is absolutely a top tier esports gaming monitor that's still worth considering despite it not having 360hz or ips the colors are still excellent when tuned correctly the ergonomics are pretty much as good as it gets and as far as i'm concerned a diet plus here is just unbeatable as i mentioned there definitely are some backlight strobing alternatives out there that do come close but they either don't run at 240 hertz they lower the brightness too low to be usable or the artifacting is just way too distracting so there it is the most popular esports gaming monitor that you can buy right now and clearly for very good reason if you're interested in picking this one up i will have it linked down below in the description as always a huge thanks for watching and i will see you all in the next one\n"