In the world of gaming monitors, you’ll almost always make a compromise or two in whichever panel you buy. You might accept a lesser high dynamic range (HDR) rating for a higher refresh rate, a larger screen size for a weightier product, or anything else in between. On rare occasions, ultrawide displays appear that make almost no compromises except for high price, such as the $2,499 Acer Predator X35. Other times, we get monitors like the BenQ Mobiuz EX3415R ($999.99), which sacrifices a higher HDR rating or more vibrant color in pursuit of record-setting input-latency results. Unfortunately, those records are matched by alternatives like the $649 MSI Optix MPG341CQR, which manages to go toe-to-toe with the Mobiuz on specs and performance numbers while looking better and costing a lot less. If you’re a BenQ loyalist, the EX3415R is the best gaming ultrawide display the company offers. Otherwise, MSI has already got you covered for way fewer bucks.
Mobiuz: A Design That’s a Little ‘Stripped’ Down
The Mobiuz EX3415R is a 34-inch curved monitor with 3,440-by-1,440-pixel resolution, featuring an IPS panel with a native refresh rate of 144Hz. It features support for VESA DisplayHDR 400 and AMD FreeSync Premium to prevent screen tearing. The curvature rating is 1900R.
This degree of curve is standard for most curved displays in the 21:9 aspect ratio these days, though it’s a bit less extreme a bend than some 1000R models like those recently seen from Samsung. Personally, I like the 1900R rating on an ultrawide panel, as the extra width provides enough space to work on comfortably while the gentle curve also lets you feel immersed in the action during FPS games. The display is mounted in a silver shell that’s relatively featureless save for a small Mobiuz logo printed on the back left of the shroud.
The monitor sits on a black-necked stand with an off-orange-shaded, Y-shaped base. The base lets the monitor slide up and down (over a range of about four inches), tilt forward and back (from -5 to 15 degrees), and swivel left and right (from -15 to 15 degrees). The BenQ can’t pivot from landscape to portrait mode, but considering that few people are going to spend a grand on a monitor just to write some code on it, that lack of versatility is understandable. (If you’re looking for something up that alley, we’d recommend the Dell 27 USB-C instead.)
This also means the Mobiuz weighs less than most competitors, at 18.9 pounds (most monitors in this size category are between 20 and 40 pounds), though whether this is a good thing depends on who you ask. I happen to prefer a heavier display that’s less prone to jiggle as I type. (I’m as lead-fingered a typist as they come.) If you’re planning to put the Mobiuz on a VESA-compatible wall mount, however, the lighter the better.
A four-direction joystick sits beneath the monitor next to an input selection button and the power button, which you can use to navigate through the EX3515R’s snappy (albeit feature-thin) onscreen display (OSD) menu.
Considering how garish many gaming monitors are, I was surprised to find the Mobiuz EX3415R has no LED lighting anywhere on its housing or under the hood, not even an illuminated logo. I’m not the biggest fan of LED lighting as it can tend to wash out what’s happening on screen, but I’d at least like to see a small band beneath the monitor to help light up my keyboard at night, or something on the back to show off when friends come over. Lights might be a distraction when I’m trying to game, but it’s nice to have the option to turn some on when I’m doing something else.
Perhaps all that lighting money went into one of the EX3451R’s main attractions versus rival gaming monitors: a full-length soundbar along the bottom of the screen, featuring two 2-watt speakers and a 5-watt woofer. I found it to be surprisingly loud compared with what we’ve heard from other gaming displays, though I’m still of the opinion that if you’re spending this much on a monitor for games, a solid pair of headphones should be the second item in your cart.
Most of the ports are centered in the back of the monitor, facing down. These include two HDMI 2.0 ports, a DisplayPort 1.4b input, an upstream USB port, two downstream USB 3.0 Type-A ports, a headphone jack, and the connector for the power adapter.
Testing the Mobiuz: To Infinity, But Not Beyond
We test gaming monitors with a Datacolor SpyderX Elite colorimeter, a Murideo SIX-G signal generator, and Portrait Displays’ CalMAN 5 software.
In the Standard picture mode with an SDR signal, the Mobiuz showed a peak brightness of 207.5 nits (candelas per square meter) and a black level of 0.15 nit, working out to a contrast ratio of 1,383:1, slightly above its rated 1,000:1. These numbers don’t change significantly in other picture modes such as FPS, Racing Mode, or Cinema. (See more about how we test monitors.)
In the HDR picture mode with an HDR signal, the Mobiuz managed a peak brightness of 403.2 nits and a black level of 0.1 nit, yielding a contrast ratio of 4,003:1. This, too, is almost right on the dot of its rated specifications, so no surprises here.
Moving along to the color results, the Mobiuz covers 100% of the sRGB gamut and also hit some high marks in DCI-P3 at 94% coverage, making it a decent choice for binge-watchers (more on movie and television performance in a minute).
The one understandably lesser area of this monitor’s color coverage was in the AdobeRGB gamut, where it scored only 87% coverage. This is higher than many gaming panels can achieve, but it’s still not close to what a professional content creator would look for in their next display.
As for traditional input lag (the amount of time between when a monitor receives a signal and the screen updates), we test that with an HDFury 4K Diva HDMI matrix. With a 60Hz test signal, the Mobiuz showed an input lag of 1.4 milliseconds. This puts the EX3415R in rarified air among our top contenders, including the aforementioned MSI Optix MPG341CQR and the elite-grade Acer Predator X25.
Media and Gaming Performance
As an ultrawide-monitor user myself, I know that monitors in this category excel for more than just gaming; they make watching a movie in CinemaScope aspect ratio an experience unlike any other. In SDR, our 4K Costa Rica test footage (output at 1440p to match the monitor’s native resolution) wasn’t a great introduction to the Mobiuz. Greens were muted and washed out in most scenarios, as were most of the other colors on the panel.
Luckily, this changed once we moved over to HDR, where things looked substantially better all around. Colors were vibrant (for DisplayHDR 400, at least), and while some other ultrawides do distinctly better (looking at you, Predator X35), they’re at least twice the price.
The Final Fantasy XV Windows benchmark looked merely OK on the Mobiuz, but the monitor was running in SDR mode at the time, as an HDR implementation for Final Fantasy is nonexistent. As for responsiveness, thanks to the display’s low input lag, action in the esports classic Counter-Strike: Global Offensive felt snappy, though FreeSync Premium struggles to match the anti-screen-tearing performance we’ve seen from comparable G-Sync monitors. For a thousand bucks, we’d expect at least a G-Sync Compatible badge, if not something flashier like G-Sync Ultimate. Lacking both, the Mobiuz falls down as an esports-friendly choice.
MSI Already Did It Better
Were it not for the existence of the stellar MSI Optix MPG341CQR, the BenQ Mobiuz EX3415R might have gotten higher marks here. But besides saving you about $350 at current Amazon prices, the Optix is equally feature-rich (if not more so, if mouse bungees are your thing) and to our eyes looks a bit better in both SDR and HDR modes. Considering the monitors’ near-identical specs and performance, the MSI comes out ahead in a no-contest conclusion.
