MSI Summit MS321UP review, a great monitor for office and productivity

About a year ago, MS extension brought some products from its new line of devices dedicated to business users to the market for the first time. I’m obviously talking about the family of devices gathered under the name Summit, which also includes the recent monitor MS321UP Summit which accompanied me for a few weeks on the office desk and of which I want to tell you about its characteristics and performance today.

Let’s talk about 32-inch diagonal monitor designed for productivity and office tasks which, however, also winks at a user more oriented towards the creation of content. It is certainly not a monitor for professional color grading but let’s say that in the prosumer field it can be considered an absolutely valid product for its characteristics.

The MSI Summit product family is, as already mentioned, made up of devices designed primarily for business and professional users. Precisely for this reason, both the notebooks and the other peripherals belonging to this series are very accurate in terms of design and materials and generally offer a fairly sober look suitable for integration into any type of work environment. The Summit MS321UP marries this philosophy perfectly with good quality solutions and finishes combined with a very solid structure.

Starting from the bottom we have a rectangular base that integrates the graft for the arm on which the panel will be placed. This graft is decentralized and ensures that the center of gravity of the product falls more or less in correspondence with the center of the base thus maintaining very good stability while saving a little space on the desk. By overturning the base we find non-slip rubber feet along the entire perimeter of the same and the quick coupling system of the support arm which can be fixed without the use of tools.

The support arm is cylindrical in shape and is made of aluminum and plastic. I must say that as soon as you lift it, it is immediately evident how it is built to be really robust, even if you sacrifice something in terms of lightness. This support then integrates the hydraulic height adjustment system, as well as a plastic hook useful for sliding the cables along the pedestal in a more orderly manner.

At the end of the arm we then find a metal plate with fixing holes that meet the VESA 100 standard and which are obviously useful for docking the panel. The hinge that allows you to adjust the tilt of the monitor offers the right resistance and allows a very fluid movement, excellent for fine-tuning this parameter.

Once assembled the MSI Summit MS321UP the very thin profiles of the panel are immediately noticeable; we are talking about only 2 mm to which are added about 8 mm of black edge of the screen itself, for a frame which therefore has a total measurement of 10 mm on the two sides and at the top. The lower area uses a 25mm hard plastic edge, which is bevelled on both the top and bottom to be more aesthetically pleasing.

Just along the bottom edge we find the MSI Control Software access button (left) and the power button (right), with the joystick for activating and controlling the OSD Menu just behind the latter. Holes on each side then allow you to position the mouse cable holder left to right.

I have to admit that straight out of the box and assembled, the display looks massive and it took a few days to get used to its presence on my desk. Despite this, the base is absolutely solid and stable and the adjustments allow you to position it in the most congenial way to our position. The monitor weighs 9.7 kg, which also contributes to stability, but, contrary to what one might think, the adjustment system is instead absolutely “soft and light” and allows us to make all the adjustments “with a finger”.

It can be raised and lowered, but also rotated, both in one direction and in the other, and tilt forward or backward; in short, truly the maximum versatility from this point of view.

As you may have guessed, we are therefore talking about a display from 32 inches diagonal in 16:9 format and made with IPS technology and a resolution of 3840×2160 pixels. Not being a gaming monitor, the refresh rate stops at 60Hz while the GtG response time is 4ms. Among the most important features to be taken into consideration we find compatibility with the VESA standard DisplayHDR 600 and support for AMD FreeSync technology.

MSI SUMMIT MS321UP DATA SHEET

• 32″ IPS in 16:9 (8-bit + FRC)
• Resolution: 4K, 3,840 x 2,160 pixels
• Refresh Rate: 60Hz
• Response time: 4ms GtG
• Color coverage:
  • 95% DCI-P3.
  • 98% sRGB.
  • 89% Adobe-RGB.

• DisplayHDR 600.
• Contrast: 1000:1.
• Maximum Luminance (SDR): 400 cd/m².
• Maximum luminance (HDR): 600 cd/m².
• Automatic brightness sensor
• AMD Freesync.
• KVM, PiP and PBP.
• Connections:
  • 2x HDMI 2.0
  • 1x DisplayPort 1.2
  • 1x USB-C with DisplayPort
  • USB HUBS:
    • 3 x USB-A 3.0
    • SD card reader

  • 1 x audio input.
  • 1x audio out.

