The best monitors don't just give you great visuals. They immerse you in what you're doing, so the best gaming monitors put you right in the middle of the action and the best monitors for MacBook Pros give you a much bigger canvas to work, create or play on. But sometimes what's right for one kind of job isn't right for others, and if like me you wear a lot of different hats that can be a pain. BenQ may have the answer with the PD2706UA, its latest 27-inch Ergo Arm monitor.
BenQ's Ergo Arm series monitors aren't like other displays, because they have a whopping great arm on the back. That means you can move them about, spin them round and generally treat your work/creative/gaming area like a transformer. It's fun with just one, but having seen the videos showing multiple Ergo Arms in all their possible configurations I reckon my perfect display setup would mean two of them.
I like to move it, move it
Many people these days wear multiple hats when they're using their PC or Mac. I know I do. In addition to writing news and features for my day job, I live inside book and screenwriting apps and spend tons of time doing music recording and production too.
Finding a display to happily cope with all those very different things proved pretty tough for me, and the best solution I could find was an ultrawide monitor. And while it's great – it gives me tons of on-screen space – I'd like it a whole lot more if I could move it and twist it and reconfigure it to get some more real-world space too, because the desk setup I have for when I'm writing isn't the desk setup I'd like for when I'm immersed in Logic Pro and using real keyboards, mixing desks and other bits of kit.
That's why I like this new BenQ. The Ergo Arm enables you to get it into pretty much any position and orientation you like, so you can turn your workstation into a studio with a grab and a flip.
There are some very useful features here. There's a clever ePaper mode for working with digital publications – a feature I didn't know existed and really, really want now – and both Picture In Picture and Picture By Picture. There's a built-in KVM switch so you can move from computer to computer without any fuss, and the single all-in-one 90W USB cable keeps everything from sliding into cable chaos.
Specs-wise you're looking at 4K UHD, DisplayHDR 400 and very accurate colours: BenQ says it delivers 95% P3, 100% sRGB, and 100% Rec.709 color spaces and along with "amazing" Delta E ≤ 3 color reproduction.
I'm genuinely surprised by the pricing here, because I read the specs first and assumed I'd be looking at pro-level pricing. But the PD2706UA is surprisingly affordable, with an RRP of $629. That's roughly £511 before tax.
