I’ve been using this LG Ultrawide 29UM59 29 inch Monitor for a few years now, but I was craving for something bigger.
I think this is big enough.
I had put off upgrading my monitor for quite some time now as they are quite expensive, but the screen real estate on my 29 inch LG monitor was becoming a limiting factor on how well I could organise my work setup on screen especially during editing.
The Benq EW3270U is a 32 inch 4K HDR monitor, and supports AMD’s FreeSync technology.
The Eyecare logo in the front indicates that this monitor supports Brightness Intelligence Plus In order to offer the most comfortable and enjoyable viewing experience. Will get to that in a bit.
This monitor supports HDR, UHD or Ultra HD resolution, a USB-C input is available, making it easy to connect newer laptops to this display. Brightness Intelligence Plus support, and a 3000:1 contrast ratio.
Let’s dig into the box and remove the stuff which can fall out when turning this around.
Power cord, nice that the monitor doesn’t need an external power brick.
Display port to mini display port cable.
Manual and online warranty card.
Here’s the stand, and the base of the stand.
I should have asked for help, but here goes.
Phew made it without breaking anything.
Lifting off the protective foam, we have access to the monitor. Doesn’t look that big within the box but trust me it is quite big. In contrast to TV’s, monitors are placed a few feet away from us, so this is plenty big else you will have to move your head to its extremities to see all corners. 32 looks to be just right.
A quick look at the manual on how to attach the stand, as each monitor has its own mounting method.
Quite simple, slide in the stand’s mounting plate, under the screws on the monitor and screw it down.
Nice that these screws stay attached to the monitor and won’t be lost if you need to mount the monitor elsewhere.
Attach the base and screw it down using the thumb screw provided. Now, we’re done, let’s stand the monitor upright.
I’m loving this metallic Gray colour, and the bezels though present are not that thick at 8 mm and 18 mm on the bottom , almost minimal.
The back of the monitor has 100mm VESA mounting holes, it weighs 7,5 KG so if you want to use your own stand, or monitor arm, keep that in mind.
The Benq logo is protected with a thin plastic film. Let’s get that off.
Shiny.
Similarly let’s get all the film off the stand too.
Connectivity options, we have two HDMI ports, one display port, a USB-C or thunderbolt port and a headphone jack.
These are recessed and need to be accessed from under, which is good and bad. It will allow for the monitor to sit closer to the wall as the cables don’t stick out, but at the same time it makes it tougher to change inputs as we cannot see where the ports are. We generally won’t change the inputs once set, but when required it will be a bit of an irritant.
Power is on the other side.
Menu options are accessed using the buttons below, the corresponding options are displayed on the monitor right above.
A HDR/BI+ mode button is present to switch between HDR emulated mode and also Brightness Intelligence mode.
Also present are speakers on both sides of the monitor and fire downwards.
This is the Ambient light sensor, which helps the monitor set the required brightness and colour temperature as per ambient lighting.
The actual diagonal size is 31.5 inches so even though 32 is marked on the box, it’s actually 31.5.
The monitor has a 16×9 aspect ratio and can run at a max resolution of 3840×2160 which is 4k. The PPI or pixels per inch comes to around 140, which is quite good.
Refresh rate maxes out at 60 hz, but if you want higher, the costs just double.
4 ms (milliseconds) response time, not the fastest, so cannot recommend this monitor to competitive FPS gamers, but for casual gaming it’s good enough.
The monitor uses a VA panel, which is like a median between TN and IPS. Great contrast and colours. Colours are accurate with support for 95% of DCI-P3 colour range and supports 1.7 billion colours.
Brightness peaks out at 300 nits, which is still higher than the 250 on my older monitor. In full brightness it literally burns your eyes, and I end up activating Brightness Intelligence mode which via this sensor in the front analyses the ambient light and changes the screen brightness and colour temperature to protect your eyes.
