Acer XR341CK - Perfection in a monitor?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
1,630 words · ~8 min read
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compromises always compromises I'm so
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sick and tired of compromises what if
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someone just made a monitor that compromised nothing I want ultrawide I
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want an IPS panel I want a high refresh rate I want high resolution I want the
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works I want the whole works presents
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and prizes and sweets and surprises and
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is that really what I sounded like okay fair enough but this isn't a movie this
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is real life I am not getting turned into a blueberry or drowned in chocolate
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or whatever I am getting the Acer XR 341
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cka a monitor that isn't perfect but boy
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we are getting really really
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close Corsair delivers real Mech or
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nothing with their new strafe mechanical keyboard featuring genuine german-made
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Cherry MX key switches click on this spot right here to learn more Acer you
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guys got to look at how everyone else does this you got your standard
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corporate site product page with inoffensive color scheme then you need
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to have a stylized subsite for your gaming products that communicates the
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things that Gamers care about in a direct fashion I was blown away when the
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single most interesting specific a of the XR 341 cka for me anyway wasn't on
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the product page I mean to be clear the stuff that is on the product page is
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pretty sick we're talking 34 in of gloriously curved ultrawide 21 by9
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aspect ratio screen here at my ideal resolution of 3440 by 1440 so no scaling
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required in Windows but much sharper looking than 1080p at this size a full
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srgb color space capable LED back lit IPS panel with a 4 millisecond rated
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response time perfect for gaming and content consumption DC backlight control
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for zero Flicker and reduced eye fatigue and whoa adaptive sync AKA AMD free sync
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if you go through the certification process is included over the display
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port input so say goodbye to the tearing
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associated with vsync off my friends now
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hold on a minute lonus you're saying there's something cooler about this
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monitor from a gaming persp perspective than the fact that it's the first curved
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34in 1440p with free sync yes I am this
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monitor runs at a maximum refresh rate of 75 htz and if you don't think that's
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a big deal you're wrong the difference between 100 HZ and 144 htz is possible
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but difficult for me to perceive by contrast and I've talked about this
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recently on some of my gaming notebook videos the difference between 60 HZ and
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75 HZ is is night and freaking day now
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some of you will know that while I use an LG 34 u97 at work and I am such an
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advocate for ultrawide that LG sent me a 3D printed action figure of myself
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standing next to a bunch of ultrawide monitors I'm still running an R Swift
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pg278 Q at home because for gaming the
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color Fidelity and immersion tradeoff
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has not yet been worth it to me to have to deal with 60 HZ refresh screen
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tearing and relatively slow response
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times that all changes today gaming on
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this sucker is simply put freaking awesome would I recommend it to
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professional Esports competitors no they're still going to want to be using
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standard aspect ratios and are going to want every Edge they can get so bring on
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the 144 HZ refresh rates and 1 millisecond response times but for folks
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who game simply for enjoyment this is the best experience that I've had yet
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much better than surround with those bezels in the way but I realized I've
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gotten ahead of myself a little bit here I completely forgot to do an actual
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overview of the monitor at the back we find buttloads of inputs two full-size
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DisplayPort 1.2s and a mini with two HDMI 2.0 ports one of which is MHL
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compatible a headphone jack and power for the external power brick and the
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Uplink and four down links for the built-in USB 3.0 Hub round out the io
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also at the back we discover that vase amount support is more than an
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afterthought but you probably won't even need it because the monitor supports the
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essential ergonomic adjustments tilt
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and height adjust but there is some disappointing stuff back here too glossy
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plastic never looks as good in person as it does on a product page and the way
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the connectors stick straight out causes undue strain on them if you change the
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height of your monitor not to mention that the top DisplayPort lock can't be
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released without finding a skinny tool to help you these kinds of things should
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have been caught at some point in the design process moving around to the
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front the top and side bezels are thin
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perfect but I'm really not a fan of the two-tone chin bar bezels should be like
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children as unobtrusive as possible unless I have a specific reason to
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interact with them which leads us to my next negative point the onscreen display
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controls are among the worst I've ever encountered the buttons aren't labeled
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they're mushy it requires three clicks to get into menu the only saving grace
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here I think is that there's almost no real reason to go in here for most
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people the default settings on the monitor normal overdrive DP 1.2 and HDMI
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2.0 enabled uh low input lag mode and even the default color mode are all
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pretty darn good but can you quantify
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pretty darn good yes for the first time
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ever I actually can thanks to my brand new i1 basic Pro 2 spectr photometer and
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calman 5 Ultimate Software big thanks to those guys for providing this gear by
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the way I can say that while the XR 341 cka doesn't quite achieve the 100%
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coverage of the standard computer srgb color space that it claims it is damn
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close at 99.4% and while our color cheer test
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does reveal some deficiencies in orange and yellow accuracy if we throw out a
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couple of outliers here almost everything is sitting in the Delta e of
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four or less range with a Delta e of less than two considered to be basically
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accurate grayscale performance looks pretty good to me as well with a bit too
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much emphasis on Blues which is typical of all but the most high-end LED backlit
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displays resulting in a cooler appearance and blacks getting crushed a
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little bit but nothing too alarming on the subject of backlight there's some
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bleed in the corners as seems to be typical of these curved monitors but
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again nothing that I would consider detrimental to the experience of using
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it though your mileage may vary as mine is an early engineering sample but I
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guess that's sort of this monitor in a nutshell there is a lot of good here
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with complaints that will not affect the usability dayto day and if you're
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willing to Shell out it's admittedly very expensive asking price you may get
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another happy surprise too using NVIDIA's display overclocking tool I was
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able to get 85 Hertz on this puppy 85
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Herz ultrawide 1440p be still my
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fluttering heart only the lack of g-sync
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prevents this from winning my coveted editor's Choice Award since NVIDIA
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currently has a stronger offering at the
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high end of their product stack where buyers of this monitor are more likely
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to be shopping but we should see that remedy shortly if what I heard from a
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little bird is anything to go on speaking of
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birds uh Crunchyroll uh is a site created by
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anime fans four anime fans they offer the most current episodes of new shows
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straight from Japan like Koko's basketball 3 and JoJo's Bizarre
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Adventure I'm really going to have to change that script at some point because
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at some point those aren't going to be like the newest shows and they have a
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large collection of the most popular anime series like Naruto and one piece
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all of the content on their site is professionally subtitled and if you head over to crunchyroll.com Linus Linked In
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the video description you can get 30 days of Crunchyroll premium for free
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that means new shows within hours of airing straight from Japan with
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professional subtitling 1080p streaming being able to stream anywhere on a
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variety of devices like your phone tablet or game console and the best part
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is if you decide you like premium then all you have to do is pay $6.95 a month
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to continue it so head over to crunchyroll.com Linus to check them out
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now that you're done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so click that little button
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computer inside a mini fridge woo see you next time