Acer is finally woken up and is paying attention to the gaming monitor Market
again they've dabbled in the past they had an at the time excellent 3D Vision
monitor the gd235hz but since then they
appear to have been sitting on their Collective thumbs until now welcome to
my video about one of the in my mind only two g-sync monitors that really
matters for high-end gaming the Acer xb280hk
Corsair gaming RGB keyboards feature Precision cherrymx RGB key switches for
16.8 million color per key backlighting for virtually unlimited customization
click now to learn more we'll start with a physical overview around this massive
28in 16x9 panel with the OSD controls
embedded in the bottom right is an unfortunately thick and glossy bezel
something I find particularly disappointing given how ahead of the curv aser was on
the super thin bezel thing when they released the h236 HL about a year and a
half ago the stand is a circular base affair with an orange accent it
assembles toolless Le in about 30 seconds and gives the xb280hk Tilt
swivel height adjust and pivot the quadfecta of ergonomic display
adjustment options it serves its purpose very well but I didn't find its build
quality particularly confidence in aspiring especially at this kind of a
price point although given that we know a g-sync module adds about $200 to the
cost of a monitor and Acer's offering is priced about $200 higher than otherwise
similar 4K displays that also don't feature beautifully overbuilt stands I
don't think Acer is cutting this corner any tighter than anyone else's on the
top bottom and right of the monitor is a whole lot of nothing but on the left
we're treated to two of the four usb3 ports that run off the monitor's
internal Hub then on the bottom we find the telltale signs of a g-sync monitor
aside from the usb3 Uplink the other two ports that go with it and an AC power
input we've got a whole lot of not much going on down here just a DisplayPort
1.2 input this is because NVIDIA's first
generation g-sync module only supports a
single DisplayPort input so then why would you want a g-sync module in your
monitor lonus great question g-sync
deliver smoother onscreen animations by eliminating screen tearing you know
those ugly horizontal lines through the image where it seems like the top half
of the screen has the last frame and the bottom half has a new one and leg which
is caused by your GPU waiting for the monitor to be ready for a refresh when
running with vsync on the way that we traditionally get rid of tearing but you
can learn more about it in this video here just trust me it works and it's a
pretty big deal but better perceived smoothness in gaming animation won't do
us any good if it's not presented on a good quality panel so let's have a look
shall we the xb280hk uses the same type
of panel that we've already seen before in the other loish cost 4K monitors that
we've covered here and here so there weren't really any surprises contrast is
pretty good color reproduction is surprisingly good for a TN panel and
pixel response times were good without excess ghosting and overdrive artifacts
even on fast moving scen as long as you leave the overdrive
setting at default within the onscreen display in fact I found most of the
settings in the OSD were best left alone I adjusted color temp to normal and
everything else especially the image profiles just made the screen look much
much worse so I didn't find myself using them in front of the flicker-free DC
controlled backlight we find a matte finished panel which is good if you hate
glare and reflections with horizontal viewing angles that are good enough as
long as you're sitting mostly centered in front of the screen the way most people use a computer the subtle green
and thin pink color shift is unlikely to bother you much on the desktop and is
pretty much impossible to pick up with a full screen game or movie running
vertical viewing angles just like the other low cost 4ks are less impressive
though with a noticeable gradient from warmer to cooler looking from bottom to
top even with your head in a stationary
position again this is something that's nearly impossible to pick up in games
and many people won't notice it at all anyway but I look at a lot of monitors
so particularly on uniform backgrounds like when reading emails or message
boards I find it a little bit distracting but let's change gears a bit
here and talk about the gaming experience I suspect if Acer could have
timed the release of their xb280hk 28 in
4k gsync gaming monitor any more
perfectly the entire world would have imploded 2 weeks ago the GTX 980 and 970
wouldn't have existed yet and graphics cards with enough horsepower to run
modern games at 4K would have started at $500 plus doar rather than 330 and they
would have been equipped with a mere 3 gigs of vram probably fine for now but
not exactly futureproof had Acer waited oh I don't know another year to release
this monitor we'd probably have better cards capable of running AAA titles
pinned at 60 FPS so the need for variable refresh rate technology that
masks stuttering when the frame rate DS drops would be reduced but as it is the
timing is great and this Monitor and those graphics cards are a match made in
heaven the way I benchmarked the xb280hk
was a little bit different than normal because it's mostly about the subjective
experience instead of firing up games and staring at my fraps counter then
dialing in graphic settings until the number looks good I went the other way
around I cranked everything to Max started turning things down until the
game felt 60fps smooth then fired up
fraps to see what frame rate I was actually running at even though I've
evaluated g-sync monitors before I've never done it this way and I think the
results May shock you I found that because of the pixel density of the
display anti-aliasing was Superfluous Beyond 2xmsaa which gave me more
Headroom to play with I candy options like tessellation and higher quality
shadows and to my surprise I discovered
that as long as my G wasn't falling below around 40 frames per second during
demanding sequences it was running to my eyes about as smoothly as if I was
running at 60 FPS constantly and this is
coming from someone who has gained for years on high-end hardware and considers
himself a bit of a frame rate Diva so
while I feel that lower cost 1080p g-sync monitors have a hard time
justifying that $200 or so premium compared to their non-gyn cousins
especially when that money could be spent on a better graphics card to keep
frame rates up or a higher resolution monitor to improve immersion and image
quality when you've already got a highres monitor the addition of g-sync
enables a smoother gaming experience with more details turned up than would
have conventionally been possible potentially saving you some additional
investment in more graphics cards this makes the xb280hk a very attractive
option for highend GeForce Gamers but
that doesn't mean that acers new beauty is the only horse on the track there are
two highres g-sync monitors that each bring their own unique value proposition
to the table this baby is the resolution
king and the only option for someone who wants a 4K display with g-sync today
while the Rog Swift from ASUS is an inch smaller diagonally and runs at a mere
2560 X 1440 resolution but delivers
thinner bezels slightly better colors and up to 144 Herz ref fresh rates so I
guess this is what it boils down to if you're a sightseer and most of your
gaming is done in third person or in casually competitive scenarios where
Lightning Fast Response times are not critical the xb280hk gets the nod if
you're looking for the best monitor on the Block for competitive play the Rog
Swift gets my vote for sure guys thanks
for watching like this video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment letting me know if your
feelings are more complicated than this also check out the link in the video description where you can give us a
monthly contribution buy a cool t- shirt like this one or change your Amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate code
so we get a small Kickback whenever you buy stuff on Amazon all that stuff helps
us out a lot thanks again for watching and as always don't forget to subscribe