The IT Nerd

I’ve had a number of requests to do a follow up review of the BenQ MOBIUZ EX321UX Gaming Monitor to find out if I still had positive feelings about it. Well, the short answer is yes. The long answer is a bit more complicated. Let’s start with the fact that the get the most out of this monitor, you need to update the firmware. BenQ has shipped five versions of their firmware according to their US website. But in reality, they got a sixth one that they haven’t documented anywhere except in this Reddit thread. While that’s an area that they clearly need to improve upon, their firmware have improved in areas like the USB hub functionality, display flickering. The latter I noticed if I was going from a really dark screen to a light one. The other thing that I should point out is if you use the KVM functionality, you should apply the KVM fix as that fixes a very persistent issue that has been around for users since day one and is described in this Reddit thread. Now I never noticed this as I don’t use that functionality, but I am glad that BenQ has addressed this.

Now one side effect of the firmware updates is that this monitor now seems to support EDR which is Apple’s implementation of HDR. In short, EDR or Extended Dynamic Range is a holistic approach that gives developers and content creators a clear-cut idea of how to achieve the best HDR results on Apple hardware, software and services. The main advantage of this is that this display seems to behave like Apple’s own monitors like the built in XDR display on my MacBook Pro where HDR content can be side by side with SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) content and both look perfectly fine. That’s another huge plus for this monitor.

Is there anything that I would change? Well, if BenQ is reading this, I would like to have the next iteration of this monitor support 10Gbps USB-A and C rather than the 5Gbps that it supports now. That would make it better for people like me who use this monitor as a USB hub.

I’m pretty happy with this monitor and I look forward to using it for years to come. Or whenever Apple decides to put out a monitor that supports ProMotion or Variable Refresh Rates and HDR. Whichever comes first. Until that monitor appears, this one will be on my desk.

This entry was posted on December 29, 2024 at 2:09 pm and is filed under Products with tags BenQ. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.