BenQ GW2490T Review UK (2026) - Ergonomics, Colour Accuracy and Honest Verdict

You can slap 100Hz on any monitor and call it a day. The question that actually matters is whether the panel keeps up, whether the image holds together over a long working day, and whether the thing you're staring at for eight hours isn't quietly wrecking your eyes. The BenQ GW2490T tries to answer all three questions at once, and based on over 628 owner reviews and a 4.4-star average, it's doing a decent job of it. So: is it any good? For a home-office monitor in the mid-range bracket, yes, mostly. But the context matters.

BenQ has positioned this as a proper productivity screen rather than a budget gaming panel with a few wellness features bolted on as an afterthought. The 99% sRGB coverage, the full ergonomic stand, the Coding mode and ePaper preset, the TÜV Rheinland eye-care certification. These aren't marketing ticks on this one; they're the actual selling point. If you're upgrading from a cheap 60Hz screen that came with your desk, this will feel like a revelation. If you're a gamer expecting to do serious fast-paced gaming at 100Hz, you'll want to look elsewhere, and we'll get into exactly why.

The mid-range home-office monitor space is genuinely competitive right now. Monitors like the Dell S2422HZ and the LG 24MQ400-B are circling the same buyers. Where the GW2490T separates itself is the ergonomic stand (which most rivals at this price absolutely skimp on) and the software presets that are actually thought through for people who code or read documents all day. That's a real differentiator, not a fake one.

Connectivity is sensible rather than exciting: one HDMI 1.4 port, one DisplayPort 1.2, and a headphone jack. There's also a USB-C port with 65W power delivery, which is genuinely useful for laptop users who want a single-cable setup. The stand offers tilt, swivel, pivot, and height adjustment. VESA 100x100 is supported if you'd rather use your own arm. The panel carries BenQ's B.I. (Brightness Intelligence) technology, which adjusts the display brightness based on ambient light conditions.

The monitor also supports VESA MediaSync for tear-free performance without the full G-Sync or FreeSync Premium overhead. It's worth understanding what that means in practice, which we'll cover in the adaptive sync section. No built-in speakers, which is fine at this price. A monitor with genuinely good built-in speakers at this bracket doesn't exist anyway.

The GW2490T's IPS panel delivers the expected 1000:1 native contrast. That's not a weakness specific to this monitor; it's just the nature of IPS technology. VA panels can hit 3000:1 or even 4000:1, which makes blacks look genuinely black rather than dark grey. But VA comes with its own problem: smearing in dark scenes, where fast-moving content in low-light areas looks like it's trailing through treacle. For a monitor aimed at people writing code and reading documents, IPS is the better trade-off. The colours are more accurate, the response is cleaner, and the viewing angles hold up when you've got a colleague peering over your shoulder.

IPS glow is a thing on this panel, as it is on every IPS monitor. In a dark room with a dark image, you'll see a slight luminous haze in the corners. Owner reviews mention it, but most say it's not bothersome during normal use. If you're doing serious photo editing or video grading in a darkened room, you'll notice it. For spreadsheets, code, and Teams calls, you won't. The anti-glare matte coating handles reflections well, which is more relevant for most home-office setups than the glow issue anyway.

The matte anti-glare coating does its job without being overly aggressive. Some cheaper monitors use a coating so heavy it adds a sandy texture to the image, making everything look slightly gritty. The GW2490T's coating is more restrained, and owner reviews consistently describe the image as clean and comfortable. Brightness uniformity is generally good based on owner reports, with no widespread complaints about bright spots or noticeable backlight bleed in the centre of the panel. A few owners mention slight bleed in corners at full brightness, which is typical for IPS at this price.

The Coding mode and ePaper mode are genuinely useful presets, not just marketing. Coding mode reduces blue light and adjusts the colour temperature to make white backgrounds less harsh during long sessions. ePaper mode goes further, reducing the display to a near-greyscale look that mimics e-ink for reading heavy documents. These aren't gimmicks. People who spend their day in terminals and text editors report real fatigue reduction. The B.I. (Brightness Intelligence) sensor adjusts brightness automatically based on ambient light, which sounds like a minor feature until you've worked through a day without it and wondered why your eyes hurt by 3pm.

The adaptive sync implementation here is VESA MediaSync rather than AMD FreeSync or NVIDIA G-Sync Compatible. VESA MediaSync is designed primarily for video playback synchronisation rather than gaming VRR (Variable Refresh Rate). It's good at eliminating judder in video content at non-native frame rates. It is not the same as FreeSync Premium or G-Sync Compatible, which provide dynamic frame rate matching across the full refresh range during gaming. If you were hoping for proper VRR gaming support, this monitor doesn't offer it. BenQ is honest about this in the product positioning; the GW2490T is not a gaming monitor.

