A Tale Of Two Monitors
Choosing an external monitor
A while ago I discussed a couple of forced upgrades that we had to perform. My personal work computer was upgraded to a Mac Studio and our dedicated print workstation in the studio was upgraded to an M4 Mac Mini. Yes, our studio is Mac based, if you are a photographer and are also invested in the Apple ecosystem you’ll remember a long period when Apple didn’t have an external dedicated monitor. During that time Les and I did extensive evaluation and research of the available third-party monitors. We ended up deciding on BenQ 32 inch 4K SW series monitor. They were the new kid on the block and offered overwhelming value and performance in the Professional display marketplace. Doesn’t seem that long ago where nobody ever heard of the brand, now they are competitive up and down the market and are a brand almost everyone looks at when considering an external monitor for video, design, print, photography, etc.
Both Les and I love our SW series monitors, which are meant to be custom hardware calibrated and provide 99% Adobe RGB color. Fantastic for those focused on print output. The PD series monitors are similar without the 16bit 3D hardware LUT and are perfectly workable for print and other work-flows. When choosing a monitor for our new M4 Mini print workstation we looked to BenQ but things have changed a bit since Apple has released their own external monitors. The Pro Display XDR was out of the question, too big, too expensive, and most of all provided features that have almost no bearing on what our primary needs are. All of those are possibly useful and a good value if you are producing video HDR content. I am not an expert, I am barely conversant. The Apple Studio Display on the other hand looked very attractive.
The Contenders
We didn’t want a 32inch monitor for our print workstation, we wanted something a bit smaller but super high quality. We wanted either a 24inch or 27inch, big enough with a reasonable pixel density (4K or more) but small enough to be put on a cart and moved around our studio easily. The two monitors we narrowed our selection to were the Apple Studio Display and the BenQ SW272U 27in 4K HDR monitor.
Both monitors are 27inch with decent build quality
The BenQ is 4K the Apple is 5K both are acceptable but I love high pixel density
Both are similarly priced at first glance… The BenQ is $1499. The Apple is $1599.
Both have a reasonable color gamut and will be acceptable to evaluate soft-proofs for fine art inkjet printing as well as other tasks. One may be a hair better for print, the other a hair better for video (HDR and new video color spaces etc)
So how does one decide? Purely based on specs? I’d suggest that color and brightness performance specifications are not the best way to decide on which of these two, similarly priced monitors is for you. It’s actually more difficult than we imagined and took us a bit to decide. Ultimately it came down to price and our two priorities.
Price
These two monitors start out looking like they are very competitive but that all depends on your particular priorities. The first and biggest priority of ours was that we wanted, maybe needed a mat, anti-glare surface. Both of us have become spoiled with the anti-glare surface of the BenQ monitors. We’ve been through two generations of their screens. The first generation is great, a far cry from Apple’s old anti-glare cinema displays that were course and hard to determine was was noise in a photo or the texture of the screen. The second generation was even better. The new SW272U is even better, more transparent, more effective.
The Apple Studio Display does not include the mat anti-glare surface in the base price. Choosing that option is a whopping $300 upgrade to get the nano-textured glass. I cannot tell you which one is “better” as I’ve not seen them side by side. Maybe the Apple surface is “better” but without having them side by side they both seem equally effective and out of the way. That price disparity alone makes the Apple harder to justify. If you are agnostic then this factor might not be a deciding factor.
The price disparity does not end there. The BenQ has tilt and height adjustment included. The Apple is tilt only. If you want height adjustment that’s another $400. Right there was the deal killer for us. As we were now looking at $2200 instead of the $1500 range for our print workstation. The only upside for our application was the higher pixel density.
Other Considerations
Above I described what we needed and was applicable to our use of the monitor as opposed to the price. I don’t want to imply those are the only considerations. The Apple Studio Display has some decent upsides as well. If you are using this monitor as part of your main device, where you spend most of your daily work hours doing a lot of different tasks there’s certainly something to be said of Apple’s convenience features.
Good sound quality built right in. You might not want or need additional speakers for your desktop. If you are an audio professional these probably don’t matter but they are fine for general use. Better than fine.
Built in 12mpix FaceTime camera. Spend a bunch of time on video conferences, etc? Certainly convenient. If this was the monitor we used to do on-line consulting, webinars, etc that would certainly be a factor.
Quick, accurate, convenient multi-tasking. Super quick, seamless, easy to understand color space and brightness calibration for the task at hand. Print, video, photo, etc. If you need to do print work, video work in multiple output modes (HDR, Rec709, Rec2020, etc, etc) as well as just using your computer to consume content this quick switching back and forth all integrated in a Mac/Apple fashion is very nice. Yes, the BenQ has similar pre-calibrated modes but it’s not nearly as conveniently controlled right from the same spot in the OS. Theoretically easy enough but error prone when not paying attention (IE, switch monitor to a pre-calibrated mode, then go and choose the correct matching profile. If you forget or choose the wrong one… you might have a lot of work to redo)
Bottom Line
If you are an Apple user the Studio Display has a lot going for it, especially if you forego the nano textured glass and height adjustability options. If you are primarily interested in the absolute optimum print workflow and accuracy or a Windows user the BenQ SW272U is the winner by a large margin, especially when considering price.
I did not bother to go into all of the things we tested, minute technical considerations, or operational details as there is a guy that does a great job on that for many, many BenQ monitors and the Apple Studio Display. Art is Right is a great resource for all of those details including calibration differences between these two devices. I wanted to share our particular priorities and use for those of you facing a similar choice with the Apple Studio Display being one of the contenders.
I was in a similar situation 2.5 years ago and went BenQ, and with no regrets. At the time, the Studio Display was getting reviews that were quite critical too. I'm no photography pro though, more scientific imaging, graphic design and illustration.
I commented when you spoke of your Apple upgrades last time, from a perspective of disappointment in Apple after a long period of consistent support for them. I do see the benefit of Apple for creative workflows, especially in combination with Adobe software. My criticisms are mostly centered on their moving away from broadly applicable general computing to niche applications, and fraught repairability. Anyway, good post!
Very useful, as are the prior comments. Let me ask a Luddite question. I came back from summer vacation to find that my NEC PA272 had died. Since I don't currently have a laptop (always used my company laptop until I retired), that left me dead in the water. Needed a display for my Windows computer pronto, so I didn't have the time to do a thorough search for a quality photo monitor. So I bought the best-reviewed mid-range monitor I could quickly find, the Dell U2723Q, essentially an sRGB product. It's good for what it is. But here's my low-brow question (being many years beyond agonizing over color management and state-of-the-art monitors -- my successive NEC monitors served me well, so I didn't mess with success):
If I'm primarily interested in printing photographs, and most images edited on my inferior sRGB monitor show significant out-of-gamut areas when soft-proofed for any of the destinatiion papers I use, what is the benefit of having an Adobe RGB capable monitor? The better monitor allows me to produce a better monitor display, of course, but does it help me produce a better print? Obviously I'm missing or have forgotten some key element of the process.
(Even if I haven't, I'll probably run out and buy the BenQ 27" or an Eizo, on the basis of this blog post and comments. Just because better monitors are clearly out there. . . .)