BenQ MA270U monitor review: A 4K display that dares to be different
BenQ’s MA series of monitors are designed to make the perfect accompaniment to a MacBook. While Apple would have you believe that the £1,499 Studio Display is the optimal side to serve with freshly baked Apple silicon in a MacBook crust, the MA270U plates up a 27in 4K monitor with all the trimmings for £450.
And if you’re suspicious that BenQ has simply given one of its standard 27in monitors an Apple-themed makeover, then that’s not the case. In fact, BenQ has color-matched the MA270U with the most recent MacBook displays so that images look consistent from laptop to monitor. Covering a claimed 95% of Apple’s preferred Display P3 color gamut, and with an average Delta E of less than 2, the MA270U should be as accurate as most people would ever need.
This focus on image quality doesn’t come at the expense of connectivity, nor does it shut the door on Windows users. Regardless of your preferred OS, you get a slick desktop app in place of the usual fiddly on-screen display, single-cable USB-C simplicity, 90 watts of power delivery, and a useful USB hub to boot. The only difficult decision you’ll face is whether you should make room on your desk for the larger 31.5in MA320U – or whether you’d be better off buying one of the MA270U’s many rivals instead.
BenQ MA270U monitor: Design & Features
You’ll be unsurprised to learn that the MA270U is a perfect scale replica of the larger MA320U. Naturally, though, this is all part of the appeal. While its features, resolution, and connectivity are all broadly similar to its larger stablemate, the 27in panel takes up considerably less space on a desk, and it’s roughly 10cm narrower and around the same amount shorter when set to a comfortable height. For space-starved desks, it’s an attractive compromise.
The large, square base and cylindrical stand are a familiar sight, and the plastics are covered in a silver shimmer which is designed to complement a metal-clad MacBook. Build quality might not scale the heights of Apple’s stratospherically expensive displays, but everything feels sturdy and well put together. The only exception here is the plastic cable management clip which just feels a little too lightweight in our opinion.
The MA270U’s slightly smaller panel perches on top of exactly the same stand as the MA320U. That’s no bad thing as it provides 115mm of height adjustment, a 30-degree range of side-to-side swivel, and a pivot mode for using the best in a portrait orientation. The sturdy stand works really well, too, feeling nice and stable even at full extension, and allowing for fine adjustments with a gentle one-handed nudge in the right direction.
Connectivity is useful if not class-leading. There’s no Thunderbolt 4 support for starters, which is a bit of a shame, but you do at least get a usefully speedy USB 3.2 Gen 1 hub. The primary USB-C port supplies 90 watts of charging, 4K 60Hz images via its DisplayPort Alt mode, and powers up a second USB-C port which supplies a more modest 15W of power. A single USB-A port is positioned at the rear, and a second USB-A port and 3.5mm headphone out are positioned just underneath the monitor’s bottom edge for easier access.
DisplayPort is notably absent here, but you do get two HDMI 2.0 ports. This adds some welcome flexibility — you can hook up a console or desktop PC to the monitor in addition to a MacBook or laptop via USB-C – and it’s also handy if you want to make the most of the USB hub’s full-speed USB 3.2 Gen 1 data rates. Just like all the other 4k monitors we’ve tested, you have to pick between maximal data rates and the highest refresh rates – you can’t have both. You have three options: settle for USB 2 data rates and a 60Hz refresh rate; drop down to 30Hz and have full-speed USB 3.2 Gen 1 transfers, or use a separate HDMI connection for video and save the USB-C connection for data and power.
You do also get a pair of speakers with 3 watts of amplification apiece, but while they’re slightly better than average, they’re still best kept for emergencies. They go reasonably loud, reaching 66dbA from a meter away, but the bass and lower midrange are totally absent, and the high-frequency response is flat and muffled. There is just enough clarity in the midrange to add a little depth and interest to music, though, so you might find them acceptable for listening to podcasts or audiobooks.
One rather radical departure from the norm is BenQ’s decision to dump the traditional on-screen display (OSD) in favor of a desktop app. The Display Pilot 2 software is available for both PC and Mac, and this provides easy access to all the monitor’s features via a simple desktop widget. The app lurks in the system or menu tray when you’re not using it, and a simple click pings it into view. That done, you can quickly adjust brightness, activate color profiles, toggle HDR or auto pivot, or delve into the more advanced settings menu, tweaking gamma, color temperature, and color gamut. In short, it works brilliantly and we wish more monitor manufacturers would provide similar functionality – if not replacing the OSD entirely, then at least providing it as a complement to a traditional monitor-side interface.
You can still quickly adjust brightness, volume, and input source via the little 4-way joystick under the monitor’s bottom-most edge, but that’s your lot. Scroll left and right through the minimalist menu, and one of the pages displays a QR code sending you to a download page for Display Pilot 2. The only downside of this approach? Well, you’ll just need to cross your fingers that the app is updated regularly enough to work reliably for the monitor’s likely lifespan.
Functionally, though, it’s excellent. You can synchronize brightness settings between your laptop and monitor – adjust the relative brightness with the onscreen sliders, and then both displays will work in tandem when you adjust the brightness with the shortcut buttons or OS controls. It’s also really easy to synchronize the OS-level and monitor color profiles: select between Display P3 or sRGB modes and, if you toggle the ICCsync button, the app will activate the same color profile on both devices.
MacBook users may appreciate the M-Book color profile. This preset was designed to mimic the color response provided by the 2022-era MacBook Pro panel so that colors look consistent across both displays. We didn’t have a suitable MacBook available to test these claims, but as we’ll discuss shortly, the MA270U’s color accuracy is really very good indeed. Any laptop display that reproduces the sRGB and/or Display P3 color spaces accurately, and has a similar white point, should make a reasonably good match with the MA270U.