For the target audience, this is fine. Someone using this monitor for work, web browsing, and occasional casual gaming doesn't need the full VRR stack. The 100Hz fixed rate is consistent and stable. Owner reviews don't report any flickering or instability at 100Hz, which is what you actually want to know. If you're running a modern GPU and outputting via DisplayPort 1.2, you'll hit 100Hz without any drama. HDMI 1.4 will also handle 1080p at 100Hz, so both connections are usable for the full refresh rate.

In practice, 5ms GtG at 100Hz means you're unlikely to notice ghosting in productivity tasks, video, or casual gaming. If you're playing a slow-paced RPG, a strategy game, or even a moderately paced shooter at reasonable settings, you'll be fine. Where you'll notice the limitation is in genuinely fast competitive gaming, dark-scene transitions in action games, and any scenario where you're pushing the monitor hard with fast motion. Owner reviews occasionally mention slight trailing in very dark fast-moving scenes, which is consistent with what you'd expect from a 5ms IPS panel without aggressive overdrive.

BenQ doesn't advertise an aggressive overdrive mode on this panel, which is actually the right call. Overdrive pushed too hard causes inverse ghosting, where bright halos appear behind moving objects. That's worse than mild trailing in most real-world content. A conservative overdrive setting at 5ms GtG keeps the image clean. If you need sub-4ms IPS response for competitive gaming, you're looking at monitors in a different category entirely, typically 144Hz or higher panels with active overdrive tuning. The GW2490T is not that monitor, and it doesn't pretend to be.

Factory calibration on monitors at this price point is always a lottery. BenQ doesn't ship a calibration report with the GW2490T, and the spec sheet doesn't quote a Delta-E figure. Based on the owner review patterns, colours are described as accurate and pleasing out of the box, with no widespread complaints about obvious colour casts or skewed white points. That's a reasonable indication that the factory calibration is competent even if it's not certified. For the target user, a web designer checking how their work looks in a browser or a developer who wants accurate UI colours, this is good enough without touching the OSD.

DCI-P3 coverage isn't quoted by BenQ for this panel, which tells you it's not a wide-gamut display. This is the right choice for a productivity monitor. Wide-gamut panels without proper colour management show oversaturated colours in standard applications, making skin tones look sunburned and greens look radioactive. A well-calibrated sRGB panel is more useful for everyday work than a wide-gamut panel that needs careful colour management to avoid looking wrong in most apps. If you're doing professional video grading or print work that demands DCI-P3 or Adobe RGB coverage, you need a different monitor entirely, and you'd know that already.

So the GW2490T has no HDR. This will not matter to its target audience. Someone buying this for home-office productivity, coding, and document work doesn't need HDR. The SDR image quality is what counts, and that's where BenQ has focused the engineering budget. If you do want to watch HDR content on your monitor and care about it looking good, you're in a different market segment, probably looking at DisplayHDR 600 certified panels or OLED, and spending considerably more.

Windows HDR mode can technically be enabled on any monitor, but on a non-HDR panel it usually makes SDR content look worse rather than better. Colours get washed out, brightness goes weird, and the whole thing is a mess. Owner reviews don't mention any issues with Windows Auto HDR on this monitor, which suggests most people are sensibly leaving it off. The monitor's SDR performance is where the value is, and it delivers that well.

250 nits peak brightness is modest. For comparison, most modern monitors aimed at outdoor or bright-room use target 300 to 400 nits. In a typical home office with indirect lighting, 250 nits is adequate. In a south-facing room with direct sunlight hitting the desk, you might find yourself pushing the brightness slider to maximum and wishing for more headroom. The matte coating helps by cutting reflections rather than relying on raw brightness to overpower them, which is the right approach for an office monitor. But on a genuinely bright day, you'll notice the ceiling.

The B.I. sensor is relevant here. By automatically lowering brightness in dim conditions and raising it in bright ones, it helps the 250-nit ceiling feel less limiting in practice. Owner reviews are mostly positive about B.I., though a handful mention it can be slightly slow to react to sudden lighting changes, like someone flicking a light switch. You can disable it if it bothers you. The flicker-free backlight is a genuine benefit over PWM-dimmed monitors, which flicker at low brightness levels in a way that causes headaches for sensitive users. The GW2490T uses DC dimming throughout its brightness range, so there's no flicker at any setting.

