Gaming~$650BenQ
Four hundred hertz on a 24-inch 1080p TN panel is a deliberately narrow product, and ZOWIE has never apologised for it. DyAc 2 strobes the backlight in sync with the refresh to cut the smearing that adaptive sync alone leaves behind, which is why this line keeps turning up on tournament stages. Everything else is stripped out: no speakers, no USB hub, no HDR, no wide gamut, and a shielding hood in the box instead.
Approx. price
~$650
snapshot, not a live price
Port speed — can each input carry this panel?
This panel needs 23.9 Gbps at 1920×1080, 400 Hz and 24 bits per pixel, with no DSC to fall back on.
Best for: Tournament-style FPS practice where motion clarity outranks everything else
The two lists above come from the maker’s specifications and from published third-party measurements, not from owner reports. Where owner discussion has been read it appears in its own section below, so the two are never mistaken for each other.
Few monitors have a narrower purpose or pursue it this hard. 400 Hz on a fast TN panel with BenQ's strobing, 24 inches, 1080p, no speakers, no HDR, no pretence of being anything other than a tool for competitive shooters — and within that brief, the owners who chase motion clarity above all else keep concluding it is the best thing available, including against OLEDs running higher numbers.
The trouble is what arrives in the box. Read a month of owner reports and you find darker bands down both edges, red marks, banding in dark scenes, flickering lines on day two, and a unit that went to a white screen two weeks in. One buyer received two in a row with pixel defects. That pattern has grown large enough that people now ask in advance whether it is safe to spend this much on one, which is not a question that should attach to a flagship. Colour is the other adjustment: somebody coming from IPS may find the picture genuinely unpleasant.
It is the right buy for one kind of player — somebody whose frame rate actually reaches these numbers, who plays a shooter seriously, who already has a second screen for everything else, and who will inspect the panel hard in the first week and exchange it without hesitation. Everyone else is better served by a 1440p OLED, which will look far better at everything and give up less motion clarity than the numbers suggest.
The reports are frequent and varied enough to take seriously: edge-darkening on both sides, red marks, banding in dark uniform areas, flickering lines within a day, one panel that failed to a white screen after two weeks, and a buyer who received two defective units consecutively. Most owners get a good one, but the odds are worse than the price implies. Buy where returns are easy, check uniformity on grey and dark test patterns immediately, and treat a first replacement as normal rather than as bad luck.
It depends entirely on whether the monitor has one job. Strobed motion here resolves moving detail that an OLED at a higher refresh rate still smears, which is why competitive players keep choosing it. But the OLED wins on everything else — colour, contrast, resolution, films, desktop work — and a 1440p OLED often costs less. Players who own both tend to keep the OLED as the main screen and this one for practice. If you only have room and budget for one monitor, the OLED is usually the better life.
With the strobing off it behaves as a normal backlit panel. With it on it is flickering deliberately — that is how the technique works, by blanking the backlight between frames — so anyone sensitive to flicker will feel it. Some owners find it uncomfortable and turn it off, and the belief that a number of professionals also disable it circulates widely. If eye strain is a concern for you, try it before committing, because the strobing is most of what you are paying for.
One owner noticed exactly this and was surprised, having learned on older models that sync off felt fastest. With sync off, frames land mid-scan and pacing wanders, which reads as inconsistency even when average latency is lower. With it on, pacing is even, and at these refresh rates the latency it adds is a fraction of a millisecond rather than the several it cost on 60 and 144 Hz panels years ago. Trust what feels better in your game — the old advice was written for much slower screens.
Not 400, but the closer you get, the more you receive. The strobing is tuned for the panel's top refresh rate and gets worse as you drop below it, so a machine that holds 250 in your main game is getting a fraction of what you paid for. Buyers with recent high-end processors report hitting these rates in CS2 and Valorant, but not in heavier titles. If your frame rate lives nearer 240, the cheaper 280 Hz sibling is the honest purchase.
Expect to spend time on it, and expect a ceiling. TN viewing angles mean the top and bottom of a 24-inch panel shift slightly at normal distance, which no setting fixes; screen height and a straight-on seating position help more than the picture menu does. One owner spent a week copying settings shared by others and never grew to like it. If you come from a good IPS or an OLED, audition it rather than assuming you will adapt.
31.5″ · 3840×2160 · 144 Hz · IPS
Best for: A living-room-style desk running a PC and two consoles off one screen
27″ · 2560×1440 · 165 Hz · IPS
Best for: A single-monitor console-and-PC desk with no room for speakers
24.1″ · 1920×1080 · 280 Hz · TN
Best for: A competitive player who wants DyAc 2 without paying the 400 Hz premium