BenQ MA270U monitor: Display quality
The MA270U’s display specifications are slightly inferior to that of its big brother. There are similarities: it’s still a 4K 3,840 x 2,160 panel with a 60Hz refresh rate, and just like the MA320U, it uses a standard IPS panel, so the claimed contrast ratio is a modest 1,200:1.
However, quoted brightness drops from the MA320U’s 600cd/m2 to 400cd/m2, hence the DisplayHDR 400 certification, and the MA270U’s color gamut is just marginally inferior, matching the MA320U’s 99% sRGB coverage while dropping a single percentage point to offer a 95% Display P3 coverage.
In our testing, the MA270U matched or exceeded BenQ’s claims in most areas. We saw an sRGB coverage of 99.6%, and the DCI-P3 coverage reached 93.4%. Brightness peaked at 393cd/m2 in SDR mode, but pushed up to 440cd/m2 in HDR. Contrast was a little lower than claimed, with all of our measurements ranging between 1,100:1 and just shy of 1,200:1, but this is exactly what we’d expect from a standard IPS panel.
Color accuracy is really very good, however. In sRGB mode, we measured an average Delta E of 1.09 and a maximum of 2.12, which indicates that colors look pretty much tone-perfect to the naked eye. The only aberration here is that the measured white point is quite a way off the 6,500k ideal, with the MA270U opting for a much warmer 6,052k.
Switching to the BenQ’s Display P3 preset provides a similarly refined performance. We measured an average Delta E of 1.19 and a maximum of 3.33. Contrast dips a little at 1,108:1, but the measured 6,275k color temperature is much closer to the intended 6,500k.
HDR is one area where the MA270U drops significantly behind its big brother. Whereas the MA320U has a basic 8 dimming zones and a peak brightness of over 600cd/m2, the MA270U’s peak brightness is substantially lower and it only has crude full-screen dimming. In practice, this means that the backlight very slowly lowers or raises the brightness depending on the onscreen content, so it can’t respond to rapidly moving HDR highlights like an OLED or Mini LED panel can.
Brightness is very slightly higher in HDR mode – we saw a peak brightness of 440cd/m2 in real content – but while the combination of high pixel density and good color accuracy make for pleasant-looking images, this isn’t HDR in any meaningful sense. There isn’t sufficient contrast or brightness to provide a true HDR picture and the sluggish dimming is anything but dynamic. If you prefer the look of games or movies in HDR mode, then the Display Pilot 2 app makes it incredibly quick and easy to toggle the feature on and off, but be in no doubt – this is HDR in name only.
Backlight and panel uniformity are mediocre. Display a solid color across the MA270U’s panel, and it’s obvious to the naked eye that the brightness and color tone varies around the panel’s edges, mostly due to backlight leakage. This isn’t egregiously bad, but it’s a long way from perfect. We also measure brightness and contrast across 25 points on every monitor we test, and while the measurements varied quite a bit across the MA270U’s panel, all but two segments showed a variance of under 10% which isn’t too bad at all. In total, six areas failed to meet the nominal tolerance for contrast and brightness variances, which is disappointing but this isn’t necessarily unusual at the price.
The MA270U’s motion handling is equally unexciting. The monitor has three overdrive settings – off, High, and Premium – and the monitor is set to High by default. The 5ms response time sounds fine on paper, but the MA270U is among the more sluggish panels we’ve tested in recent months. Fine detail is noticeably smeared on moving objects, and – just as we found with the BenQ MA320U – engaging the Premium overdrive setting does very little if anything to sharpen things up. Suffice to say, this is not a gaming monitor.
BenQ MA270U monitor: Is it worth it?
The BenQ MA270U does a lot right. Color accuracy is good straight out of the box, and the design and features are both thoughtful and practical. The desktop app in particular makes life a lot easier – so much so that we hope other manufacturers begin to follow suit. Being able to rapidly switch color profiles, tweak image settings or enable HDR with just a couple of clicks of a mouse button is far more elegant than prodding buttons and battling with esoteric on-screen displays and little 4-way joysticks.
That said, there’s a lot of competition at this end of the market, and by far the biggest challenger to the BenQ MA270U is the Dell UltraSharp U2723QE. Given that both monitors retail for a very similar sum, we’d say that the Dell is the better buy overall, offering subtly improved image quality, vastly more connectivity, and useful KVM and PIP/PBP features. It’s by far the better-looking monitor, too. At the right price, we’d still be very happy to have the BenQ on our desks, but given the various image quality quibbles, it’s just not quite good enough to lead the pack overall.
BenQ MA270U specifications
|
Display |
27in IPS panel |
Row 0 – Cell 2 |
|
Panel resolution |
3,840 x 2,160 |
Row 1 – Cell 2 |
|
Refresh rate |
60Hz |
Row 2 – Cell 2 |
|
Panel response time |
5ms GtG |
Row 3 – Cell 2 |
|
Adaptive Sync Support |
No |
Row 4 – Cell 2 |
|
HDR Support |
Yes, HDR10, DisplayHDR 400 |
Row 5 – Cell 2 |
|
Ports |
HDMI 2.0 x 2, USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 x 1 (upstream, up to 90W, Displayport Alt), USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 x 2 (downstream, up to 15W), USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 x 2 (downstream), Headphone out |
Row 6 – Cell 2 |
|
Stand |
Ergonomics: -5~20° tilt, 15~15° swivel, 90° pivot, 115mm height adjustment |
Row 7 – Cell 2 |
|
Dimensions (with stand) |
614 x 220 x 560mm |
Row 8 – Cell 2 |
|
Weight (with stand) |
8.2kg |
Row 9 – Cell 2 |
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