Owner reviews are consistently positive about the stand. The height adjustment is described as smooth and well-damped, the pivot works without drama, and the overall build feels solid rather than plasticky. A few owners note the stand base has a relatively small footprint, which is good for desk space but means the monitor is slightly less stable than a wider-footed design if you're the sort of person who taps the desk hard while typing. Nobody's reported it falling over, but it's a minor observation from the owner pool.

The VESA 100x100 mount is there if you prefer a monitor arm, which is the right call for a lot of home-office setups. Monitor arms free up desk space, allow more precise positioning, and make cable management easier. The GW2490T's stand is good enough that you won't feel forced onto a monitor arm, but the option is there. Build quality overall is described by owners as appropriate for the price: solid plastic, no obvious flex in the panel, and the OSD buttons (physical buttons on the rear edge) are responsive and well-placed. No touchscreen OSD here, which is actually fine because touchscreen OSD buttons are often worse than physical ones anyway.

The 65W USB-C power delivery is a proper feature, not a token one. 65W is enough to charge most business laptops at full speed, including many 13 and 14-inch models. It won't charge a 16-inch gaming laptop at full rate, but for a home-office machine it's genuinely useful. A single USB-C cable from your laptop to the monitor gives you video output and charging simultaneously. Owner reviews confirm this works as expected, with no reports of charging instability or compatibility issues with common laptop brands.

The absence of a USB hub is a limitation worth naming. If you have a USB keyboard, mouse, webcam, and external drive all plugged into your desk setup, you'll need a separate USB hub or a laptop with enough ports. For a monitor at this price targeting home-office users, a two-port USB hub would have been a welcome addition. It's not a dealbreaker but it does mean slightly more cable clutter on the desk than you might want. The headphone jack is a useful addition for people who use wired headphones and want to run audio from the monitor rather than hunting for the output on the back of a desktop.

• 1x HDMI 1.4
• 1x DisplayPort 1.2
• 1x USB-C with 65W Power Delivery
• 1x 3.5mm headphone jack
• No USB hub
• No built-in speakers

The LG 24MQ400-B is a 24-inch IPS panel at 75Hz with a simpler stand (tilt only) and no USB-C. It's typically cheaper, and it's a decent monitor for the money, but it loses on ergonomics, refresh rate, and the eye-care feature set. The GW2490T's full stand, 100Hz, and proper eye-care certification make it the better long-term investment for someone who spends serious hours at the desk. The LG is the right answer if budget is the primary constraint and ergonomics are handled by a monitor arm you already own.

Neither competitor matches the GW2490T's combination of full ergonomic stand, 100Hz, 99% sRGB, USB-C with 65W PD, and the BenQ-specific software presets (Coding mode, ePaper, B.I.). That's a genuinely strong package. The Dell beats it on webcam and USB hub. The LG beats it on price. But as an all-round home-office monitor with proper ergonomics, the GW2490T holds its own against both.

Over 628 owners and a 4.4-star average is a strong signal. The complaints that do appear in the reviews are predictable and honest: no USB hub, no HDR, 250 nits is modest in bright rooms, and IPS blacks are IPS blacks. None of these are surprises, and none of them are failures. They're trade-offs that BenQ made deliberately to hit this price with this feature set, and they're the right trade-offs for a productivity-first monitor.

Who should buy this? Someone upgrading from an old 60Hz 1080p screen who works from home, codes, writes, or does design work in sRGB. Someone who wants a single USB-C cable from their laptop to their monitor for video and charging. Someone who cares about long-session eye comfort and wants the TÜV-certified setup to back it up. The GW2490T is a proper monitor for proper work, and it'll be comfortable to use eight hours a day in a way that a lot of cheaper alternatives simply aren't.

Who should skip it? Gamers who need fast-paced competitive performance should look at 144Hz or 165Hz IPS panels with proper FreeSync Premium or G-Sync Compatible support. The 100Hz and 5ms GtG here is fine for casual gaming but not optimised for it. Anyone needing HDR, wide-gamut DCI-P3 coverage for video work, or a built-in webcam for video calls will find the Dell S2422HZ or a step-up panel more appropriate. And if budget is tight and you already own a monitor arm, the LG 24MQ400-B is the smarter spend: you lose the ergonomic stand and drop to 75Hz, but you save real money and the IPS image quality is comparable.

As a BenQ GW2490T review conclusion: score it 8 out of 10. It's not exciting. It doesn't need to be. It's a well-built, well-specified monitor that does exactly what it says for people who stare at screens for a living, and it does it without making your eyes feel like sandpaper by Friday afternoon.