ZOWIE RL2455 Review

The ZOWIE RL2455 is a strange beast to say the least. With most consoles being placed underneath the living room TV, aiming a high-end gaming monitor in their direction seems like an odd decision. But there must be gamers out there clamouring for these kinds of screens over using a similarly sized TV. So what makes the RL2455 stand out from the crowd?

For your money, you get a 24-inch, full-HD (1920x1080) screen, with an advertised contrast ratio of 1000:1 capable of up to 75hz refresh rate (more than enough for console use). Connectivity wise you have VGA, DVI and two HDMI ports for video, a line-in for an audio connection when using VGA or DVI, and a headphone out. Save for the second HDMI port, this is a fairly standard array for a monitor - so I'm still questioning why this might be aimed at console users specifically.

There's a raft of nice touches on the RL2455, that we've seen on some of ZOWIE's other monitors, such as the "Black eQualizer", which levels out the contrast across an image so you can see dark areas a lot better when it's offset by a lot of lighter areas on the screen. "Flicker free" technology also means that the monitor doesn't suffer from the that annoying flicker that can be noticed on cheaper models of monitor specifically, which is great news for your eyes.

Last but not least, the bezel of the RL2455 has been designed in such a way that it doesn't cast a reflection of the screen, instead, it nullifies anything that may be cause for distraction, which, when you're 15-14 down in a clutch round of CS:GO and you look down instead of up because you caught movement in the reflection of your screen and lose the match for your team _might_ just have made the difference to you here.

The stand that comes with the RL2455 can be angled back and forth, allowing you to set a comfortable viewing angle, however, it can't be raised/lowered which is a sizeable omission from ZOWIE's other stands, and it also can't be rotated - though for the intended demographic, that's probably not a huge loss. What is a real shame though, is that the 24-inch model doesn't come with the features of it's bigger brother - the RL2755, by omitting the slightly rubberised base for placing your controller on and the fold-out headphone hook to stow away your headset when it's not in use.

And that's bewildering; two models in the same range that are aimed at console gamers, and the smaller of the two omits features that would specifically work to help sell itself as a console gamer's monitor.

As a 24-inch monitor, it's certainly capable of handling the games that you throw at it as well as your day to day tasks, but as something that's aimed at console gamers, I can't help but feel like you'd be better off saving the extra needed to grab the 27-inch model instead for the additional screen size and the features that better place it as a monitor for console gaming.