But HDR10 and only 300 nits, doesn’t it need 1000. Yes, it implements HDR, but only to an extent.
Windows supports HDR in OS and can be activated via the display options.
Also you can open up the advanced options to change the brightness of SDR content so that it doesn’t look as muted when switching to HDR.
Once HDR is on we can’t control any of the picture options, all levels such as brightness everything is controlled and set as per the content being played. If you play HDR content on Netflix or Amazon prime they look amazing, but the standard desktop does look quite different. You can turn HDR on or off via the display settings as required, and it’s great that the monitor allows for manual control too.
Here are some demo videos on YouTube, with HDR on and without HDR, there is some visible improvement, but I don’t think this video can faithfully reproduce the quality changes as I’m recording in 1080p.
Being a VA panel there is colour shifting if you move to extreme angles, Benq claims a viewing angle of 178 degrees, both vertically and horizontally, which looks to be accurate.
But I would not suggest this monitor to show clients any media content as they may sit off angle and not see the colours as they are meant to be. We as users mostly work straight on with the monitor max 3 feet away, we won’t have much of a problem.
It also works USB-C to USB-C, here I have a HP Envy thin and light laptop and these don’t come with any HDMI or other display ports, but one USB-C cable attached between the monitor and the laptop provides a 4K 60hz display.
So all you thin and light or MacBook owners, one cable is all you need to connect this monitor as an external display. But this port doesn’t provide power, so you cannot charge your laptops with this, which would have been icing on the cake. But being a budget 32k monitor, these are where feature cuts are made, I guess.
Here’s the light sensor used for the Brightness Intelligence plus feature, this can be turned on or off by using the HDR button on the bottom right, it cycles between HDR, BI+ and BI+ only and both off.
The HDR activated through this button is emulated, so if you want true HDR use the option in windows to activate it.
But it still makes the colours pop on screen for any content, but doesn’t always look good. So use as necessary.
The Menus on the monitor are easy to access and navigate through using the buttons on the bottom of the monitor. The function of the button is displayed on screen right above. The LG used a joystick menu selector, but I got used to Benq’s options quite fast, and is quite intuitive.
Other features include Super Resolution which usually adds edge enhancement to artificially sharpen the image
And also Smart Focus which highlights a selected window or area, helping users concentrate on the main viewing content by reducing distractions in the background.
The speaker’s under the screen, which are 2 watts, are OK, if you don’t have any speakers and need something temporary. I would suggest external speakers in place of these.
The stand is supportive enough, and the monitor doesn’t wobble much when I’m bumping on my desk.
We can only tilt the monitor the -5 forward and 15 degrees back at maximum. No height adjustment is possible, which would have been great, but sadly is missing.
Moving from a 29 inch ultra-wide, this looks massive, and with the extra screen real-estate makes working on it much more comfortable. I generally edit my videos on this computer with a bit of gaming and video streaming.
In my video editor I can see so much more at the same time, making me need to scroll less and have all my tools available on screen, improving my productivity.
Gaming, I have a few games I play and they all worked quite well.
Having upgraded to a 2070 Super recently it could handle 4K gaming, albeit lowering the settings from ultra to high maybe. But you will need a good graphics card if you want to run this monitor at full 4K resolution.
Overall, I’m loving the look of the monitor, the Metallic Gray finish is very classy. This monitor is great for work, casual gaming and of course movies. 32 inches looks like the sweet spot for size without me having to move my head around to look at the corners. This is a budget 32 inch 4K monitor but still does seem to give the competition a run for their money at this price point.
So great price, great specs, would I recommend it? Compared to other monitors at this price point and with similar specs, this is the best out there. For better specs, you will need to literally pay double. HDR features are fine, the colours do pop on screen but at 300 nits is not fully HDR compatible. But at 3 feet from our face, 300 nit’s brightness is plenty as it gets quite bright and I turn it down anyway.
If you have any questions email me at tech@talkingstuff.net or WhatsApp me at 9652578833.
