 This isn't the first time that I've checked out a monitor with AMD FreeSync, and you can watch my video about the LG 34UM67 up in the little eye thing. But, it might be the first FreeSync monitor to impress me with its variable refresh rate technology, since it mostly avoids a significant pitfall that the other one didn't. This is the BenQ XL2730Z. The AMD gamer's answer to the critically acclaimed ASUS ROG Swift PG278Q that I declared to be the best gaming monitor yet in August of last year. [♪ music playing and title screen music playing. FreshBooks is the online accounting tool for small businesses whose flexibility and ease of use makes you feel like a boss. Click my face to learn more. Let's start the video with something BenQ hasn't done as well as ASUS. The ID, or industrial design, of the XL2730Z. Instead of glowing red rings on the base and a stunningly slim bezel, BenQ has taken the, yo, my eyes are up here approach with a plain, completely uninteresting look. But hey, maybe that works for them since you won't be giving up anything as far as actual features are concerned. Front and center is the 144Hz 2560x1440 16x9 8-bit TN panel, boasting 1 millisecond gray-to-gray response times, basically no input lag, and what's this? 72% NTSC color gamut support, so about equal to sRGB, not too shabby. But yes, it turns out that much like the ROG Swift, which likely uses the same or a very similar panel, this is not your granddaddy's TN with rubbish color accuracy, nausea-inducing color and contrast shift, and a washed-out low-contrast overall appearance. And while I wouldn't recommend it for any professional photo editing, anyone coming from an older or less expensive commodity-grade monitor is going to be plenty impressed. More impressive stuff, even though you don't have to use it thanks to the VESA-compliant holes at the back, the stand features all the usual adjustments, tilt, swivel, height, and even pivot, and has some unusual stuff like a spot to put the puck controller that you can use to navigate the on-screen menu, a handle for carrying it to and from LAN events, both headphone and microphone audio jacks, and even, look at that, a little headphone holder. Right under that bad boy are two of the USB 3.0 ports that run off the built-in powered hub, then around the bottom we find the other two of those along with a metric whacked ton of other I.O. We've got the uplink for the USB hub, VGA, I'm seriously VGA, anyway, display port, dual HDMI inputs, one of which is HDMI 2.0, dual-link DVI, the connector for the little controller puck, and the microphone pass-through. You won't actually need a pass-through for your headphones since your audio will actually come over HDMI or display port from your video card. And that display port port, that's the one you're gonna want to use primarily if you're a PC gamer, because if you want to take advantage of the big feature of the XL2730Z, AMD's FreeSync variable refresh rate technology, that is the input that supports it for now. So let's talk about FreeSync. Just like Nvidia's G-Sync, it allows the graphics card to work in tandem with the monitor to only update the image on the display once a new frame has been rendered by the GPU. This is to eliminate stuttering and tearing in the on-screen animations as frame rates swing all over the place during a typical gaming session. But, and this was the issue I had with the 34UM67, while AMD in theory supports anywhere from 9 to 240Hz refresh rates to match the frames that the video card is outputting per second, modern LCD panels need to be refreshed more often than 9 times per second, or the image will actually start to fade in between frames being drawn, causing an unpleasant flickering. Nvidia handles this with a strategic frame doubling or even tripling strategy that they've implemented consistently on their certified displays, but on the FreeSync side, it's been left up to monitor makers to determine how low they can go. So with my last monitor, it actually had an effective variable refresh rate window with butter smooth animations of only 48 to 75Hz, a window that one could easily exceed on both sides in a single gaming session. But what about exceeding the range of the window then? Well, AMD handles this by allowing you to either enable traditional V-Sync and choose to deal with some lag when frame rates are high, although it's fairly minor on a high refresh rate display like this one outside of the window, or deal with some tearing by disabling V-Sync altogether, something Nvidia does not give their users the option to choose. But enough of this theory stuff, what's it like to game on the thing? Well, I started by fine-tuning the image quality settings, because as much as BenQ's black equalizer feature allows you to see bad guys hidden in shadows, it really does look like butt, and I wish they wouldn't enable it by default, since it's only really relevant for competitive play and not the kind of sightseeing gaming that I typically do. And then when I was done with that, I fired up some games. Overall impressions? Not too shabby. FreeSync works as expected, noticeably smoothing animations regardless of frame rates, so check out the ugly mini tears in this streetlamp post in Grand Theft Auto V without FreeSync, and then check it out again with FreeSync. And the best thing about it is that it doesn't disappoint the way that it did with the LG UltraWide, thanks to the much wider variable refresh rate window. So the 2730Z actually handles everything from 40 to 144Hz, which if you tweak your graphical settings correctly, should be plenty of room to stay inside. But what if you do dip below that 40 FPS? What I tried to do was create a scenario with the R9 290X as well as the GeForce GTX 970, where I'd be floating in that 30-ish FPS range just to see how they both felt in Grand Theft Auto V, and while I don't necessarily agree with Scott at Tech Report's assessment that the shift isn't that noticeable or that there isn't much of a difference, what I do think is that any PC gamer who is gaming on a 144Hz display at that kind of a frame rate should be changing the settings in the game in order to get the best out of their equipment anyway, because neither G-Sync nor FreeSync are able to maintain their, wow, the animation is still smooth even though I dipped below 60 FPS effect below around 45 FPS anyway. So it's basically a moot point, but Nvidia does seem to handle it a little bit better. So with that said, even though I could create situations where the gaming experience wasn't as ideal or quite as good as G-Sync, thanks to the large window and the configurability of PC games, the XL2730Z looked great to me as a PC gamer using variable refresh on an AMD graphics card, but there are some users who might not be as thrilled with the monitor. It does have a touch more motion blur compared to the RG Swift, again, not a closed ecosystem, therefore harder to control things like pixel timing, blipity-bloop, and user Falcontyne from overclock.net points out that because BenQ didn't correctly implement single-stroke backlight modulation at some refresh rates, very notably 60 Hz, motion blur reduction, which is the strobing backlight, which doesn't work alongside FreeSync, and therefore I would typically leave off on a PC anyway, won't work correctly on a game console, a bit of a bummer if you wanted this as a multi-purpose display thanks to its plethora of inputs. Which leaves just the bottom line, is it worth it? Wow. If it was the same price as my new favorite gaming monitor, the XB270HU, an IPS 144 Hz G-Sync monitor, I would say no. But at $200 cheaper, it's really darn competitive. So that's pretty much it, thanks for watching guys. If this video sucked, I think you know what to do. But if it was awesome, get subscribed, hit that like button, or even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop at Amazon, buying a cool t-shirt like the one I'm wearing, or with even a direct monthly contribution. Now that you're done doing all of that stuff, you're probably wondering what to watch next, so click that little button in the top right corner to check out this sweet video we uploaded recently, where I, without giving too many spoilers, significantly improved the performance of a MacBook by dipping it in water.