BenQ ZOWIE XL2566K Monitor Review

The BenQ ZOWIE XL2566K has a simple design with a definite gamer aesthetic. The bezels are roughly the same thickness on all four sides, which looks nice, but they're thicker and deeper than more premium models. There are two adjustable shields on either side of the monitor to keep you focused on your game. It has a few nice convenience features, including a built-in headphone hook to keep your desk organized when you're not gaming.

The build quality is just okay. It's made entirely of plastic, and it feels a bit cheap. The plastic panels have little flex to them, which is good, and it doesn't seem likely to break. The bezels aren't properly attached to the screen, though, and on our unit, it's easy to lift them off the screen.

The BenQ ZOWIE XL2566K has fantastic ergonomics, so you can easily and quickly adjust it to an ideal viewing position. The height adjustment even has a ruler, so you can quickly adjust it to the perfect height depending on your needs. There's a hole in the stand for cable management.

The stand is simple, with a small, flat base, so you can easily place things in front of it or stash your keyboard when you're not gaming. The height adjustment is on an angle, so the total thickness varies depending on the height you set. The posted measurements are at the thickest position.

There's a joystick on the back of the monitor for navigating the monitor's on-screen display and two preset buttons on the back. There's also an external S-Switch controller that makes it even easier to navigate the menus and change settings on the fly.

• Power cable
• HDMI cable
• DisplayPort cable
• S-Switch
• Monitor cover (shown here)
• User documentation and guides

Unfortunately, the contrast ratio is very low, so blacks look gray when viewed in a dark room. There's also no local dimming feature to improve the contrast between bright and dark areas of the screen.

Unfortunately, this monitor doesn't have a local dimming feature. We still film this video on the monitor so you can compare the backlight performance to another monitor with local dimming.

The BenQ ZOWIE XL2566K has good peak brightness in SDR. It's bright enough to overcome glare, and there's very little variation in peak brightness with different scenes. The minimum brightness is a bit high, so it's not ideal for users looking to use it in a completely dark room.

These measurements are taken after calibration, in the 'Standard' Picture Mode, with the Brightness at max.

This monitor doesn't support HDR.

Unfortunately, the horizontal viewing angle is just passable. Colors shift rapidly as you move off-center and appear noticeably washed out at a moderate angle, so it's not ideal for sharing your screen with someone sitting beside you.

Unfortunately, like all monitors with a TN panel, the vertical viewing angle is poor. Looking at it from above, the image fades and appears washed out, but looking at it from below, the image is completely inversed and looks bad.

The gray uniformity is just okay. The sides of the screen are a bit darker than the center, but there's just a bit of dirty screen effect. The top half of the screen is a bit darker than the bottom due to the poor vertical viewing angle.

The black uniformity is alright. The screen is a bit cloudy throughout due to the low contrast ratio, and there's a bit of backlight bleed along the bottom edge. Sadly, there's no local dimming feature to improve this.

The BenQ ZOWIE XL2566K has excellent accuracy before calibration. The white balance is excellent, with no noticeable issues, and most colors are displayed properly. Pure blues are a bit off, but it's not noticeable. Colors aren't oversaturated, and it covers most of the sRGB gamut area without needing a dedicated sRGB mode. Gamma tracks the sRGB target curve nearly perfectly.

The color accuracy and white balance are superb after calibration, but it doesn't make a noticeable difference on this monitor, as it was already excellent.

The SDR color gamut is excellent. It displays most of the sRGB color space used by most desktop and web content. Sadly, it can't display any of the wider range of colors supported by the Adobe RGB color space, so it's not suited for print or photo processing using this color space.

The color volume is fantastic. It displays bright colors well in both the sRGB and Adobe RGB color spaces. In both cases, it's limited by its incomplete color gamut and can't display dark colors well due to its low contrast ratio.

This monitor doesn't support HDR.

This monitor doesn't support HDR.

The BenQ ZOWIE XL2566K has good reflection handling. The matte anti-reflective coating significantly reduces the intensity of direct reflections, but this adds a slight haze to the screen.

The BenQ ZOWIE XL2566K has just decent text clarity. The matte coating gives text a slightly hazy look, and due to the low pixel density, text isn't very sharp, even after optimizing the Windows ClearType settings for the display (top photo).

Gradients are displayed well, with just a bit of banding in darker shades. There's noticeable 8-bit banding since this monitor can't display 10-bit gradients.

The maximum refresh rate of this monitor is only supported over DisplayPort due to the bandwidth limitations of the HDMI port on this monitor.

Although not officially certified for either AMD FreeSync or NVIDIA G-SYNC variable refresh rates, it works well with both. G-SYNC Compatible only works over DisplayPort, but FreeSync works properly over both connectors.

The response time at the max refresh rate is incredible, resulting in crystal clear motion with almost no noticeable blur behind fast-moving objects. Like most gaming monitors, you can adjust the level of overdrive to optimize the motion handling to your liking. There are a few preset settings, but unlike most monitors, you can choose a custom overdrive level. A custom setting of '8' delivers the best motion experience overall, with the fastest rise/fall time and no overshoot. Higher settings deliver a faster rise/fall time, but they show more distracting overshoot artifacts and inverse ghosting.

The response time at 120Hz is remarkable, delivering clear motion that looks almost as good as it does at the max refresh rate. There's slightly more overshoot when using the same settings at the max refresh rate, but it's not noticeable.

The response time at 60Hz is great overall. The rise/fall time is extremely quick, as most pixels transition close to their final state quickly, but the total response time is slow, resulting in more noticeable motion blur than at faster refresh rates. The customizable overdrive setting is very convenient here, as the same '8' setting used at higher refresh rates delivers a much faster rise/fall time than the preset overdrive modes.

The BenQ ZOWIE XL2566K has a versatile backlight strobing feature, which BenQ calls DyAC+, to improve the appearance of motion. It's available across a wide range of refresh rates, nearly the full range of the monitor itself. Sadly, although you can enable it as low as 60Hz, this doesn't work, as it still flickers at 120Hz.

This monitor is completely flicker-free, helping to reduce eye strain.

Thanks to its fast refresh rate, there's very little input lag when gaming, ensuring a responsive gaming experience. The input lag is noticeably higher at 60Hz, even higher than most other monitors at 60Hz, but it's not too bad.

Sadly, the low resolution of this screen results in a very low pixel density, so text and images aren't very sharp.

Unfortunately, although the BenQ ZOWIE XL2566K supports variable refresh rate, it doesn't work with the PS5.

Unfortunately, although this monitor supports variable refresh rate, it doesn't work with the Xbox Series S|X.

There's a mini-USB port on the back of the monitor, but it's only for the S-Switch remote.

This monitor works well with recent MacBooks. Windows return to their original position when waking from sleep, and it wakes up quickly. Unfortunately, it's limited to a 240Hz refresh rate with MacBooks, but this is a limitation of macOS, not the monitor.

This is a pretty barebones monitor with no significant additional features. There are a few picture mode modifiers like Black eQualizer, which adjusts the gamma to make it easier to spot dark details, and a blue light filter. It also comes with the S-Switch remote, making it very easy to navigate the on-screen display or switch between preset modes.