OLED in a display this large makes for an astounding gaming monitor, especially when it has all the right specs. But the BenQ MOBIUZ OLED EX480UZ Gaming Monitor isn’t as great for non-gaming uses.
Who wouldn’t want to try out a 48-inch OLED gaming monitor? When BenQ reached out to me with the opportunity to try its $1,799 take on the concept, the MOBIUZ EX480UZ, I had to say yes. And after spending all day with it for a few weeks, it’s clearly a gaming monster. But not an everyday monitor.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a 48-inch OLED display. But it’s rare to see one on a computer desk, and even more rare for the display in question to be intended for PC use. In most cases, what you’d usually find is someone using an OLED TV as a monitor, and that doesn’t work well. While they seem similar, there are distinct differences in computer monitors and TVs, owing to different needs in resolution, text scaling, and so on. And worse yet, OLEDs are prone to screen burn-in, especially with static content. That’s not as much an issue for TVs, since the content you watch constantly changes what’s on the screen. But for a computer monitor, where you may leave the same windows in place for hours on end, that can become a big problem very quickly.
BenQ’s MOBIUZ OLED EX48OUZ (hereafter, I’ll just call it MOBIUZ OLED), is a display built to be a computer monitor. It supports resolutions you’ll want, whether for gaming or productivity and throws in a few tricks to fight screen burn-in. In theory, you won’t find your browser window “permanently stuck” as an afterimage. But while the overall setup makes for a fantastic gaming monitor, the efforts to protect the screen limit its use as a productivity monitor. This probably can’t be your everyday display, unfortunately.
Here’s What We Like
- OLED is Amazing
- The monitor is huge
- All the specs are great
And What We Don’t
- Expensive
- Kills productivity to prevent burn-in
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Big, Beautiful, and Perfect for Gaming
What makes a great gaming monitor? Fast response times, great colors, fast refresh rates, high-resolution capabilities, and a big ol’ display are certainly things you’ll want if you plan to plunk down a bunch of cash on a monitor. And thankfully, the MOBIUZ OLED has all that with room to spare. It’s a 4K, 120 HZ, 450 nits, HDR10, 0.1 ms screen. Those are all the right numbers and stats for a great gaming monitor.
But what sets this one apart is the sheer size and the panel tech. First, at 48 inches, it’s a monster. You can sit away from the display and still get a giant immersive view. It’s a small TV on your desk, after all. Sit closer, and it completely envelopes your view. And at 4K it’s a high enough resolution that you won’t regret sitting so close either.
And then there’s OLED. When it comes to displaying darkness, no tech can “outshine” OLED. That’s because it’s the one tech that can truly do “black” by simply not lighting up pixels as needed. Other technology dims the pixel as much as possible, which ultimately leaves you with a “very dark grey.” But unlike LEGO Batman, sometimes you really only want to work in black, or your Batmobile just won’t look right.
Or in the case of STAR WARS Jedi: Survivor, your opening scenes taking place at mostly night won’t look the way the developers intended. With OLED, night scenes pop, and lightsabers stand out more thanks to greater contrast (helped by HDR, of course) than might otherwise be possible.
And if you’re worried this monitor is only good for gaming, don’t be. Thanks to two HDMI 2.1 ports, you can hook up a PS4 and an Xbox Series X, and you’ll still have a DisplayPort 1.4 left over for your gaming PC. One more HDMI port would have been nice, but I digress. The USB Type-C does offer another option for video, however, and the remote is handling for changing settings on the fly.
Just keep in mind that if you do want this for PC gaming, you’ll need a beefy graphics card to stand a chance of taking advantage of all the features. And you’ll have major downside that also applies to trying to use this as some sort of productivity monitor.
Not As Great For Regular PC Use
Unfortunately, everything that makes it great of gaming also detracts from any sort of productive use. OLED screens suffer from screen burn-in issues. Leave the same content in the same place too long and it’ll sort of be “stuck” there permanently in a ghostly fashion. It’s something all OLED displays have to fight, but for something like video isn’t as big a deal as the content is constantly changing.
Using this as a regular monitor, though, means dealing with that exact problem. Do you open the same windows in the same spot all the time on your current monitor? Then you’ll have to worry about that content becoming a “permanent” feature of this display. That’s where using an OLED TV as a computer monitor isn’t a great option.
But BenQ thought of that and added features to help prevent that issue. It’s hard to say if they will stave off the problem, as this isn’t a long-term review, but I can say they make using the monitor a little more difficult. The biggest one, OFF-RS, requires you to turn the monitor off for 15 minutes every four hours so it can run some behind-the-scenes tech to “unstick” pixels. That’ll be twice in the average work shift. And unfortunately, letting the monitor go to sleep doesn’t stop the timer.
You can choose to skip an OFF-RS session and run it later, but of course, you’re risking permanent burn-in if you do that too often. After 1,500 hours, a second process dubbed JB kicks in, but that one only takes two minutes. And the BenQ added an ORBIT function that shifts things every minute or so to help avoid burn-in. Thankfully that one is so subtle I’ve never noticed it in action. But having to stop what I’m doing every four hours or so kills productivity; I can be mid-task and have to walk away from my work.
The other big problem is the sheer size of the screen. It’s not an ultrawide, which means that at 48 inches, it does spread across the desk pretty well, but it’s also very tall and very low. I found myself sizing windows to only use the middle two-thirds of the screen to avoid having to tilt my head too far up and down to see the content.
Buy It For Gaming
Here’s the thing though. BenQ doesn’t market this as a productivity monitor. It’s a gaming monitor. And when you get a purpose-built device, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise when it’s not a great fit for a different purpose, even if they’re similar. So the question comes down to what you intend to do with a monitor.
At $1,800 (though I’ve seen it on sale for $1,500) this is not an inexpensive monitor. But you get all the bells and whistles that are perfect for gaming. It looks amazing, and no other screen tech can hold a candle to OLED when it comes time to show off a dark scene or drastically disparate lighting situations. The one major issue is if your gaming sessions tend to last longer than four hours—which for the hardcore gamers that would be interested in the MOBIUZ OLED is a problem.
But if you plan to use this for anything other than gaming, you’re going to be frustrated by it at times. If your PC pulls double duty for gaming and work, the work half will see frequent interruptions and the nagging fear of burn-in that ruins your very expensive monitor. It’s hard to recommend for anyone that uses the PC more than half the time for things other than gaming and video watching.
But if your PC is an entertainment machine, first and foremost, then it’s hard not to recommend this monitor. As long as you can afford it and the expensive graphics card to match.
Rating: 7/10
?
- 1 – Absolute Hot Garbage
- 2 – Sorta Lukewarm Garbage
- 3 – Strongly Flawed Design
- 4 – Some Pros, Lots Of Cons
- 5 – Acceptably Imperfect
- 6 – Good Enough to Buy On Sale
- 7 – Great, But Not Best-In-Class
- 8 – Fantastic, with Some Footnotes
- 9 – Shut Up And Take My Money
- 10 – Absolute Design Nirvana
Price: $1,800
Here’s What We Like
- OLED is Amazing
- The monitor is huge
- All the specs are great
And What We Don’t
- Expensive
- Kills productivity to prevent burn-in