Words: Vishwanath Venkatesh
At a reasonable price of INR 26,898/-, you’re getting a 4k monitor that caters to just about any whim or fancy you may entertain or need from a Monitor.
BenQ has mastered the art of producing high quality monitors across a varied price band to cater to every user. As a daily driver at work, I use an older BenQ 27-inch 1080p monitor and have had no complaints about it. It delivers on what it says on the box, a no-nonsense monitor.
So, when the BenQ EW2790U came across my desk, the jump in quality was immediately noticeable and appreciated.
Design and build quality:
The BenQ EW2790U is well designed and aesthetically pleasing. I got my hands on the white monitor and at first glace it evoked memories of a storm-troopers helmet from Star Wars. The white monitor, with the two 5W speakers poking out the bottom truly give the impression that it would not be out of place in an imperial office.
The monitor is well built and feels premium and well built, the 4k panel is fantastic, colors are vibrant and the picture presentation is second to none, which we will get to.
The icing is the stand that accompanies the monitor. Its well-built, owing to its all-metal build, and offers great stability when placed on the table. Its reassuring heft gives you piece of mind that this monitor is not going to tip over even in the face of gale force winds.
The stand also is thoughtfully designed keeping in mindcable organization and has an integrated carrying handle so that moving the monitor isn’t a painful chore.
The articulation of the stand is also great, it’s adjustable for height, up to 110mm, tilt ranges from -5⁰ to 20⁰, swivel covers 20⁰ in either direction, and pivot of 90⁰, for those who need the portrait orientation. BenQ is definitely a class leader when it comes to its stand and all the operations feel smooth and intuitive and a major bonus for any user.
Display performance:
The display is a crips 27-inch IPS panel with a slated resolution of 3840×2160, with a 163 PPI. What this translates to is a wonderful 4k monitor, which is sharp, clear and with has great readability. The pixel density is more than enough for sharp images and great colour reproduction with impressive coverage of on the DCI-P3 of 95%, which makes it a great monitor for creative work, photo editing or any activity that requires colour accuracy.
In short, it’s fantastic, that coupled with the fact that it supports HDR-10, lets you load up your favourite content on any major streaming platform and with the excellent and vivid colour reproduction, and the integrated 5W speakers, which are good, makes this a content consumption beast.
However, this isn’t the best for gaming with its 60Hz refresh rate and 5ms response rate, isn’t going to help you in a sweaty 1v1 in a call of duty gulag, but its more than passable for casual gaming. One needs to keep in mind that you need a beefy system to even take advantage of this monitor if you want to game in 4K. If you’re looking for a gaming focused monitor, BenQ has its Mobiuz range or 1080p/2K offerings from LG would make a better value proposition than this monitor.
Another place where this panel is disappointing is the brightness, rated at peak brightness of 400 nits, it struggles in well-lit environments, not a deal breaker for everything it offers, but something to keep in mind as to where it’ll be placed.
Ports/IO:
BenQ has really outdone itself with the IO and this monitor offers 3 HDMI 2.0 ports, 1 USB C display port with 65W power delivery, 3 USB A 3.2 Gen 1 ports, 1 USB C Downstream port and by this combination of ports, one would think BenQ’s target users would be Mac users, which I truly appreciate given the two USB-C ports on my MacBook Air. The flexibility offered by the IO is fantastic and honestly, should be the industry standard.
Display Pilot:
Display Pilot is a great third-party software tool that allows you to control all aspects of the Monitor without having to fumble around with the physical controls on the Monitor and works well with the Mac and lets you fine tune the manner in which to set up the display and lets you find what works for you effortlessly instead of slaving away at menus and submenus. You can switch color profiles and matches the display characteristics of your Mac for seamless operations.
Verdict:
BenQ continues to lead the monitor game, it has put out a product that excels at anything you throw at it and is targeted at wide spectrum of users. It’s great for creative work, content consumption and for people who want a nice clean desk set-up with minimal clutter.
Strap it to a Mac Mini M4, a low-profile keyboard and Logitech MX Master 3s, some speakers, and you’ll have the ultimate minimalist set up and if you want to steam, add some Elgato peripherals all in white of course, can’t mess up that clean aesthetic now can we.
Price: INR 26,898, benq.com
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