My Dell 4K monitor that I bought about four years ago started to show its age. Eventually it started to produce lines of dead pixels across the display. I knew it’s gone.
It has been five months since I use my MacBook without a monitor. I took my time to do some research about which monitor I want to buy next. Sure, ultimately I want a Studio Display but I’m in no position financially to afford that right now. I just spent thousands on my cat’s medical bill and thousands more on my dental surgeries. It sucks, but you gotta do what you gotta do. Priorities.
I shortlisted a few 4K monitors. First of all, if you’re a designer like me, get at least a 4K monitor. 1440p will not cut it. It’s good in terms of scaling, but at 1x. You really don’t want to be living in the 1x world if you’re used to a retina display.
I considered a Dell, LG and BenQ monitors. Specifically Dell U2723QE, LG 27UQ850 and BenQ PD2725U. Dell is a household name so you kind of know what you’re getting. LG looks promising but I really can’t stand the thick chin all their monitors have.
So it came down to Dell and BenQ. I had Dell U2720Q previously, and the U2723QE is the successor to that. The display is okay, the colour is okay but it’s got some issues when I was using the older model. That made me kind of hesitated to go with Dell this time. So I went with BenQ PD2725U.
I had one worry with the BenQ — it’s only got 250 nits of brightness in Standard mode. I was worried if it’s gonna be too dim or dull considering my bright room. I’m glad I was wrong. There is nothing to be worried about. The display is just fine, even in the brightest room that sometimes feels like a sauna.
The texts are sharp and the colour reproduction is amazing. I currently use it at 3008px resolution and I don’t see pixelated texts from where I sit, which is about an arm length from the monitor.
And the best thing of all is, it scales really nicely. It’s not perfect, it’s only 163-ish ppi but it scales faster than the Dell I had before. The performance is twice better.
I like the hotkey puck. It’s a breeze to adjust monitor brightness and access the settings. Why don’t every other monitor manufacturer has this. One complain though — the hotkey puck is connected to the back of the monitor via a mini micro-USB port. Such an ancient thing.
I currently use the monitor on its own stand just because I was too lazy to re-install my Illegear Ruka monitor arm.
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