BenQ PD3226G

Introduction

The BenQ PD3226G marries the powers of a solid 4K monitor for creatives with a high refresh rate in quite a rare market entry.

Traditionally, a 32-inch 4K 144Hz IPS screen is more of a gaming panel than one designed for creatives, but a higher refresh rate yields benefits for responsiveness for everyone to give an overall slick experience.

The PD3226G pairs a high refresh rate with a large, detailed panel, alongside modern looks and an advanced port selection to boot. It’ll run you a lot, though, at £1099.99/$1299.99 – for reference, the Samsung ViewFinity S9 is only £200/$300 up the road, while the Dell 32 Plus 4K QD-OLED is £732.50/$799.99 and opts for QD-OLED over IPS and adds spatial audio speakers as its flagship features.

I’ve been testing BenQ’s candidate for the last couple of weeks to see if it can take the crown as one of the best monitors we’ve tested. 

Design

• Minimalistic, smart looks
• Lots of stand adjustments
• Sublime port selection

The PD3226G leans into a similarly minimal, business-chic aesthetic as the PD3225U before it, opting for a large 32-inch screen that’s flanked by minimal bezels on all sides, apart from the chunkier underside. Nonetheless, the silver and grey two-tone colour scheme places it well in a modern office environment.

It’s easy to assemble with a toolless construction, thanks to both a clip-in base and a stand that screws in from the underside with ease.

Getting set up with this BenQ monitor is a doddle, while it has oodles of stand adjustment with scope for tilt, swivel, height adjustment, and even swinging around into a portrait orientation if you’d prefer.

There is a choice of how to navigate the PD3226G’s OSD, with either the joystick on the underside of the panel or with a wireless puck. The puck being wireless is new for this monitor, where it’s previously been , reducing desk clutter and unneeded wires. It provides a useful method of controlling things such as brightness and contrast without reaching under the monitor and into a menu.

Connectivity is a real strong point with this BenQ monitor. You get an HDMI 2.1 and DP 1.4 port, as well as a Thunderbolt 4 USB-C in that provides up to 90W of power delivery and display powers that works especially well with modern laptops – it worked a treat with my MacBook Pro.

In addition, there is another Thunderbolt 4 out with 15W of power delivery for charging smaller devices such as a smartphone or tablet. Two of the three USB-C ports on the back can be used for this BenQ panel to become a KVM hub for having two computers hooked up to the display that share a set of peripherals.

You can take advantage of a rare feature with the PD3226G’s Thunderbolt out, which means you can daisy-chain connections to another display. For instance, if you connect a laptop to the monitor’s Thunderbolt 4-in, for example, you can connect a second monitor to the BenQ PD3226G’s Thunderbolt 3 port, and have a dual monitor setup with just a handful of cables.

The underside of the monitor is home to a USB hub, which includes another, lower-wattage USB-C, three USB-A ports and a headphone jack.

Image Quality

• Brilliant colour accuracy
• Middling brightness and contrast
• Solid in day-to-day use

The PD3226G, on paper, should get things right with some sublime image quality thanks to its 32-inch 4K IPS screen, especially as it is designed for creatives and professionals who require the best quality possible. 

As you’d expect, the colour accuracy afforded here is excellent, with near-perfect 99% sRGB and 96% DCI-P3 coverage, alongside 87% Adobe RGB according to my colorimeter. This is reflective of this panel’s ideal suitability for colour-sensitive workloads such as design and video editing that it’s inherently designed for.

The measured 0.24 black level at 50% brightness means we’re getting reasonably deep blacks for an IPS screen, although this result is bettered by more affordable IPS screens, and especially by OLED and QD-OLED options. The same is true for the 550:1 contrast ratio, while the 6600K colour temperature is bang-on where it should be.

I measured the PD3226G to have a peak brightness of 227.3 nits, which is fine, if a little unremarkable for the price. BenQ quotes 400 nits peak, although that is helped along by basic DisplayHDR400 support for more punch in supported content.

The numbers only tell one side of the story, as I felt the PD3226G to generally look quite punchy with excellent clarity on text and with images, helped by along by its high 4K resolution and solid 140ppi pixel density.

The addition of a 144Hz refresh rate certainly aids general responsiveness against more basic 60Hz options, and it even allows this BenQ screen to flirt with the idea of being used as a gaming panel when you’ve finished work. I found it to be surprisingly responsive in some runs of Counter-Strike 2 when winding down after a long day.

Software and Features

• Lots of colour modes
• Interesting Dual View function
• Built-in speakers are here, but just okay

The PD3226G’s on-screen display (OSD) is easy to navigate with either the joystick on the underside of the panel or with the included wireless puck. It comes with some extensive options for changing the colour mode, such as for sRGB, DCI-P3 and Rec.709.

There are specific modes for matching a MacBook’s display with the M-Book mode and for use in a dark room, with the Darkroom mode, as well as for the type of work you may be undertaking, including for animation and CAD.

It comes with an interesting Dual View feature, which splits the 32-inch screen in half, and you can then choose which colour mode for the second half of the screen. Or, you can use it with a smaller screen superimposed on your main screen. It appears this feature is useful if you’re working on different projects, and you want even more flexibility.

Built-in speakers seem to be becoming a bit of a rarity on monitors up and down the price ladder, but if you want them, the PD3226G does have some with a pair of 3W options. They’re of reasonable quality, serving up solid detail and decent overall audio for dealing with music and films. However, you are going to be much better off with a pair of external speakers or a set of headphones.

Should you buy it?

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