Go display shopping, and you’ll see no shortage of 1080p high-refresh gaming monitors to choose among, with BenQ’s Mobiuz EX2510S ($299.99) joining a crowded field. As a high-refresh, high-performance display targeting gamers, the monitor performs in line with what speed-minded players want, but BenQ’s inclusion of support for HDR10—without the premium picture quality that it’s supposed to bring—adds more cost than necessary. Plus, its flimsy stand and lack of onboard USB ports showcase areas where that money might have been better spent. For just a little more cash, the MSI Oculux NXG253R is more than twice as fast, and it shines with image quality that matches some monitors twice the price.
The Mobiuz Mission: 1080p Play on a Speedy Panel
The Mobiuz EX2510S is a 24.5-inch-diagonal monitor with 1,920-by-1,080-pixel native resolution and a 165Hz native refresh rate, built around an IPS panel.
The monitor is mounted on a stand similar to that of the Mobiuz EX3415R we reviewed earlier this year, and gamers may not take to that. For years, BenQ monitors have been performance-first, design-second products, and that heritage shows here. A sole orange stripe runs across the triangular plastic base of the monitor to signify its “gaming”-ness, and the stand is not as stable as we’d like.
Apart from the stripe, that is all the Mobiuz does to set its cabinet apart from, say, that of an office monitor. The adjustability is above average, though, with -5 to 20 degrees of vertical tilt, wide 178-degree viewing angles (both side-to-side and up-and-down), and a swivel range of -20 to 20 degrees. The display cannot pivot 90 degrees between landscape and portrait modes.
BenQ’s onscreen display (OSD) menu is controlled by a five-way joystick at the right rear of the unit, flanked by three other control buttons underneath. The recently updated OSD offers up smorgasbord of customization options and settings, and presents all of it in one of the most easily navigable formats we’ve seen on a gaming display.
Pushing right on the joystick brings up a sort of “hot menu,” where you can change profiles, tweak the brightness, and add a custom section for the setting of your choosing. This makes it quick and easy to swap between setting profiles and creating your own. Of the things this monitor does right, its OSD is one of its top highlights.
As for ports, the Mobiuz’s $299.99 price leaves a bit to be desired on that front. On the underside of the cabinet, we found just two HDMI 2.0 ports, plus one DisplayPort 1.4b input, these alongside a 3.5mm headphone jack for use with the HDMI audio pass-through. No USB upstream or downstream connections here; only the basics.
Testing the Mobiuz EX2510S: Great for Games, HDR Less So
As mentioned, this 1080p display boasts an IPS panel with a native refresh rate of 165Hz (with no overclocks supported on the refresh rate). Rated for HDR10, the EX2510S supports AMD FreeSync Premium. We put the EX2510S through our standard gaming-monitor test regimen using a Datacolor SpyderX Elite colorimeter. Here’s what we saw…
Testing the display in the default picture mode with an SDR signal, the BenQ showed a peak brightness of 288.5 nits, just a hair above its 280-nit rating, with a black level of 0.33 nits. That works out to a contrast ratio of 870:1, which falls a bit below its rated 1,000:1.
Switching over to HDR testing, we were able to see some surprising bumps in that brightness up to 406.1 nits, a bar that many HDR10 monitors shoot for but only a few clear. Alas, as we’ll get into below, that brightness result didn’t always translate to the kind of image quality you should expect from a $300 1080p display.
The Mobiuz EX2510S’s coverage of both the sRGB and Adobe RGB gamuts was below that of many other models we’ve tested lately at just 96% and 75%, respectively, while DCI-P3 coverage sat at just 79%. That is much lower than what we’ve seen from competing Fast IPS-based panels of late, and below par for content creators overall.
Coming off those results, the Mobiuz put up a better-than-average Delta E (dE) color accuracy reading of just 1.68, which suggests a possible sub-1.0 reading with some careful tuning using BenQ’s extensive color configuration options.
Media and Gaming Performance
So, enough with the numbers. How did things actually look once we booted up some videos and games?
On an HDR10 display, our 4K Costa Rica test footage (output at 1080p to match the monitor’s native resolution) looked expectedly low-tier, and switching back to SDR mode brought things only up to the level of “mediocre”. However SDR kept speeds quick in gaming (HDR adds some input lag and increases response times), which is this monitor’s main purpose.
Speaking of which, next I booted up the game Red Dead Redemption 2, with HDR alternately turned on and off, to see how the monitor handled each. The HDR picture was, again, not great, following the same issues we saw in our picture testing above. HDR support is sometimes added to 1080p performance monitors as a “because we can” rather than a “because we should,” and it usually looks better as a selling point on the box than it does as an actual feature on the monitor itself.
For testing traditional input lag (the amount of time between when a monitor receives a signal and the screen updates), we use an HDFury 4K Diva HDMI matrix. Given a 60Hz test signal, the Mobiuz joins a swell of displays we’ve tested lately that return results below 1 millisecond, and our detector can’t measure exactly how far below.
To see how that low input lag felt in action, I tried a few rounds of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Valorant, and Overwatch. In each of these, the BenQ felt about as good as gaming can get, save for certain ultra-premium high-refresh panels like the MSI Oculux NXG253R. I actually found myself gaming for longer than the usual test period during rounds of Overwatch. The monitor felt so responsive to play on that my tallies (versus my normal scores on my personal 200Hz monitor) rose a bit, thanks to how responsive and fast the hits felt while using certain characters. Low input lag for the win!
A Mobiuz Strip of Pros and Cons
As a midrange-priced 1080p gaming display, BenQ’s latest Mobiuz model is just a bit too pricey for what’s on offer, especially given the barebones port loadout and the plastic base. The EX2510S’s performance in the gaming scenarios it was built to handle is certainly exceptional, though. The low input lag and overall responsive feel added up to some major wins, both in formal testing, and on our personal esports scoreboard during our multiplayer gaming trials.
Because of the so-so picture quality, though, its HDR rating might as well not be included, and the base brightness isn’t high enough to make up the difference as a primary content-watching and -creation monitor. This leaves the Mobiuz in a bit of a specific tight spot, being great for games where speed is paramount, but below par for general content enjoyment and work. Those who like to watch movies just often as play games might consider better-balanced options like the Fast IPS-based Acer Nitro XV252Q F instead.
