I finally got round to buying my self a proper monitor to use with my laptop at home (I know I’m very late to this party given the current situation of extended working from home).
I’ll be using it with my Dell XPS13 which only has 2 ports ( 2 USB-C/Thunderbolt ) and these double as the power input as well so I was looking for a monitor that can be both driven via USB-C and supply power to the laptop via USB-PD.
Seeking recommendations for a 28-32″ monitor. 4K preferably with USB-C and USB-PD (to power the laptop). Any suggestions?
— Ben Hardill (@hardillb) February 1, 2021
Having had a bit of a search round and asking for suggestions on Twitter, I found the BenQ EW2780U which looked to cover all the bases. There was a reasonably looking review from TechRadar. 27″ was a little outside my initial size range, but given how close it will be on my desk and the amount of space I have to play with it’s the right call.
There was a very similar 32″ model (BenQ EW3270u) on Amazon that was even slightly cheaper, but while it had support for video over USB-C, it didn’t support USB-PD to charge/power the laptop.
Technical Specs
- 27″ Screen
- 3840 x 2160 pixels
- 2 HDMI ports (v2.0)
- 1 DisplayPort (v1.4)
- 1 USB-C
- USB-PD up to 60W (Note I don’t think this is enough to charge a MBP)
- Built in speakers (these work over HDMI/USB-C)
Setup
I’ve tweaked a few of the out of the box settings.
- Turned off auto input switching, mainly because it was flipping to the Chromecast when ever the laptop went to sleep or I unplugged it. It’s pretty easy to switch inputs with the buttons on the back.
- Set it to sleep when the USB-C connection is unplugged.
While the monitor did come with a HDMI cable in the box I did need to buy a new USB-C cable to use it with the Dell. None of the ones I currently had would support the HD video signal. This is one of the only downsides of USB-C, all the cables will fit in all the devices, but it’s very hard to visually tell them apart as to what spec they support.
I had a problem with Ubuntu 18.04 not liking driving such a big desktop, if I put anything on the new monitor it would occasionally randomly crash the Gnome session which meant all the open apps also got killed. So this lead to me actually getting round to do the upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 that I had been putting off. This has fixed the problem and everything is running smoothly now.
The only thing it’s really missing is a built in USB hub then I wouldn’t need to plug a dongle into the remaining USB-C port to give me some USB-A ports.