BenQ GW2480 Review: Honest 24-Inch IPS Office Monitor

Panel type debates are fun and all, but they don't pay the bills. What actually matters is whether a monitor does its job without annoying you, and whether the money you spent on it was well spent. The BenQ GW2480 60.5 cm is a 24-inch 1080p IPS monitor aimed squarely at office workers, students, and anyone who just needs a decent screen without drama. No HDR marketing theatre, no 240Hz nonsense you'll never use. Just a sensible screen at a sensible price. The question is whether it's genuinely good value or just inoffensive.

With nearly 15,000 owner reviews averaging ★★★★½ (4.6), this isn't a monitor flying under the radar. That's a serious amount of real-world feedback, and the pattern across those reviews is consistent enough to tell a clear story. BenQ has been pushing its Eye-Care credentials hard on this one, and the specs back up some of that claim. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

This review pulls from the spec sheet, published display measurements from credible sources, and what thousands of actual owners report day to day. No lab bench, no colorimeter session, no pretending we've had this on a desk for three weeks. Just honest analysis of what the data says.

Connectivity is decent for the price bracket. You get one HDMI 1.4 port, one DisplayPort 1.2, and one VGA input (yes, VGA, for legacy kit). There's a headphone jack and built-in speakers, which is a nice touch for office use. No USB hub, which is a shame, but not a dealbreaker at this price. The stand offers tilt adjustment only, so if you need height or pivot, you'll want a VESA arm (100x100mm mount is supported).

Brightness is rated at 250 cd/m2, contrast ratio is specified at 1000:1, and colour coverage is quoted as covering the sRGB colour space. The monitor carries BenQ's Eye-Care certifications including flicker-free backlighting and a low blue light mode. Power consumption sits at around 19W typical, which is genuinely low for a 24-inch panel. Here's the full spec breakdown:

The trade-off with IPS versus VA is contrast. VA panels typically deliver native contrast ratios in the 3000:1 to 4000:1 range, which makes blacks look genuinely dark. IPS panels, including this one, sit around 1000:1 native contrast, which means blacks look more like very dark grey in a dim room. This is a known characteristic of IPS technology, not a flaw specific to the GW2480. IPS panels trade deep blacks for better colour consistency and viewing angles, and for most office and content consumption use cases, that's the right trade. If you're watching a lot of dark films in a dark room, VA would suit you better. But that's not really who this monitor is aimed at.

IPS glow is worth mentioning. It's that faint brightening you see in the corners of an IPS panel when displaying dark content, caused by light leaking through the liquid crystal layer. The GW2480 isn't immune to this. Owner reviews mention it occasionally, particularly in dark-room use. But it's not unusually bad for the price bracket, and in normal office lighting conditions you simply won't notice it. The matte anti-glare coating helps in bright environments, and for its intended use case, the panel technology is entirely appropriate.

The matte anti-glare coating is a practical win. Glossy screens look punchy in a showroom but become mirrors in a bright office or near a window. The GW2480's matte coating handles ambient light well, which is one reason it gets recommended so often for office environments. Brightness uniformity is generally decent across the panel, though like most IPS monitors in this price range, there can be minor variation at the edges. Nothing that would bother you in normal use.

The 250 cd/m2 peak brightness is adequate for most indoor environments. It's not going to cut through strong direct sunlight, but at a normal office desk it's fine. BenQ's Brightness Intelligence technology, which automatically adjusts brightness based on ambient light, is included and owners seem to find it genuinely useful rather than gimmicky. The low blue light filter (BenQ calls it Low Blue Light Plus) reduces blue light emission to reduce eye strain during long sessions. Whether you believe the eye-strain science or not, the filter is there and adjustable, and it doesn't wreck colour accuracy as badly as some implementations do.

For the intended audience, 60Hz is absolutely fine. Office work, web browsing, video calls, document editing, even watching Netflix or YouTube, none of these need 144Hz. The human eye doesn't need 144 frames per second to read a spreadsheet. What matters for productivity use is colour accuracy, comfortable brightness, and a panel that doesn't cause eye strain over a full working day. The GW2480 focuses on those things instead of chasing a refresh rate number it has no business chasing.

The lack of adaptive sync means you might see occasional screen tearing if you do play games on this monitor. At 60Hz with a GPU that can push well above 60fps in lighter titles, tearing can be visible. The fix is either to cap your frame rate at 60fps in your game settings or enable V-Sync, which introduces a small amount of input lag but eliminates tearing. Not ideal for fast-paced gaming, but entirely manageable for casual play. Just don't buy this expecting a gaming monitor. It isn't one.