• Height adjustable base, rotatable and tiltable panel
• Bundled: Power cord, USB-C cable and DisplayPort
• 727.1 x 235 x 460.78mm
• 9.7kg

From the specifications we can then certainly notice the lack of a speaker system. Unlike some competitors, in fact, along the perimeter of the monitor we do not find speakers and, therefore, it will be necessary to connect external speakers to our PC.

On the other hand, the availability in terms of connections is good. They are easily accessible on the lower back of the monitor and include 2 HDMI 2.0, one DisplayPort 1.2, one USB-C with DisplayPort support, a USB for remote configuration, a second USB-A for data and an audio jack, plus a handy SD card slot.

Obviously to test the performance of this monitor we used the our XRite i1 Display Pro probe and the usual Calman software in its most recent version. The results returned by the measurements were decidedly good and almost always in line with what was declared by the company. But let’s go in order and let’s start talking about luminance.

MSI doesn’t state a maximum luminance value for this monitor, but the fact that it’s VESA DisplayHDR 600 certified should assume it’s close to 600 nits. Indeed, our HDR measurement got us almost 550 nits, which drops to around 400 in SDR mode. A good result considering the product category and what, theoretically, is the purpose for which it was designed. The value of contrast ratio, which came out at 1098:1, is then slightly higher than MSI’s claimed 1,000:1. That’s not an impressive figure; if you use the monitor in a very dark room you may find that you don’t get super deep blacks, but it’s still a satisfactory result for a 4K IPS panel.

But that’s not all, this monitor also offers very good color space coverage for the sRGB standard, that’s 100%, 99.7 to be exact. And we’re getting close to 100% for the DCI-P3 standard as well; our measure was 97.6%. By further expanding the gamut and taking the Adobe RGB color space as a reference, however, we stop just above 90%. Here, too, these are very interesting values ​​that correspond to the declared.

There is, however, a situation in which the data declared by MSI does not correspond to what is measured. It’s about the accuracy in color reproduction. The company states that this monitor is calibrated at the factory and arrives in the hands of the user with a Delta E of less than 2. In reality the panel is not so accurate; the error measured in our tests is a little higher but we do not exclude it may be a problem with our sample.

Like all monitors, this too MSI Summit MS321UP offers its own OSD menu with a fairly large number of interaction possibilities. The pop-up menu is managed by a small joystick positioned at the bottom right which can be moved in the classic four directions and clicked to select items. The menu is quite well organized, the various items are visible and are well highlighted when we select them; the only drawback is the reactivity, not exactly at the top. It takes a few moments before appearing and it happens, actually not too often, that the inputs are not all received correctly and instantly.

As already mentioned, the menu includes many options that most users will certainly appreciate. At its core we find, for example, the possibility of selecting the gamma and color temperature, as well as brightness and saturation. Apart from this it is also possible to change the calibration presets with a few simple taps, thus switching from sRGB to Adobe RGB or Display P3 in moments. There are also three custom calibration solts that can be stored and then accessed in the same way as the presets.

In addition to the OSD menu, MSI allows you to control the options related to the configuration of the monitor also through a software installed on your PC. To do this, simply connect your PC with a USB-A cable and download and install the Productivity Intelligence application.

From this application we can activate the different monitor profiles, create new ones, activate and deactivate the automatic brightness and sharpness. In short, everything we can do with the OSD menu and even something more, including the possibility of activating the display of the rulers along the sides of the monitor and the template for the 2/3 rule; they are details but they will please some categories of users such as designers for example.

Summing up we can therefore say, as already mentioned in the title, that this MSI Summit MS321UP is a good business monitor for productivity. It has an enviable color coverage for most of the useful color spaces, is very bright, even compared to several competitors, and guarantees high resolution and excellent definition. All features that contribute to having a satisfactory user experience in most situations.

It is certainly not the perfect monitor, the speakers are missing, there are solutions that guarantee deeper blacks, and 144Hz could have been there for hybrid use including even a little gaming. Having said that, we must also take a look at the price. The price list speaks of 899 euros but online it is already available at figures that are around 700 euros. It’s definitely not a cheap monitor but it absolutely is in line with the alternatives.

We apologize for the absence of photos taken by us, unfortunately the files became corrupted in the transfer from the SD card and the monitor was no longer available to take new ones