BenQ PD2770U monitor review

BenQ has long been a go-to brand if you wanted a premium monitor suitable for color-critical creative work. It’s SW270C, SW271C and SW272U 27-inch monitors have consistently delivered superb image quality at a fair price. The PD2770U isn't in the same model range as those monitors, but it's aimed at similar users. It boasts excellent image quality specs and a host of extra features designed for discerning creatives. On paper at least, it seems like the PD2770U has it all. Let's see if it delivers in real-world use as well.

Specifications

Display area: 27 inches
Aspect: 16:9
Panel type: IPS
Panel bit depth: 10-bit
Display colors: 1.07 billion
Resolution: 3840 x 2160
Pixel density: 163 ppi
Refresh rate: 60Hz
Response time: 5ms
Brightness: 400 cd/m2
Contrast ratio: 1000:1
Color space coverage: 100% Rec.709, 99% AdobeRGB, 99% P3
Video inputs: HDMI x2, USB-C (DP Alt Mode), DisplayPort

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Key features

The PD2770U has pretty much every conceivable monitor feature you could ask for from a photo or video editing perspective. It nails the basics with an impressive 99% coverage of the wide-gamut Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 color spaces, along with 100% Rec.709 coverage. Each PD2770U comes pre-calibrated to a color accuracy of less than Delta E 1.5, so you can be confident it'll display accurate color right out of the box.

To ensure it continues to be color-accurate, the PD2770U features hardware color calibration, meaning when you recalibrate its color, the adjusted color balance look-up table is stored within the monitor itself, rather than on the host computer. That way you can connect any computer you like and the monitor will always display the same, accurate color. What's more, you don't even need a separate monitor calibrator to calibrate the display in the first place. Built into the PD2770U's top screen bezel is a small colorimeter on a motorized hinge. When you want to calibrate, the colorimeter rotates out from its slot, then the monitor fires a sequence of pre-set colors. The entire calibration process is completely automatic and hassle-free, plus it can adapt to ambient lighting conditions. You can even schedule the process to take place at a day/time convenient for you.

But it's not just color accuracy that defines good image quality. You also want a monitor to display consistent color and brightness across its entire screen area, not just the central region. The PD2770U achieves this with a dedicated uniformity mode that keeps brightness consistent right to the corners of the display.

You can have all the image quality features out there, but they won't be much good if you can't see what's on screen. To ensure on-screen content is clearly visible, the PD2770U sports BenQ's Nano Matte coating to reduce reflections and ambient glare. It's also claimed to improve eye comfort during long editing sessions.

And the extras don't stop there. In addition to standard on-panel controls, BenQ includes its Hotkey Puck. This wireless remote control is designed to make navigating through the monitor's menu and settings a more ergonomic experience. The central, clickable dial is ideal for fine-tuning screen brightness, while the buttons surrounding the dial enable instant switching between your preferred three color modes. The buttons are also customizable, and though I personally don't find the Puck to be an essential accessory as I tend to stay in one color mode and screen brightness setting for the majority of my work, it's nonetheless a nice extra to have.

Build & handling

As you'd expect for a monitor at this price point, the PD2770U looks and feels like a high quality product. The screen's casing feels solid and well assembled, while the adjustable stand is predominantly metal and weighty; it’s a reassuringly stable base for the screen itself. It also has a decent range of height, tilt and swivel adjustment. The overall design of the monitor and stand is quite conservative - its substance over style - but one noteworthy visual feature is the screen’s oversized top bezel. The reason for this is to make room for the calibration colorimeter, which hinges out of a slot in the middle of the bezel so it can analyse and calibrate the display.

Directly below this, at the base of the screen, is a row of buttons and BenQ's classic joystick controller for navigating the various on-screen menus and monitor settings. This system works well, and feels more intuitive than a button-only interface, though don't forget you can also use the included Hotkey Puck remote dial for an even more ergonomic control system. Also on the bottom of the display are a pair of USB-A sockets, and a 3.5mm headphone socket.

At the rear of the panel are fairly standard input sockets, including a pair of HDMI ports, a single DisplayPort connection, dual USB-C ports, and an RJ45 LAN connection which is used for network-managed firmware updates and synchronized color management. If you connect a laptop via USB-C, the monitor can supply it with up to 96W of power, so you can have a single cable carrying power and video data.

