Gadronics
BenQ has been making excellent Mac-friendly monitors for years, and their new MA270S is the creme de la creme of their lineup. It’s a 27-inch 5K monitor, but with a feature that most monitors don’t ship with: a glossy finish.
All of Apple’s displays ship with glossy finishes by default, but for one reason or another, matte finishes have dominated the external monitor market – and BenQ is bucking that trend. This makes the MA270S much more at home with the Mac.
I checked out the MA270U last year, their more budget-friendly offering for the Mac. It’s still a 27-inch panel, though it comes in at 4K instead of 5K. It does come with a matte finish by default, though they do make a variant with a glossy finish for those who prefer it. BenQ offers excellent colors, so you shouldn’t worry about it feeling subpar compared to your MacBook screen.
Overview
The new MA270S follows many of the same design philosophies as the MA270U that I tried out. It has the same slim bezels, the same minimal silver stand (with a silicone pad on the base for resting your MacBook without scratching it), and a plethora of ports.
You can run the MA270S with just a single USB-C cable, powering your MacBook and carrying all of your accessories plugged into the monitor. The display offers four USB-C ports, two USB-A ports, and two additional HDMI ports for other devices.
BenQ also offers an app called Display Pilot 2, allowing you to manage the display and brightness of the monitor from your Mac’s keyboard, without having to fiddle with the monitor’s controls. It also offers a KVM, allowing you to seamlessly use the same keyboard and mouse with your Mac and a Windows PC.
The built-in stand swivels, tilts, pivots, and has height adjustability. The display panel, on the other hand, offers 99% P3 color coverage, offers HDR400 support, goes up to 70Hz (though that’s nothing to write home about), and has built-in speakers.
Wrap up
In all honesty, the only true compromises compared to the Studio Display are two fold:
That said, the MA270S comes in at just $999, vs the $1599 price tag of Apple’s Studio Display – while offering a similar 27-inch 5K panel with a glossy finish. The savings are substantial, and at the end of the day, the MA270S is going to be one of few 5K options on the market with a glossy finish – so if you’re after that, it’s sort of a no-brainer. It’s been my daily driver for weeks, and I’m certainly quite pleased with it.
You can purchase the MA270S from BenQ’s website or on Amazon (out of stock at the time of writing). Or, if you want one of their cheaper glossy monitors (albeit at 4K), you can check out the MA270UP or MA320UP, at 27-inch and 32-inch display sizes, respectively. Both of those are available on Amazon.
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