 Now if you guys have watched my channel for a while, it's possible you already know that the BenQ 2410T was actually my favorite first generation 3D monitor. That is, by first generation I don't mean first generation because the first generation was that ViewSonic one and that Samsung one, both of which were 22 inches which is not big enough and not high res enough for a proper gaming experience these days. But by first generation I mean that went with the NVIDIA 3D Vision V1 glasses. Now I am very excited in that case today to have a look at the BenQ 2420T. So this is the successor to the 2410T and what it does is it brings a couple of, wow that's really light, a couple of interesting new features into the mix and the biggest one of those is of course LightBoost. So it is fully compatible with NVIDIA's LightBoost technology which basically modulates the backlight of the LCD. Oh, okay, I think I opened it up upside down. You can clearly see all the accessories here were piled in such a way as they would be easily taken out. So why don't we go one by one. What it does is it modulates the backlight in order to create better separation between the left and the right image and also to reduce the amount of eye fatigue and finally, last but not least, to boost the amount of light that makes it to your eye. It worked quite well on the ASUS 27 inch that I tried so far but I am very, very excited to see this one. So what the heck is this? BenQ Gaming is in the details. It's a dust cover. That is certainly a detail. I've never seen a dust cover included with a monitor before. Okay, we've got the base station. It's right here. So that goes in there. Fairly solid looking pieces so far. We've got, ah, this is cool. So this is called the S-switch. So the S-switch is for navigating between a few different profiles. So what you can do is you can throw a couple of different profiles on the monitor with respect to, you know, your brightness, your contrast, however you want to have it set up and then you can use that switch instead of navigating through the clumsy on-screen menus you can use this switch to quickly switch between your different profiles. So if you have a certain profile that's good for one kind of game but not as good for another kind you can switch to it like that and then you can store up to three profiles. Another thing that's kind of cool about it as well is the fact that you can download professional gamer profiles. I shouldn't say professional gamers. They are professional gamers. So Heat On and Spawn in particular have profiles you can download and you can use their exact settings and yeah, we've got some distractions here. So let me get these all kind of unwrapped and I'll get the monitor assembled and we'll have a closer look at it. So before I mount the monitor onto the stand I just want to have a quick look at what we've got included in terms of inputs. So we've got a very wide variety including DisplayPort, VGA DVI. You're going to want to use this one for 3D predominantly although I guess DisplayPort might also work for 120Hz. Two HDMI's, a USB for the built-in hub and then a USB port that you can plug something into and this guy is for that S switch which was the thing for, there's your power, for quickly changing profiles. So we're going to go ahead and mount this on here. I also want to talk about some of the other unique features of this monitor before we actually fire it up because I'm really excited to test this one out. So some of the other unique features are there, all new black equalizers so BenQ has added some image processing to this monitor that you know how a lot of the time whenever you have a shadow in a game you're almost tempted to turn shadows off because anything with any kind of shade, the shadows aren't soft enough so you lose all of the detail in there. So BenQ has, according to what they're saying, made it so that shadows are going to lose less of the details but black will still be black because a lot of the time the only way to combat that is by turning gamma way up which means you lose a lot of the color fidelity so you're either losing image fidelity or you're losing color fidelity one way or the other. This is also an interesting one so display mode, 17 inch, 19 inch, 19 inch wide, 21.5 inch wide, 22 wide and 23 wide. I don't understand the point so guys please post in the comments if you understand why you would want to quickly be able to virtualize a smaller monitor than the one that you actually purchased. Please let me know why you would want to do that. It includes smart scaling for fine tuning these different picture sizes. I mean the one scenario I can think of where it might make sense is something like Starcraft 1 where there's only one resolution that it really looks good at and otherwise it's going to look stupid so you might want to quickly scale your monitor to be a 19 inch for example you know to play Starcraft 1 but that's the only scenario I can think of. Let me know if you can think of something else. In terms of included accessories and peripherals we've got a DVI cable, a VGA cable, a USB cable for the built in hub, we've got a power connector and then let's go ahead and get this hooked up here. So let's have a look at the overall aesthetic of the monitor before we get into the performance. There's some pretty cool things. For