BenQ PD2700U

Give us pixels, and plenty of ’em.

- Jeremy Laird

Adaptive sync, crazy high refresh rates, HDR visuals, and quantum dot techno-trickery are all great, but what the heck happened to plain old high quality pixels, and having a lot of ’em? No question, the monitor market is nothing if not innovative of late, but there’s a danger of losing sight of what’s important.

Enter BenQ’s new PD2700U. It’s conspicuously lacking in all of the above. It runs at just 60Hz. It doesn’t support adaptive sync. There’s no fancy local dimming with quantum dot enhancements. And that’s just fine by us.

Strictly speaking, the PD2700U is HDR10 compliant. But that reflects its ability to process an HDR signal. Without local dimming and with a maximum brightness of just 350cdm2, this isn’t a true HDR monitor. So, what exactly does it have to offer?

Most notable is the 27-inch panel, a high-quality IPS item, packing a full 4K 3840x2160 pixel grid. Throw in some decent control electronics, and you have a recipe for a very pleasing computing experience. Partly, that’s thanks to the combination of the 27-inch diagonal and the 4K native resolution. Do the math, and that works out to 163 pixels per inch.