In practical terms, this means the monitor is perfectly fine for everyday use and casual gaming, but it will show motion blur in fast-paced titles. Dark scenes with fast movement can exhibit trailing. This is a consequence of both the 60Hz refresh rate and the IPS response time, and it's not something you can tune away with an overdrive setting (the GW2480 doesn't offer overdrive adjustment). If you're playing competitive shooters or fast-paced action games, the motion performance will frustrate you. For slower-paced games, strategy titles, RPGs, or casual play, it's absolutely acceptable.

What the GW2480 does well in the motion department is avoiding the inverse ghosting (or overshoot) that plagues some budget monitors with aggressive overdrive settings. Because there's no overdrive to misconfigure, you don't get bright halos trailing behind moving objects. The motion isn't the fastest, but it's clean. Owners who use this for light gaming report it as "fine for casual use" rather than a problem, which is an honest assessment of what 5ms at 60Hz delivers. Manage your expectations and you won't be disappointed.

Delta-E, which measures colour accuracy (lower is better, with under 2 considered good and under 1 considered excellent), comes in at around 1.5 to 2.5 from factory on units measured by reviewers. That's decent for a budget monitor. It's not calibrated to professional standards out of the box, but it's not wildly inaccurate either. For graphic design or print production work where colour accuracy is critical, you'd want a proper factory-calibrated display with a Delta-E report. But for general office use, photo browsing, or casual creative work, the GW2480's colour accuracy is more than acceptable.

DCI-P3 coverage is not a focus here, and BenQ doesn't make claims about it. The GW2480 is an sRGB monitor, full stop. If you need wide colour gamut coverage for video production or HDR content creation, this isn't your tool. But for its target audience, sRGB coverage is exactly what matters. The colour modes BenQ includes (sRGB, Low Blue Light, various preset modes) are genuinely useful rather than just menu filler. The BenQ specification page confirms the colour coverage claims, and real-world measurements broadly support them.

The GW2480 peaks at 250 cd/m2, which wouldn't even qualify for DisplayHDR 400. Rather than pretend otherwise, BenQ just doesn't mention HDR at all. This is the right call. True HDR requires peak brightness of at least 600 nits with local dimming, or the kind of per-pixel control you get with OLED. Neither is possible at this price point. Any monitor under roughly £155.18 that claims meaningful HDR is almost certainly overstating the case.

So for HDR content, the GW2480 will tone-map HDR signals to its SDR output range, which is standard behaviour. It won't look dramatically different from SDR content. If you watch a lot of HDR films and care about that experience, you need a different monitor entirely. For the office worker, student, or general user this monitor targets, the absence of HDR is not a loss. It's just an honest omission.

Peak brightness at 250 cd/m2 is adequate for most indoor use. Offices with controlled lighting, home desks away from windows, and general indoor environments won't push this monitor to its limits. In a bright room with sunlight coming in from the side, you might find yourself wishing for more headroom. The matte coating helps considerably with reflections, but it can't compensate for insufficient brightness in extremely bright conditions. Owners working in well-lit offices report no issues with brightness, which suggests 250 cd/m2 is sufficient for the target environment.

Brightness uniformity is generally good across the panel, with most tested units showing variation of around 10 to 15% from centre to corner. That's normal for IPS panels in this price range and won't be noticeable in everyday use. The backlight is flicker-free at all brightness levels, which is one of the GW2480's genuine selling points. Many budget monitors use PWM (pulse-width modulation) dimming, which flickers the backlight rapidly to reduce brightness. This can cause eye strain and headaches in sensitive users. The GW2480 avoids this entirely with DC dimming, and that's a real practical benefit for long working sessions.

The good news is that VESA mounting is supported at the standard 100x100mm pattern, so buying a decent monitor arm solves the problem entirely. A basic single-arm mount costs around £20 to £30 and gives you full height, tilt, swivel, and even pivot adjustment. Many owners in the reviews mention going straight to a VESA arm and not bothering with the stock stand. If you're planning to do that anyway, the stand limitation is irrelevant. If you want a monitor that works well out of the box without extra purchases, it's worth knowing upfront.

Build quality is solid for the price. The plastic feels decent rather than premium, but it doesn't flex or creak. The base has a reasonably small footprint, which helps on cluttered desks. The bezels are slim on three sides with a slightly thicker bottom bezel, which is standard for this class of monitor. The OSD (on-screen display) controls are physical buttons on the underside of the right edge, which is a slightly fiddly design but functional once you're used to it. Overall build quality matches the price point without embarrassing itself. Owners rarely complain about the physical build, which is usually a good sign.

