While it's marketed as a productivity monitor, the MSI Pro MP341CQ is also comfortable playing games. It manages to do both fairly well but is still a little hard to outright recommend when there are better equipped options for around the same price (or less in some cases).
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Design
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Performance
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Features
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Value
In an ideal world, we all have enough money to afford one monitor for work and a separate monitor for pleasure. Most folks don’t live in that world and have to prioritise one over the other. Or, they meet in the middle and get something like the MSI Pro MP341CQ.
It is marketed as a productivity monitor but some of the specs that make it good for work transfer over to gaming, like an increased resolution and higher-than-average refresh rate. As is often the case, trying to be a jack of all trades can mean you end up as a master of none. But, as the full quote goes, that can still be better than a master of one.
Right down the middle
As a result of the dual focus, the MP341CQ doesn’t lean too heavily on typical gaming design tropes. Our unit arrived with a black plastic exterior (also available in white), no lighting frills, or oddly shaped bits that jut out. An exhaust vent spans most of the rear panel to help with passive cooling but doesn’t draw much attention.
The MP341CQ is fairly well-constructed although it lacks the refinement you’d get buying something pricier – but that’s to be expected. Assembly is pretty straightforward with the stand and base screwing together with a captive screw. You’ll need a screwdriver to attach the stand to the monitor. You’ll find two HDMI 2.0b ports, a DisplayPort 1.2a, and a 3.5mm headphone jack around back, along with VESA mounting holes and a few buttons to navigate the on-screen menus.
Seeing things clearly
This is classed as a 34in monitor (screens are measured diagonally, don’t forget) so the increased resolution of 3,440 x 1,440 over the usual FHD (1,920 x 1,080) means everything retains its crispiness with the larger panel size. It is also wider than most office monitors with an aspect ratio of 21:9 so you can fit more open windows next to each other. That aspect alone makes this great for office work.
With the increased refresh rate of 100Hz, dragging windows around benefits from extra smoothness. It might not be as big of a jump as going from 60Hz to 144Hz, but anything above 60Hz will look and feel better.
As for this panel’s performance, it’s… fine. MSI has used a VA (Vertical Alignment) panel with the MP341CQ. VA panels generally boast a higher contrast ratio and better black uniformity over TN (Twisted Nematic) or IPS (In-Plane Switching) panels. This comes at the expense of motion handling and worse viewing angles, exacerbated by the slightly curved edges (1500R).
Motion clarity is helped somewhat by support for AMD’s Freesync dynamic refresh rate tech. This will synchronise the monitor’s refresh cycle with a GPU’s frame output. While there used to be a much bigger disparity between the different panel types, the industry has advanced to the point where the differences are much harder to notice.
The MSI Pro MP341CQ offers full coverage of the sRGB colour space but no support for the wider DCI-P3 gamut. Colour-sensitive work outside of sRGB will fare better on something else. There are also presets for other scenarios that can be edited in the MSI Display Kit companion app. The app will also let you pair programs to certain presets so your preferred settings are applied when you open a specific game. Although, if you’re going to be mostly gaming, you might want to shop around.
MSI Pro MP341CQ verdict
The specs and features MSI has shoved into this 34in monitor would usually make for an easy recommendation, especially if your office desk needs a new screen. Don’t underestimate how much more you can get done, work or otherwise, with the extra screen space. The increased refresh rate is always a welcome feature. If fewer people have to live with 60Hz, the world can begin to heal.
Unfortunately for MSI, the asking price of R9,800 doesn’t do the Pro MP341CQ any favours against similarly specced monitors, some of which have slightly better specs and still cost less. That might change things if you can find it for less, or on special. But then the same could be said for the others too.
