Review: HKC Q320 Pro IPS Monitor (32 inch 1440P)

Special thanks again to Gearbest for providing yet another monitor for a review. This continues my exploration into the different monitors made by China company HKC. The earlier monitor I featured was the HKC T7000, a budget colour accurate monitor.

From the list of monitors available on Gearbest, I picked the HKC Q320 Pro for this review because, first, it's an IPS panel and secondly, for a 32 inch monitor with 2560 x 1440 resolution, it's selling at an incredible price of US $250.

My review unit arrived pretty quickly but the box suffered from what looked like punctured holes. Thankfully, the monitor itself was not damaged.

The only graphics cable included is the HDMI cable.

That's the stand that you have to fix up yourself. The feet is quite thin and the stand itself is large and heavy.

This is how the back of the monitor looks like. The HKC Q320 Pro is only available in white.

To fix up the stand, you slot it into the two slits on the back of the monitor.

Screws are provided for you to secure the back of the monitor to the stand. But it's very difficult to actually put the screw in the hole because parts of the stand actually blocks the hole. So I just left the monitor on the stand without any screws. It's quite secured and tight and will not drop off easily, but I must remember not to carry the monitor upside down with the stand.

These are the holes for VESA mounting. This is the 10cm setting.

The stand looks pretty good. The stand only allows for tilt adjustments. The monitor is top heavy and the stand is actually not that heavy (compared to other brands I've used), so rotating the tilting the monitor requires both hands, one holding the top and the other holding the bottom. With other monitors, I could tilt the monitor by holding the sides of the monitor, but with the Q320 Pro, one has to hold the top and bottom. I don't adjust the stand often after i set it right the first time.

The ports available are HDMI, DVI and VGA. Note that if you want to drive the 2560 x 1440 resolution with DVI, you will need a Dual Link DVI cable. There's no DVI cable included. Just one HDMI. The HDMI port is HDMI 1.0.

The monitor is really slim. I've never seen such a slim IPS panel before. TN or TFT panels this thin, yes, but IPS, nope. Actually, the Q320 Pro uses an IPS-ADS panel. Well, it's still an IPS panel so I'm quite impressed. In the photo above, I compared the thickness to my wireless Bluetooth keyboard.

Because my table space is limited, having such a thin monitor allows me to push the monitor all the way to the back to free up some space in front. I wasn't able to do that with the other monitors I've used because of their huge stand footprint.

Image quality

IPS panels typically have good colour reproduction and viewing angles.

This monitor isn't particularly bright. 224cd/m2 is the maximum brightness I measured with the Spyder5Pro. The maximum brightness is even dimmer than some laptop screens.

The relatively low brightness might be a problem if you're working in a brightly lit room.

The colour gamut readout I got was 99% sRGB, 71% NTSC, 77% AdobeRGB.

Important
To get the best colour setting, you have to go into the display menu, look for Colour Temperature settings (it will be in Chinese), and toggle between the three settings there: cool, warm and user (best).

The colours are good enough for graphic design, photo or video editing.

The menus are in Chinese by the way. Changing brightness and contrast is pretty straightforward even if you don't know Chinese.

These are the menu buttons.

How big is too big?

This is the largest computer monitor I've ever used. It's quite a step up from the my main 27-inch BenQ SW2700PT which I thought was already a big monitor. The Q320 Pro with its extra diagonal 5-inch makes it look humongous, more so because with computer monitors we tend to sit closer to the screen.

The resolution of 2560 x 1440 is sufficient for a screen this size but it's not ideal. Pixelation is obvious because of the pixel density. But I don't find the pixelation to be distracting or annoying. The combination of screen size and resolution is good enough for me.

After using this monitor for a few weeks, I know my next monitor is definitely a 32-inch. It is really satisfying to watch movies, play games on such a huge screen. It feels so immersive while watching videos. And the colours are great for videos. Speaking of games, the refresh rate is 60Hz.

Backlight

Backlight is rather uneven. There are large obvious patches at the edges that can be quite distracting when the screen is black. But when movies are played, it's less distracting because of the contrast provided by the video against the black bar. Uneven backlighting is not cool but when watching a movie on such a huge screen, I don't even notice the backlight patches anymore.

There's also the usual IPS glow.

Warranty

All items bought from Gearbest comes with a one year warranty. For returns and other warranty info, please visit Gearbest Warranty and Returns page.

Conclusion

I enjoy using this monitor very much because of its sheer size. It's such a joy to see everything so large. It's seriously a fantastic deal for a 32-inch monitor with 2560 x 1440 resolution when you consider the price point of US $250.

The most important thing is really to set the colour temperature correctly when you first use the monitor. If not, the colours may look off.

Availability

You can get the monitor at
https://www.gearbest.com/desktop-computer-monitor/pp_691710.html?lkid=1…