example the on screen display is probably the smartest and easiest to navigate one that I've yet encountered. You just use these touch buttons here and you go and see it gives you a little context dependent menu so that's back. You might want to go picture mode. Oh right we need to do that. Yes. Oh I'm in 3D so it's not letting me navigate right now. But it's very intuitive. See how depending on the context the functionality of the buttons changes. All touch sensitive and very easy to use. You can also however use this guy right here to scroll between things and that makes life once again even a little bit easier. So we're going to just exit out of that. So industrial design. I mean BenQ on the 2410 I thought they did a great job on this one. They've done pretty much exactly the same job. Nice thin bezel. Very thin monitor. Guys this is LED backlit so actually I'm fairly sure it's LED backlit. Hold on. Yeah it's LED backlit so that means that you've got better power consumption in addition to actually surprisingly good backlight bleed. Check this out. Comes with a headphone. Whoops. A headphone hanger on the back so you can hang up your headphones behind your monitor if you're not using them. Yeah there's no. Oh look there is. There's swivel. There's height adjust. There's tilt. And nope you don't have any pivot. So it's got pretty much your basic functionality. Now I want to talk about the monitor itself. So it does use a matte screen which many of you do find preferable personally. I find that to be very preferable and in terms of the 3D performance it is outstanding. So you see how bright areas like this look. Part of that is because of light boost technology. So as soon as I look through I wonder if you look through the glasses. So if you look through the glasses you'll see more like the brightness that I'm seeing which is significantly brighter than actually you know what I bet you can also see if you look through the glasses. So that's significantly brighter than 3D Vision V1. I actually want you here let's get a little bit closer and let's look at our character here. So what I want you guys to look for any separation or I want you to look for any ghosting of the right image. You're looking through the left eye right now and I'm willing to bet you can find almost none. And I call it ghosting but that's more colloquial. What I really mean is crosstalk or crossover. So what light boost has done in addition to dramatically increasing the brightness is it has given significantly less noise between one image, the image you're supposed to be seeing and the image that you do see or rather the images because that's how it's been a lot of the time in the past for me anyway. So in something like Trine 2 which is absolutely beautiful in 3D I can play for an extended period of time on 3D Vision 2. I know because I've done it in the past. However with 3D Vision 1 I get a headache after about 15 minutes. It used to be on 3D Vision 1 I would do just fine with a DLP projector but as soon as I went over to an LCD because of the stereo crosstalk seeing the left image in my right eye and vice versa I just wasn't able to really use it past a little while. Like it's cool and it's fun and it's great but it would give me a headache after a while. So remember guys light boost is compatible with 3D Vision V1 glasses. Looks exactly the same through the V1 glasses as it does through the V2's. The benefit of the V2 glasses is that they do have the bigger frames so you are less likely to see sort of you know black cut off instead of just the screen that you're looking at although personally I don't find the V1's that bothersome. I've never actually demoed them side by side like this before. So I think that pretty much covers it. Thank you for checking out my overview of the BenQ 2420. So far out of the light boost compatible 3D Vision 2 ready monitors that I've tried it is I'd say a worthy competitor. I don't think I can necessarily declare it to be the winner because unlike the 2410 which was obviously better than its competition which had things like glossy screens, sort of critical design, design you know errors in judgment in my opinion, the ASUS 27 inch that I've tried already is very good as well. So right now without trying them side by side I'd say it's about a for all intents and purposes equal. Both of them provide an excellent gaming experience with very little stereo crosstalk so it's going to come down to whether you want a 24 inch or a 27 inch between those two right now. Like all 3D ready 120 hertz monitors you do have less overall color depth available to you because there is less processing going on with the image. So what that means is that, okay I'm not going to be able to get back to the Windows desktop, it means you're going to have less rich colors overall. This is a byproduct of trying to make such a fast panel with such quickly switching pixels. So you have to decide do you want the lightning fast gaming performance, do you want 120 hertz, remember 120 hertz is a benefit whether you're running 3D or not because you do have a smoother overall experience or do you prefer rich colors in which case you're going to want to go with an IPS or a VA or a PLS type panel. So thank you for checking out this unboxing and first look at the BenQ 2420T. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer