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.

BenQ makes great monitors. Every time they send me one for review, I tend to walk away impressed. Then the BenQ MOBIUZ EX321UX showed up via FedEx a last week. And I have to say that BenQ came up with a monitor that is almost perfect. Let’s start with the look of the monitor from the front:

This is a plain, black bezeled boring monitor if you look at it from the front. And that is the exact opposite of most gaming monitors that I encounter. The back is white and the monitor comes with a stand that is also white, but has a few orange/copper accents along with being height, swivel and tilt adjustable. I didn’t bother using that stand during my testing and instead mounted it to this monitor arm on my desk as the monitor has a VESA mount on the back. It also is devoid of any RGB lighting. This is a good move on BenQ’s part as they bill this as a gaming monitor, but they clearly designed it to be used in environments other than the basement of some guy who would only use this monitor only to play Call Of Duty Warzone. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

There are two things that I would like to highlight on the back of the monitor. First is the 100×100 mm VESA mount that allows you to mount the monitor on your own stand as I did. The second is the significant amount of ports on this monitor. Here’s a list:

• HDMI v2.1 eARC
• 2 x HDMI v2.1
• DisplayPort v2.1
• USB-C with 65W Power Delivery, DisplayPort Alt Mode, data transfer
• USB-C upstream (USB 3.1 Gen 1, 5 Gbps, data transfer only)
• 3 x USB-A downstream (USB 3.1 Gen 1, 5 Gbps, power charging 4.5W)
• USB-C downstream (USB 3.1 Gen 1, 5 Gbps, power charging 7.5W)
• 1/8″ headphone jack

That is a healthy selection of ports. But some of you might be noticing that in terms of the ports, the math doesn’t quite add up as you can’t see all of them. That’s because these ports are on the bottom left of the monitor:

This is another good move by BenQ as it makes these ports easy to access should you need them. I would have liked to see all of these USB ports being 10 Gbps ports rather than 5 Gbps ports. But they will work for most use cases. For those who need 10 Gbps or faster speeds, a thunderbolt dock might be your best option.

Pro Tip: I wasn’t getting 5 Gbps a second when I first started testing the ports on this monitor. That was until I noticed this when I was looking through the monitor settings:

Once I set it to USB 3.1 Gen1, I started to get the speeds that I was expecting.

I should note that there are no internal speakers, but the headphone jack has three different sound modes that provide a decent approximation of surround audio. And if you need better sound, you can plug in a soundbar into the eARC HDMI port and get your high quality sound fix that way. As a bonus, there’s KVM support. That means you can hook up a PC and Mac to this monitor for example and use one monitor, keyboard and mouse with both.

Also of note, this monitor comes with a remote control. It provides quick access to picture modes, settings memories, brightness, and the heads-up display with signal and frame rate info. I have to admit though that I took out of the box, fooled around with it to see what it controlled, and put it back into the box. That’s because the joystick at the bottom centre of the monitor does such a good job of allowing you to control the monitor’s features. I should also note that I had to find a CR2032 battery to get the remote up and running as I didn’t find one in the box. Speaking of being in the box, every cable you might need is in the box, along with an external power brick that those who cable manage all the things may not be fond of.

To test this monitor, I set it up with my M1 Pro MacBook Pro running macOS Sonoma version 14.6.1. I ran all my USB gear through the monitor and connected the monitor via USB-C to create a one cable setup that would keep my Mac charged as well as provide access to things like my webcam and the like. That worked fine although my Mac was only getting 65W of power which meant it is theoretically possible that if I pushed the MacBook Pro hard enough, the monitor would not be able to supply enough power to the laptop. As a result, the laptop battery would start to deplete until the load on the laptop lessens and the monitor can start charging the laptop battery up again. I wasn’t able to get my laptop to exhibit this in my testing. So I guess that’s a non-issue. But it would have been nice if the monitor put out say 90W so that wouldn’t be an issue with any laptop that has high power demands. Gaming laptops for example.

I ended up running this monitor at 2560×1440 with variable refresh rates of 48-144 Hz enabled. Now that sounds like a weird resolution for me to run a 4K monitor in. But this is why I set it up that way. macOS does something called display scaling. That’s where the monitor actually runs at 4K resolution. But the macOS UI is scaled to something less. And given that I am on the wrong side of 40 years old, 4K resolution on a Mac results in text that is too small for me to read comfortably. So I am using a resolution that balances having a lot of screen real estate with the ability to read text. I should also note that I am using this resolution with the “low resolution” option. That’s something else that is unique to macOS where if you pick a resolution that has this option, you turn off the ability to render everything in macOS’s “retina” mode where everything looks super sharp, and instead it renders everything “normally” for lack of a better description. While there is a difference between the “retina” mode and the “low resolution” option when it comes to text sharpness on the screen, the difference is really slight. Likely because this monitor is sharp and clear when it comes to how text looks on it. Also running in “low resolution” mode covers up a bug in macOS and M1 processors where you can’t run certain resolutions with variable refresh rates and HDR turned on. If you want to go down the rabbit hole on that, you can read the details here.

So with that out of the way, how does this monitor perform? Brilliantly for the most part.

From a basic productivity standpoint, this is a great monitor for productivity work. Text is sharp and clear as I mentioned previously. Though one thing that I noted was that when HDR is turned on, the Eye Care functionality which is handy for those who work for eight hours a day in front of a monitor gets turned off. I’m guessing that BenQ is doing this to preserve the quality of how HDR looks on the screen.

To further find out how good this monitor was, I drove the monitor to a client who is a professional photographer and photo editor so that he could use this tool on it in order to compare his results to the calibration report that was in the box. Yes you read that correctly, there was a calibration report in the box of a gaming monitor. I perhaps should not have been surprised by that as that’s how BenQ rolls. But I still was surprised. In any case, here’s what he told me after testing the monitor for about 45 minutes:

• sRGB is spot on as he got an average error of just 1.37dE which from a colour accuracy perspective almost perfect. And this result was actually slightly better than the calibration report stated which was 1.38dE.
• Display P3 had average error of 1.41dE. Which again is visibly perfect from a colour perspective.

In short, if you do colour accurate work, this monitor is a great option for you.

Now over to HDR. When you have HDR turned on, you get five HDR modes to choose from:

Honestly, your best option is to use the Display HDR option. I found it to be the mode that mostly matched what my MacBook Pro displays, and I was also assured by my client that this was the most colour accurate HDR mode to run the monitor. One thing that I should point out is that the MacBook Pro has a glossy screen that boosts the contrast of what is on your screen, and the BenQ monitor is a matte screen that dulls the contrast slightly as it’s meant to control reflections. It also means that dark areas on the monitor are slightly more dark than they perhaps should be. Which I am fine with because of the fact that I am in a room where controlling light is problematic. Thus I will take a matte screen any day of the week on any monitor that I use. But I can see where that might be a non-starter for some who want a more vibrant picture. You’ll also note that there are sRBG and Display P3 options for colour accurate work. But you’ll need to disable HDR to use those which is a bit of a bummer. I am thinking that BenQ must have felt that enabling HDR in those modes would take away from the colour accuracy that this monitor has. I should also note that this monitor supports FreeSync Premium Pro so anything from a PS5 to a gaming PC can have smooth visuals with this monitor. And by having it on is how I am getting support for variable refresh rates.

As for the HDR performance, let’s touch on some numbers first. The BenQ monitor has a mini LED panel with 1152 dimming zones. My MacBook Pro for comparison purposes has 2554 dimming zones, and the Apple Pro Display XDR has 576 local dimming zones. The BenQ monitor is capable of doing 1000 nits of brightness at its peak. Again for comparison purposes, my MacBook Pro and the Pro Display XDR can do 1000 nits sustained brightness, and 1600 nits peak brightness for HDR content. The reason why I am pointing all of this out because when it comes to mini LED monitors like this one, the more local dimming zones, the better the HDR performance in theory. While this monitor doesn’t have the same number of dimming zones as the built in display of my MacBook Pro, it has twice as many when compared to the Pro Display XDR. As for the brightness, the 1600 nits of brightness that the Apple monitors are capable of are in “peak” circumstances. Meaning that you mostly won’t see this in your day to day existence. Instead you will see 1000 nits. That makes these monitors somewhat compatible.

After running a number of HDR videos on this monitor, I can say that this BenQ display is outstanding. Fooling around with some games, as well as Blur Busters TestUFO to test the motion clarity, I found that there were no issues that I could find on that front. One big plus is that this is the first monitor that I have encountered where I could control the brightness of the monitor in HDR mode as most monitors outside the Pro Display XDR don’t have such a feature. That’s a very welcome feature and I applaud BenQ for including it. The next thing that I want to point out is blooming. Or rather the lack of it. Blooming is an issue where one local dimming zone will be so bright that it will overwhelm the local dimming zone next to it. For example if you have a really bright local dimming zone and a dark one next to each other, the dark one will look grey rather than black, or you might see what I call a halo effect. I ran a bunch of test videos that I know will generate blooming problems with HDR monitors and didn’t find much if any blooming to speak of. So then I ran some blooming tests which pushed the monitor to its 1000 nits maximum brightness, and I did see that there were some minimal levels of blooming. But it was so minimal that it’s unlikely that anyone would care, assuming that they even noticed at all. I don’t know what magic BenQ put in this monitor to get this result, but I was impressed.

A Few last things that I should mention. BenQ allows you to create profiles and save those so that you can switch between say a colour accurate setup and a gaming setup easily. And for bonus points, you can switch profiles via the joystick controller, or the remote control. You can also use a piece of software called Colour Shuttle to tailor this monitor to specific games if you want to go next level with your gaming experience.

So is this the perfect monitor? Well as I mentioned before, the USB ports could be 10 Gbps rather than 5 Gbps. I also wish you could at least have the option to use HDR in Display P3 and sRGB modes, and I wished that power delivery to a laptop was higher than 65W. But given the performance and capabilities of this monitor, I’m more than willing to let all of that slide. The BenQ MOBIUZ EX321UX is an outstanding monitor that allows you to do anything from Microsoft Word to colour accurate work during business hours, to pwning n00bs in your video game of choice after hours. In fact, I think BenQ is selling this monitor short by calling it a gaming monitor for that reason because it’s a great all around monitor that fits a huge number of use cases. Which is why I will be asking BenQ if I could buy this monitor from them as this is the sort of monitor that I have been waiting for to pair with my MacBook Pro with since I got it in 2021. Expect to pay $1599 CAD for one of these monitors which sounds expensive, but I would argue that it’s money well spent given what this monitor brings to the table.

I’ll get this out of the way right now. The BenQ DesignVue PD3220U is either almost the perfect monitor for Mac users. Or it is the perfect monitor for Mac users. It depends on who you are and what you will use this monitor for. If you’re the average Mac user, you’re in the former camp. If you’re the target audience for this monitor, which are people who design content, you’re in the latter camp. Let me spend this review walking though the features of this monitor and pointing out the things that make it perfect for the latter camp, and slightly less so for the former camp.

It’s a 31.5-inch IPS panel with a resolution of 3840×2160 pixels which represents 140 ppi. While not Apple retina levels of ppi, fine detailing is still easy to see at a comfortable viewing distance. Given that I have a small standing desk from to place this monitor on, that’s something I did like. The monitor has a peak brightness of 300 nits which is the first issue that some might have with this monitor. Which is that you’ll either like the fact that this isn’t a super bright monitor that will sear your eyeballs, or you will wish that it was brighter. I personally, am ok with the brightness level that this monitor is capable of as this is aimed at people who don’t want super bright monitors. Designers and video editors for example. Though I will note that it pales in comparison to my MacBook Pro which can get to much higher brightness levels. Thus I can see some people being unimpressed at first glance and wanting it to be a bit brighter if they consume content as opposed to create it.

The display has 10-bit colour processing which delivers a palette of 1.07 billion colours, resulting in smoother shading, colour transitions and tonal gradations. On top of that, you get 100 percent of the sRGB colour space and its video equivalent, Rec.709. The display also covers 95 percent of the DCI-P3 colour space, and for video-makers, the PD3220U also handles HDR content via having HDR10 support. More on HDR in a bit. Oddly, BenQ doesn’t supply a specification for the Adobe RGB colour space. But there’s a calibration report in the box as it is a factory calibrated monitor. Finally, this is a 60Hz panel. And that brings me to the second issue that some will have with this monitor. For some, especially those who own newer MacBook Pros that are capable of ProMotion or the ability to ramp up the refresh rate up to 120Hz, the fact that this is a 60Hz monitor is pretty noticeable and may be a turn off to some. Others, again those who create content will likely not care. I say that because those who edit video for example are editing video at frame rates of 24 and 30 fps for example. And those who are doing photo editing for example will not care as they look at static images all day.

The monitor is mostly plastic. But it felt solid and the build quality looks good. The PD3220U has a matte anti-glare screen surface that BenQ doesn’t want you accidentally peeling off. In fact they have this sticker on the monitor telling you not to peel it off:

Consider yourself warned. This anti glare film does work though as it I noted no reflection in my home office which has a window on the left that even though it has blinds, it gets a lot of sunlight in the afternoon as it is facing west.

Let’s move on to connectivity. The PD3230U has lots of it:

The full list of connectivity for the back goes like this:

• Two USB-A 3.1 downstream ports
• One USB-B upstream port
• A USB-B mini Port for the hotkey puck
• Two HDMI 2.0 Ports
• Display Port 1.4
• Two USB Type C with Thunderbolt 3 connectivity. One is downstream and one is upstream.

Here you see the USB-C, USB-A and 3.5mm headphone jack that are located on the right side of the monitor. That way you can plug in a set of headphones or a USB stick.

All this connectivity gives you a one cable setup that delivers video, power (85W), and connectivity over a single Thunderbolt cable. For Mac users, especially portable ones, that’s the dream setup. This monitor also has support for a Keyboard Video Mouse (KVM) which allows for easier switching between two computers with a single keyboard and mouse. There’s also a ‘DualView’ mode for when you’re using one display with two inputs. Plus there’s all sorts of Picture in Picture modes that allow you to keep tabs on one of those computers. Finally, you can daisy chain two monitors together and still connect everything to your computer with one cable.

The PD3220U includes BenQ’s Hotkey Puck remote control dial. This plugs into the monitor via the mini USB port that I referenced earlier and is used to control monitor settings like brightness, colour modes and the volume of the built-in dual 2W speakers. Though I should mention that there are buttons on the back of the monitor if that’s your preference. In terms of the speakers, they are unremarkable as most monitor speakers tend to be.

Let’s get to the part that you care about. How does this monitor perform? Here’s the TL:DR on that:

• The Display P3 colour mode is impressive. It has vibrant colours and excellent colour and contrast consistency.
• BenQ has software called Display Pilot for the Mac that will help to make sure that my MacBook Pro Display matches the PD3220U as closely as possible is an excellent touch. I didn’t use that option when I reviewed this monitor. I simply put the monitor into “M-Book” mode and went to work. But content creators and control enthusiasts will appreciate that Display Pilot exists.
• This monitor has a low blue light filter which helps reduce the amount of harmful blue light emitted by the display. This is especially useful for those who work long hours in front of a screen, as it can help to reduce the risk of eye fatigue and other related issues.
• HDR-10 performance was a surprise for me. I typically don’t expect much from any monitor that has no local dimming ability, not to mention the brightness levels that this monitor has. But running some test HDR videos on this monitor revealed that you can view HDR with correct colours 100% of the time, which is very useful from a content creation perspective. But less useful for content consumption.

Another area that I want to touch on is the stand. It’s made of metal, features tool free assembly, and is solid. The monitor has a bit of shake to it if you shake the desk that it is on. But I didn’t notice any shaking while I was typing. The stand also has some basic cable management and is height adjustable as well as having the ability to tilt and swivel. Though in terms of height, it may not go high enough for those who are on the taller side. For those people, a good quality VESA mount (it supports 100×100 VESA mounts) may be your best option.

Finally, in the bonus points department, all cables are included in the box which makes life easy for anyone who buys this monitor as everything is there for you to set it up and use it.

The BenQ DesignVue PD3220U is going to be the perfect monitor, or almost perfect monitor depending on who you are. In my opinion if you’re a content creator of some sort, this monitor has to be on your shopping list. If you’re an average Mac user, this might not be the right monitor for you. Though given the connectivity options, it is still worth a look for that reason alone as there aren’t a lot of monitors outside of Apple’s own monitors that provide this level of connectivity. I found it on Amazon for $1500 CDN which isn’t exactly cheap. But I suspect for many, it will be at a price point that makes it worth considering.

Let me get right to the point. The BenQ PD3420Q ultra wide monitor is aimed at anyone who needs a colour critical monitor for image or video editing. Ideally if you’re a Mac user as it has a lot of features that are Mac friendly. That’s it. The review is done. Have a nice day.

