BenQ's EX3410R is a testament to how far ultrawide monitors have come, and it's the go-to option in 2022.
BenQ Mobiuz EX3410R monitor MSRP $599.00 Score Details DT Editors' Choice “BenQ's EX3410R is the bar for ultrawide gaming monitors thanks to excellent performance and price.” Pros Cons Ultrawide monitors have become increasingly popular over the last few years. What used to be a high-end product reserved for only the most dedicated enthusiasts has morphed into a class of gaming monitors available to anyone, and BenQ’s Mobiuz EX3410R is a showcase of that.
BenQ went beyond looks as well. The stand includes adjustments for height, tilt, and swivel, though you can’t rotate it to portrait mode. The VESA mount can help you there if you need a vertical ultrawide, but I’ve never liked using an ultrawide in this orientation. It’s no secret that a lot of PC gaming happens with headphones, and display makers have moved away from including speakers as a result. The EX3410R takes into account all of the other times you’re using your PC when you don’t want a pair of cans strapped to your head, and few other display makers pay that much mind to how people use their products.
Controls are easy, but the EX3410R’s OSD could use some work. If you press up or down, you’ll adjust the volume, and if you press left, right, or in the center, you’ll pull up a quick access menu. I like this menu a lot, as it allows you to cycle picture modes and access three user-set options. The options are specific to the preset, too, so you could have brightness on your cinema mode and overdrive settings on your gaming mode, for example.
Image quality I put the EX3410R through its paces with a diet of movies, video games, and text documents. Out of the box, the display looks much more vibrant than a typical VA monitor. It’s as if BenQ turned up a saturation dial just before the point it would be off-putting. The colors have an extra oomph to them.
HDR HDR lives in two buckets on the EX3410R: Real and emulated. Like several other BenQ monitors, this one comes with HDRi . HDRi can emulate HDR when you have it turned off, and it can also enhance HDR when you have it turned on. This is definitely in the immersive class of gaming monitors, not in the hyper-competitive class like the Asus ROG Swift PG259QNR. To that end, BenQ offers several tools to tailor your experience — Light Tuner to balance the shadows in open-world games and B.I.+ to adjust HDR automatically based on the built-in light sensor.
BenQ’s overdrive setting is called AMA, or Advanced Motion Accelerator, and it has three levels. The highest level is terrible, as is typical of VA panels, with clear black smearing on any moving object. AMA puts in some work at the lower levels, though. Simply turning it to the lowest settings results in a massive reduction in motion blur without any clear visual artifacts.