How ZOWIE Designs Hardware With and For Esports Athletes

Friday, December 11, 10 a.m. The MVM Dome in Budapest begins to stir as it prepares to open its doors for the Counter-Strike 2 Major playoffs, the most prestigious tournament on Valve’s FPS circuit. Inside the arena that would crown Team Vitality three days later, technicians are already at work, the stage design is being refined, decibel levels are rising, and sound collides with the silence of a venue that is, for now, entirely empty.

Below the stands of the Hungarian arena, activity is equally intense, particularly around one of the event’s partner booths: ZOWIE. The brand, specialised in the development of esports equipment, had invited the specialised press both to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the launch of its first monitor and to showcase one of the flagships of its range, the XL2586X+ TN 600Hz DyAc 2 Gaming Monitor, the very display used by players on stage during the event. Guests were also given hands-on access to these high-end monitors, offering a direct look at the advantages of such products.

Following an introduction by Jay Wu, President of BenQ Europe B.V., Celsa Wu, Head of ZOWIE’s esports business at BenQ Europe B.V., took the time to outline the brand’s vision, ambitions, and processes. Having begun to gain traction on the market in 2012, ZOWIE has since grown into an essential presence on the FPS scene. ZOWIE monitors are now ubiquitous at LAN events and are, for example, also used by professionals on the VCT EMEA stage in VALORANT.

This prominence can first be explained by ZOWIE’s efforts to simplify the use of its products, as Celsa Wu explains: “Each of the tournaments we are sponsoring, or sometimes we are not sponsoring, we will fly our engineers to the venue or their studio before. They put all the monitors onto the stage [and] do a so-called health check of each monitor.” More importantly, however, it reflects the strong endorsement of ZOWIE products by the players themselves. Among 857 professional players surveyed in a study published by prosettings.net in 2023, 757 reported using a ZOWIE monitor—more than 88% of the sample.

As Celsa Wu explained during the Media Tour, this figure is largely the result of ZOWIE’s scientific approach to designing and refining its products, notably through the use of motion capture and electromyography for its mice. Above all, ZOWIE, which sponsors several teams on the circuit such as Team Spirit and HEROIC, works closely with players themselves—both active and retired—using their feedback to make incremental adjustments.

“Most of the athletes want mainly three things,” Celsa Wu explains. “They want us or the product to help them be better. They want our product to protect them from being injured. Of course, they also want the product to inform them better with some features. For example, our science lab will tell you that maybe you will need to adjust your training.”

Veteran Richard "shox" Papillon is among the players who regularly test products for ZOWIE. This collaborative approach has even inspired the name of one of the brand’s flagship mouse lines. The EC series, highly popular among professionals, was named after the initials of Emil "HeaToN" Christensen, the first player to work with the brand to improve its products. “The only goal we have when delivering a product is to make sure that our product can help athletes to win the game,” Celsa Wu summarises. “Gaming and esports are different. When we talk about sports, then the desire of wanting to win is the most important part.”

To gather feedback from professional players, ZOWIE opened its first laboratory five years ago at its headquarters in Taiwan, before establishing a second one in China. In mid-November, a third laboratory opened in Europe “to make sure our pool is bigger and make sure we can serve all the European pros locally and more closely,” Celsa Wu explains. “Sixty percent of the tournaments are happening in Europe, and according to data from Liquipedia, between 2013 and 2024, more than 70% of the players in these tournaments are from Europe,” adds the Head of ZOWIE’s esports division. Now positioned closer than ever to its core audience, the brand appears well equipped to further consolidate its position on the market in the years to come.