Seriously this is a great monitor with very few things for me to gripe about. Let’s start with the monitor itself. It’s a 34″ monitor that is 21:9 which means that you get a resolution of 3440 x 1440 with a pixel density of 109 ppi. It’s also a 10-bit IPS panel that has a 60Hz refresh rate.

The PD3420Q has 100% sRGB and 98% DCI-P3 color space coverage. It also comes factory calibrated (the documentation is in the box) to an accuracy of Delta-E <3 which is okay as many monitors have a Delta-E of <2. But I think that might be on the conservative side as I will point out later. I didn’t see Adobe RGB percentage coverage mentioned anywhere in the specs, so if someone reading this needs that, you might have to look at another option.

Now let’s look at connectivity which is the first reason why I like this monitor:

From left to right you get a Mini-USB port for BenQ’s Hotkey Puck to control the monitor, two HDMI 2.0 ports, DisplayPort, a USB-C port that supports 65W power delivery and DisplayPort, A USB-A upstream port, two USB-A downstream ports.

On the side you get a USB-C port and a USB-A port along with a headphone jack.

What all of that means is that if you have a modern MacBook, you can do a one cable setup where a single USB-C cable delivers video, power and anything else that you need as seen in the picture above. And you have additional connection needs, you can leverage the monitor for that.

The PD3420Q includes BenQ’s Hotkey Puck remote control dial. This plugs into the monitor via the mini USB port that I referenced earlier and is used to control monitor settings like brightness, colour modes and the volume of the built-in dual 2.5W speakers. Though I should mention that there are buttons on the back of the monitor if that’s your preference. As for the stand, it’s made of metal, features tool free assembly, and is solid. The monitor doesn’t shake at all which is great and has some basic cable management. The stand is height adjustable as well as having the ability to tilt and swivel. Though in terms of height, it may not go high enough for those who are on the taller side. For those people, a good quality VESA mount may be your best option. I should point out that before getting this monitor, you should look at your setup so that you can ensure that it enough depth for the monitor. Otherwise you might find it difficult to look at if it is too close to you.

I should also mention that the PD3420Q incorporates a built-in KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) switch, allowing you to control two computers from a single keyboard and mouse, with the Hotkey Puck able to switch between the two computers.

Now all of that is nice, but how does the monitor perform? I’ll get the negative out of the way. The speakers will not impress you. However, in the default Display P3 colour mode, the PD3420Q will impress you. It has vibrant colours and excellent colour and contrast consistency. And the fact that BenQ has software called Display Pilot for the Mac that will help to make sure that my MacBook Pro Display matches the PD3420Q as closely as possible is an excellent touch. More on that in a moment. But what this means if you depend on your monitor for colour critical work, this is a very good option for you. I will also say once you tweak things using Display Pilot, text was pretty sharp.

One feature I really appreciated was the low blue light filter, which helps reduce the amount of harmful blue light emitted by the display. This is especially useful for those who work long hours in front of a screen, as it can help to reduce the risk of eye fatigue and other related issues.

The PD3420Q also has several additional features that make it a versatile and powerful monitor. For example, it has a Picture-by-Picture feature that allows you to connect two different sources (a PC and Mac for example) to the monitor as mentioned above and display them side by side.

The monitor also has a Picture-in-Picture feature, which allows you to display a smaller window within the main display. This can be useful for tasks such as video conferencing or keeping an eye on your email while working on something else.

Another feature worth mentioning is the Display Pilot software, which allows you to customize and optimize the display settings to suit your specific needs. The software includes various features such as split-screen options, colour temperature adjustments, and more. This software was a very nice touch during my testing.

The PD3420Q does Display HDR400 and HDR10. And I will say that HDR performance is better than most IPS displays that I have seen lately. However as is usually the case, the Mini LED XDR display in my MacBook Pro blows it away. Largely because of of the fact that the MacBook Pro’s display can get way brighter than the 400 nits that this monitor is capable of, and because it comes with local dimming which the PD3420Q does not have.

Finally, in the bonus points department, all cables are included in the box which makes life easy for anyone who buys this monitor as everything is there for you to set it up and use it.

Overall, I was impressed with the BenQ PD3420Q. It’s a powerful and feature packed monitor that is well suited for professionals who need a high quality display for their work. Its price point is pretty good as I found it on Amazon for about $1200. Take a look at it if you have a colour critical workflow.