• 1x HDMI 1.4 (supports up to 1080p at 60Hz)
• 1x DisplayPort 1.2 (supports up to 1080p at 60Hz)
• 1x VGA (D-Sub, for legacy systems)
• 1x 3.5mm headphone output
• 2x 1W built-in speakers

The inclusion of VGA will raise eyebrows in 2026, but it's actually useful for connecting older office machines, thin clients, or legacy hardware that doesn't have HDMI or DisplayPort. In a corporate environment, this matters more than you'd think. The combination of HDMI and DisplayPort covers modern devices, and both support 1080p at 60Hz without issue. DisplayPort 1.2 is more than adequate for 1080p 60Hz, and the HDMI 1.4 port handles everything from laptops to consoles to streaming sticks.

There's no USB-C, no USB hub, and no Thunderbolt. At this price point, that's expected rather than disappointing. USB-C monitors with power delivery start at a significantly higher price bracket. If you need to charge a laptop through your monitor or connect with a single cable, you're shopping in the wrong category. The built-in speakers are 1W each, which is genuinely low power, and owners describe them as "fine for the occasional video call" rather than something you'd use for music. They're there, they work, they're not impressive. The headphone jack is a more useful feature for most people.

Cable management is basic. There's a small clip on the back of the stand to route cables, which helps keep the desk tidy. No dedicated cable channel, but it's better than nothing. The power supply is internal, so there's no external power brick to deal with, which is a small but genuine quality-of-life win.

The LG 24MK430H is closer in price and offers FreeSync support, making it more attractive for casual gaming. It uses an IPS panel too, with similar colour coverage. The GW2480 edges it out on Eye-Care features and has a slightly more refined OSD, but the LG's adaptive sync is a meaningful differentiator if you play any games at all. For pure office use, the BenQ's Eye-Care credentials and flicker-free backlight are compelling. For mixed use, the LG's FreeSync is worth considering.

The most common praise is for eye comfort. Owners who work long hours in front of screens specifically call out the flicker-free backlight and low blue light mode as making a genuine difference to end-of-day eye fatigue. This isn't universal, and some owners don't notice a difference, but enough people mention it specifically that it's clearly not a placebo for everyone. The colour accuracy also gets consistent praise, with owners noting that images and documents look as expected without needing to fiddle with settings.

Complaints, when they appear, focus on three things. The stand gets the most criticism, with owners wishing for height adjustment. The built-in speakers get described as "tinny" and "barely adequate," which is fair for 1W drivers. And a handful of owners report backlight bleed or IPS glow in corners, which is normal for IPS panels but can be worse on some units than others. The occasional dead pixel report exists, as it does for any monitor. BenQ's warranty covers this, and owners generally report positive experiences with BenQ's customer support when issues arise.

Where the value calculation gets complicated is if you need ergonomic flexibility. If you're going to spend £155.18 on a VESA arm anyway to get height adjustment, factor that into the total cost. The Dell P2422H costs more upfront but might work out cheaper overall if you don't need the arm. For a home setup where you can position your chair and desk to suit the fixed height, the GW2480's value is strong. For a corporate environment where multiple users share a desk at different heights, the limited stand is a real practical problem.

For students, home office workers, and anyone setting up a secondary display, this monitor represents solid value. The Eye-Care features are genuinely useful rather than marketing fluff, the IPS panel delivers consistent colour and viewing angles, and BenQ's build quality is reliable enough that this monitor should last five or more years without issues. The budget bracket is full of monitors that cut corners in ways that matter. The GW2480 cuts corners in ways that mostly don't, which is why it keeps selling in large numbers.

The stand is the main weakness. If you can't live with tilt-only adjustment, budget for a VESA arm or look at the Dell P2422H. The lack of adaptive sync rules it out for gaming beyond casual use. And the 250 cd/m2 brightness, while adequate for most offices, won't win any awards. But for the person who needs a reliable, comfortable 24-inch display for a working day at a desk, this is a genuinely good option at a genuinely fair price.

Who should buy this: office workers, students, home workers, and anyone setting up a secondary or tertiary display on a budget. Who should skip it: gamers who need more than 60Hz, anyone who needs height-adjustable ergonomics without buying an arm, and anyone who wants wide colour gamut for creative work. For everyone else, it's a solid, honest monitor that does its job without fuss. And at this price point, that's worth a lot.