BenQ supplies the PD2770U with a separate shading hood to guard against unwanted screen reflections. This is a one-piece design that easily attaches to the monitor using magnets - no prior assembly or annoying clips required.

Performance

The PD2770U uses a wide-gamut 10-bit IPS LCD panel, and to great effect. To the naked eye and in the default color pre-set, the display looks great, with vibrant but not over-saturated color, along with consistent color and contrast, regardless of your viewing angle. The 4K resolution on a screen this size results in a crisp 163 pixels per inch, though you will need to use approximately 150% operating system scaling in order for text, icons and toolbars to be easily readable. The Nano Matte coating does an excellent job of minimizing reflections, so unless you have a strong light source nearby, the shading hood shouldn't be required. One small quirk I noticed with the screen is how the extreme left and right edges appear to curve away from you just as they disappear behind the frame bezels, rather than having a defined edge. This seems to be by design, and while it does look a bit strange at first, you do get used to it.

Lab results

Color gamut:

A key selling point of the PD2770U is its excellent color space coverage; BenQ claims impressive 99% Adobe RGB and 99% DCI-P3 coverage. Testing our sample monitor revealed 97% P3 coverage, while Adobe RGB was exactly as advertised, at 99% - both terrific scores, and very welcome if you edit in either of these color spaces.

Color accuracy:

BenQ advertises the PD2770U as factory calibrated to a Delta E accuracy of less than 1.5. I managed a marginally worse deviance of 1.58, though I was able to get this down to 0.97 after a manual calibration. While this level of color accuracy is respectable, I was expecting better. For context, BenQ's SW272U monitor managed 1.07 out of the box during my testing, and its 5K PD2730S returned a superb Delta E deviance from ideal color of just 0.42.

Brightness and contrast:

Maximum brightness is advertised at 400 nits. I managed to record 367.1. That may be a little short of the claimed brightness, but in an ideal world you'll want to be editing in room that doesn't have strong ambient lighting, and therefore you shouldn't need your monitor to be set at a retina-searing brightness level.

If you choose to enable the screen's brightness uniformity mode, maximum brightness is reduced to 286.3 nits. This does appear noticeably dimmer to the naked eye, though again, it’s still well above the brightness level you'll likely be editing at.

Brightness uniformity:

With there being little practical penalty from using the uniformity mode, I kept it enabled when testing the PD2770U's brightness and color uniformity. I recorded a 4% difference between the brightest and dimmest screen regions, whether overall brightness was set to 100% or 67% - a very impressive result.

Color uniformity:

Color uniformity isn't quite so great, with a difference between the most and least accurate screen regions of Delta E 2.4, but it’s by no means a bad performance. What's more, reduce brightness down to a more usable 67% and color uniformity improves considerably, to a deviance of just Delta E 1.4.

Verdict

There's no denying that the BenQ PD2770U is a serious investment, but you do get a heck of a lot for your money. Excellent color space coverage, USB-C connectivity with Power Delivery, an included shading hood and Hotkey puck remote, plus the fully automated color calibration with built-in calibrator: the PD2770U has pretty much everything you could want from a high-end monitor designed for demanding creatives. For context, the Eizo CG2770X is another 27-inch 4K display with similar color space coverage as well as a built-in calibration sensor, yet it will set you back around $3400/£2500, making the PD2770U look like great value.

The PD2770U would easily be worth a full 5-star rating, if it wasn't for one thing: its color accuracy. Although BenQ advertises it to be within Delta E 1.5 of perfect color out of the box, I've tested many monitors of similar or lower cost that return a deviance of less than 1, making our 1.58 figure comparatively disappointing. Thankfully this score was improved by a manual calibration, and it's entirely possible other PD2770U examples could perform slightly better out of the box than our test sample.

Ultimately, if you need a high-quality monitor for color-critical image or video editing, the PD2770U should be high on your shortlist. It's ideal if you edit in Adobe RGB or DCI-P3, and it's completely automated hardware calibration is a blessing for creatives who require long-term color consistency. Even so, there are plenty of compelling alternative monitors at this price point, not least from BenQ itself. The aforementioned PD2730S lacks hardware calibration and a built-in calibrator, and its Adobe RGB coverage is only 86%, but it boasts a 5K resolution and has even better color accuracy, while costing around 30% less than the PD2770U.