BenQ Zowie XL2566K
The BenQ Zowie XL2566K is a lightning-fast gaming monitor designed for the FPS player, with a high refresh rate and low response times.
Esports players are to regular gamers like my seven-a-side performances are to Mo Salah. I get out of breath after one particularly intense press against a 50-year-old bald fella filling in at centre back and hear a dim “‘Gwed Ben la,” from a teammate. Mo Salah effortlessly slots one past England goalkeeper Jordan Pickford and celebrates in front of the raucous Anfield crowd. We’re on different levels.
If a professional football player, even a crap one who plays for, say, Sunderland, came down to my seven-a-side match, they would show everyone up with their speed, awareness, and skill. Even non-league players put us all to shame. The same goes for professional esports players. Yes, even the semi-pros. We all like to think we could hang in a lobby with some pro players. Sure, we wouldn’t do quite as much damage or get quite so many kills, but we play a lot of video games, we could hold our own. Except no, we can’t.
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There’s a point to all this. The BenQ Zowie XL2566K is a monitor for esports athletes. If you’re a regular gamer, you won’t feel the benefit of the 360Hz screen. Even if you put tens of hours into Valorant every week, if your hours in League are up to four figures, this still probably isn’t for you. This is a monitor for professionals, and that’s reflected in its framerate output, its display priorities, and its price.
The good news is that, if you’re an esports professional or a casual competitive gamer with a grand going spare, the XL2566K is perfect. ensure your PC is beefy enough to handle it, but running games like CS:GO, Valorant, orApex Legendsat 360 frames per second is like nothing I’ve encountered before. I swear that the increased frame rate helps you hit more headshots and increase your performance, but that’s merely anecdotal evidence from one average player. Gameplay is noticeably smoother though, as you’d expect at twice the price and twice the frames of my current gaming monitor.
I’m not going to gettootechnical on you, but there are issues when you crank up monitors to show this many frames per second: normal pixels just aren’t equipped to handle it. So, monitor companies essentially charge them up to work faster. If not precisely tuned, this can cause more issues, known as ghosting, which shows up as little smears on your screen. Too far the other way and you get an overtuned image where the smears precede the images. Luckily, BenQ has anticipated this and gives you all the tools to fix the issue.
Advanced Motion Acceleration – that’s what it calls the supercharging stuff – has three preset options; Premium, High, and Off. High worked well for me, but if you want to get deeper into the nitty gritty, there’s a 30-point scale that you can adjust to your liking. I found that 15 was the sweet spot for me, but you might find something different. The point is, you can choose and tinker with the monitor to find your sweet spot.
Then you come to the DyAc+ backlight strobing tech. I know I said I was avoiding getting too technical, but this is the stuff that sets the XL2566K apart from its competitors. This strobe is, again, imperceptible, but inserts a black frame between every regular frame you’re looking at. This reduces motion blur to ensure your crosshair is always centred on the specific head you want to pop. I couldn’t see a huge difference here if I’m being honest, but it might make the difference if a million dollars is on the line.
That’s the hardcore stuff out of the way, and if you’re here to read that, you can probably skip to the end now. For anything other than top esports performance, the XL2566K disappoints. The display is a 25” 1080p TN panel. There’s no HDR+, it’s nowhere near 4K resolution. I am glad, however, that there are no garish RGB lights adorning the peripheries.
For regular gaming, you’d be better off with a more general purpose monitor for half the price. If you want to play God of War and Elden Ring on your PC, pick something else. Pick a panel with a better colour range, find something that doesn’t grey the blacks. I did find the TN surprisingly bright, however, and was impressed by the lack of glare, even without the side panels intended to block the sun from your screen. Those panels are easy to attach and work as intended, which is a running theme with the XL2566K.
The monitor is easy to build and easy to set up. It looks quite nice, even if aesthetics are perfunctory. If you don’t like navigating menus using the industry-standard buttons on the back of the screen, there’s even a little button remote you can set on your desktop to make life easier. Don’t watch a film on this monitor. Most games won’t play optimally, either. It’s only the most competitive titles that are worth playing here, with every setting other than fps tuned to the minimum.
The Zowie XL2566K knows what it wants to achieve, and does it with aplomb. It’s a contender for the title of best monitor for esports professionals, and the incremental performance boosts in this regard could decide titles. If you’re anything other than a hardcore competitor, however, this isn’t for you.
