Away from Computex 2026’s busy show floor, I sat down with two senior BenQ executives at the brand’s Taipei HQ. The conversations covered very different ground – esports monitors and workspace lighting – which don’t have much in common on the surface.
However, the same theme kept surfacing in both. BenQ has spent years building products for people who are serious about what they do in front of a screen – and that focus, it turns out, has led it to conclusions the rest of the market hasn’t fully embraced.
Zowie vs OLED: why BenQ’s esports brand still backs TN panels
BenQ is one of the last bastions of the TN panel for its Zowie monitor range, aimed squarely at competitive play, even in the face of improving IPS and OLED screens. As per Ajen Liao, this is a deliberate decision and has been a long-term play.
Around a decade ago, BenQ ran comparative tests between TN and then-improving IPS screens and found that while IPS screens met the response time certifications, they fell short on motion clarity compared to TN, not least in conjunction with the brand’s proprietary Dynamic Accuracy tech.
The same now goes for OLED – BenQ is dipping its toe into the water with OLED with its Mobiuz range of screens, such as the excellent Mobiuz EX271UZ (the brand’s first OLED gaming screen), but these are designed more for casual and lifestyle players, rather than the hardened competitive users the Zowie line has always served.
It also comes down to what pro players are used to, not least because BenQ has supplied eSports tournaments for the best part of a decade with Zowie monitors outside of the realms of tournament sponsorship, which goes hand-in-hand with other peripherals, such as keyboards and mice. Pro players want gear they’re comfortable using, and a good gaming monitor is paramount to this.
Liao recounted a story to me that illustrated the brand’s standing in the esports community. At a European major several years ago, a rival brand’s monitors had been used instead of BenQ’s, which drew enough complaints from players and community members that the organiser approached BenQ mid-event to use its Zowie monitors. The brand stepped in without a formal sponsorship arrangement and provided the equipment. The community, Liao noted, was simply relieved to be using equipment they trusted.
Validation
He also discussed the importance of having pro players validate products for product development. We’ve seen this become more commonplace with other manufacturers using pro tournaments to validate their latest creations – both the Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike and Razer Viper V4 Pro have been developed with this in mind – and I asked Liao how important this was for BenQ.
This isn’t so much of a concern with BenQ, as it sees the tournament as the final stage of a product’s development cycle; instead, it has its own lab filled with highly qualified sports scientists and engineers, who collaborate with pro players to develop mice with the right shape and the right feel, and who can also help the players get the best out of existing tech by using contact sensors to measure hand and finger position. Their work generates a personalised report which guides players on the best strategies to use to get the best out of BenQ’s mice, and how best to grip the mouse, for instance.
What’s clear from speaking to Liao is that BenQ’s approach to competitive gaming is one about being confident in its own convictions – it doesn’t chase the market when it knows its own tech and methodology is still ideal for its target audience, not least with professional validation and data-driven insights at the forefront. To a degree, the same thing is true with BenQ’s lighting division, as I found out in my other interview.
The monitor accessory few think they need – and why BenQ keeps trying anyway
JC Pan is Chief Product Designer at BenQ Smart Lighting and the man behind BenQ’s lighting division. He’s seen the monitor light bar category evolve from a niche curiosity to a market sector more people are taking notice of. With this in mind, there is still a disconnect between the intended use case of a light bar and how people are using them in the real world, which Pan tells me is quite eye-opening.
He stated that we’re seeing more people use multi-monitor setups, which is a difficult nut to crack, as a light bar is only designed for one monitor. BenQ actually discovered this gap between assumption and reality through an intriguing Amazon review. A customer had given a BenQ light bar a five-star review and posted a picture of their setup, with three monitors and three light bars, each with their own wireless controller. They were seemingly unaware that a single controller can manage multiple units simultaneously.
Pan told me he found the image equal parts charming and instructive. The customer was getting triple the value BenQ intended to sell them, and triple the clutter BenQ would rather they didn’t have, which netted the firm three times the revenue it should have – something Pan said that it didn’t need, as it’d rather help people find the right products for their setup than sell them what they don’t need. Future products, he suggests, will address multi-monitor environments more explicitly.
We’re also seeing more people work away from a traditional desk-and-monitor setup, using laptops out and about in less-than-ideal conditions, where having ‘correct’ ergonomics is a little more challenging. In any guise, it’s perhaps even more important for users to have as ideal conditions as they can, given the compromises made against a proper desk setup.
However, this desire from manufacturers to help people comes against the odds of how mobile users actually work. As Pan explained, BenQ has had two goes at a laptop light bar, first in 2018, and secondly in 2022, with a drastically redesigned model that was co-designed with a Danish designer whose credits include work with Bang & Olufsen. The second model addressed the shortcomings users had with the first, such as a rechargeable battery to save the dependency on USB power, and a magnetic attachment mechanism with a special hinge to work on laptops. In theory, a strong choice for laptop users to employ to get some of the same benefits as working at a desk in an office.
However, users didn’t actually want to carry something else around when they’re out and about. That goes for whether it’s a light bar or even a separate mouse and keyboard, even if it’s beneficial to their setup and how comfortable they’re likely to be while working with it. Ergonomics isn’t an exact science for everyone, and is highly personal; however, there are still broad strokes that can be made to help folks, such as employing a vertical mouse, using a wrist rest and even just by having a more optimal lighting environment. Whether users care enough to take such products with them when out and about is the issue that manufacturers such as BenQ have to try to address.
I also asked Pan about the potential to employ ‘smart’ techniques with monitor lighting, not least because we seem to be moving towards connected and app-controlled features for a range of devices. However, he told me that these kinds of features consistently rank at the bottom of customer surveys when users are asked which features they value most. Instead, things such as auto-dimming, flicker-free performance, and colour temperature adjustment sit at the top. The unglamorous specifications, in other words – not the headline ones.
BenQ recently launched a connected ceiling lamp, Aora, with an array of smart features, which some customers appreciated. Most, however, as the data suggested, didn’t particularly engage with the feature at all after a few tries as a novelty.
Pan is more excited about a different kind of intelligence — one that doesn’t require a network connection. He floated the idea of a new ScreenBar product that can automatically adjust lighting presets accordingly based on the application a user is running, shifting colour temperature and brightness as a user moves between a spreadsheet, a game, or a film, without any manual input. It’s a more contained proposition than full smart home integration, and Pan thinks that’s precisely why it will land better. The system doesn’t need to know who you are or where you are — it just needs to know what you’re doing.
Both of these conversations essentially arrive at a version of the same point – what the monitor industry comes up with is one thing; it’s how those products are adopted and received by consumers that matters.
Firms can spend a fortune solving a problem or innovating on an older solution, but it’s how people actually use them that matters most. The cases of TN panels for eSports and the resistance to a laptop light bar prove this to no end. For BenQ, at least, that distinction appears to be the whole point.
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
