BenQ Mobiuz EX271UZ

Design

• Modern, two-tone chassis
• Meagre stand adjustment
• Rich port selection

I like the look of the EX271UZ, and it’s sure to fit well in a modern gaming setup, especially with a two-tone black and white colourway, and slim bezels around the modest 27-inch screen. The presence of any BenQ branding is quite limited, with a simple logo in one corner of the screen, plus Mobiuz lettering on the rear.

Assembly is nice and simple, with the base screwing into the bottom of the stand, and the other end latching into place on the back of the panel. No tools are needed, so it’s easy to be up and running in a matter of moments. As is in-keeping with recent design changes to monitors in a more general sense, the base of the stand is flat, as opposed to having V-shaped legs, making it easier to stand things on it if you need to – in my case, it’s my Sonos Beam soundbar.

The adjustment of the EX271UZ’s stand is quite limited against its key rivals, though, with some scope of tilt, swivel and height adjustment to get comfortable with it. It won’t go into portrait mode, though.

I’m a big fan of the port selection of this panel, though. We’ve got two HDMI 2.1 ports, with one of them an eARC port for hooking up an external soundbar or speakers (which the Alienware AW2725Q has) with passthrough for Dolby Atmos, plus a DP 1.4 and two USB-C ports. One of the ports has 90W of power delivery, while the other is an upstream port for powering a USB hub – this BenQ screen also has KVM powers for using one set of peripherals with multiple connected devices. There are also some further USB ports on the underside of the front fascia for quick access.

Image Quality

• Fantastic detail and silky smooth motion
• Deep blacks, and marvellous contrast
• SDR brightness not as strong as other panel types

As much as this BenQ choice takes a different approach in look to its key rivals, it is using the same fourth-gen Samsung QD-OLED panel as its rivals, meaning very similar image quality across the board.

This means you’re getting the same sublime detail, deep, inky blacks and sublime contrast, as measured by my colorimeter. We’re getting a black level of 0.01, and a fantastic contrast ratio of 17650:1, proving this panel has some lovely dynamic range.

Thanks to its 240Hz refresh rate, on-screen action felt especially smooth in everything from high-intensity shooters such as Counter-Strike 2 to more cinematic titles such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Indiana Jones & The Great Circle. It’s especially crisp and sharp. Plus, a 27-inch screen size is much more usable for close-up competitive gameplay against a bigger 32-inch choice.

Being an OLED, you also get sublime colour accuracy with this screen. My colorimeter measured 100% coverage of the sRGB colour space, as well as 98% DCI-P3 and 0% Adobe RGB, demonstrating this panel’s suitability for both productivity and more colour-sensitive workloads.

This fourth-gen QD-OLED screen also benefits from a bump in pixel density, with the XG271UZ rated for the same 165ppi, or pixels per inch, as its rivals. This helps the legibility of text against last year’s 32-inch models, such as the Philips Evnia 32M2N8900 I use every day, and generally affords more clarity for productivity and gaming workloads.

Support for VRR is good too, with this BenQ option supporting AMD FreeSync Premium Pro and having compatibility with Nvidia G-Sync through the included Adaptive Sync toggle in the OSD. HDR support is less impressive, with the EX271UZ only coming with basic HDR10 and VESA DisplayHDR 400 True Black. The Alienware AW2725Q supports both of those, as well as Dolby Vision.

The only area where this BenQ panel falls down, as other rivals do, is with its SDR brightness. OLEDs don’t typically get as bright as their Mini LED rivals, for instance, at least in SDR workloads. My colorimeter measures a peak of 254.5 nits, which is very much in line with BenQ’s quoted 250 nit figure. Nonetheless, it can get up to 1000 nits peak brightness in a smaller window for truly impactful HDR performance in supported content.

Software and Features

• Convenient and clever OSD with additional software
• No speakers

The EX271UZ comes with a slick and decently feature-rich OSD that’s easily controllable with the joystick on the underside of the front of the screen. There’s no need to reach around the back and find it. There’s everything from different picture modes to numerous OLED care modes, plus useful extras such as toggles for VRR, HDR and on-screen crosshairs for shooter games.

The unique thing with this BenQ monitor is what the brand calls Colour Shuttle. It’s some downloadable software that acts as an extension of the OSD, providing on-the-fly picture profile adjustment, plus game-specific ones to optimise image quality. At the moment, thaw profiles are for brand new games such as Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Death Stranding 2: On The Beach. They’re downloadable from the software and apply to one of three ‘Gamer’ custom picture profiles on the monitor.

The EX271UZ follows in the footsteps of its contemporaries by opting for no speakers, instead leaving to use either its headphone jack or HDMI eARC port for hooking up capable separates or a soundbar.

Should you buy it?