Acer B326HK 4K IPS Monitor
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,844 words · ~9 min read
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when I tweeted a picture of just the box of the Acer b326 HK I was surprised to
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see that I had responses right away from folks telling me that they were already
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sitting with a finger on the trigger waiting for my review to let them know
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if it was good or not and they were planning to buy it however it happened
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Acer has some hype around their 4K monitors these days oh and by the way
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for the gamers out there we've got an AMD value 4K gaming rig build blog
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coming up that investigates just how hard it is to drive mainstream and
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competitive games at this resolution so don't miss that or this General use
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review of what I think is the 4k monitor
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that a lot of people have been waiting
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for ensure Swift Victory with Corsair's highly responsive lightweight gaming
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mouse the saber RGB click now to learn more 4K non-tn monitors like the PQ 321
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Q from ASUS have been available for over a year now but that one even at half of
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its introductory price is $1,500 and a two tile display to boot
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not the most elegant solution especially for gamers and UHD TN monitors while
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available at great prices like $600 is
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and in some cases I've actually got reviews of a few interesting ones here
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here and here offering very competitive performance for TN monitors are still TN
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monitors so a lot of you have been waiting for an IPS s 4k monitor with the
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improved text readability viewing angles and color Fidelity that comes with that
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well here's a pretty darn impressive looking option let's take a run at the
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physical overview and specs of the b326 HK shall we the stand is actually
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surprisingly solid considering it has an 8 kilo 32in panel sitting on top of it
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and features swivel tilt and height adjust but no pivot although that's
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pretty uncommon on a monitor of this size the base has a textured surface
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finish actually confused me until I started absentmindedly piling things on
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it and I noticed that they didn't roll off touche Acer and it also features
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Acer's trademark paperclip magnet thing
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if you don't like the stand though the panel's got Vasa compatible mounting holes at the back so you can use a third
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party option or wall mount the sucker since we're looking at the back we might
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as well have a quick look at the io aside from a power input the Uplink and
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two of the ports for the built-in USB 3 Hub the other two are on the left side
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by the way and a headphone pass through would normally expect to see a display
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port input and an HDMI input or maybe two but instead I was pleasantly
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surprised you get HDMI with MHL full-size DisplayPort mini DisplayPort
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great for hooking up your laptop without any adapters and what dual link DVI it
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only supports running at up to 30 HZ without manual overrides at 4K but it's
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a handy thing to have in a pinch for older computers Acer could have knocked
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my socks completely off with better outof thebox support for waking from
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sleep on a Mac and 60 HZ Ultra HD HDMI
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2.0 but this is still a really strong offering onto the panel itself what a
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pleasure this thing is to use at a pixel density of 137 PPI about 27% more than a
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27in 1440p monitor it is amazing what a
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difference a nice high contrast panel makes to the usability of this product
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compared to other UHD monitors that I've tried the extra four diagonal inches is
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definitely helpful most of what I've used is in the 27in size range but I was
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still shocked to find myself actually able to use this Beast without scaling
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quite comfortably in Windows 7 and based on this new egg review it looks like I'm
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not the only one now my eyes are pretty good but they're not perfect so it seems
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like the nearly imperceptible IPS Glow Higher contrast even when viewing at an
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angle something that's bound to happen more often than you'd think with a display this large and flicker-free
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backlight helps enormously when reading
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or working on it it's not perfect though mine did have a bit of a hot spot of
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backlight bleed in the bottom right corner although it's the kind of thing
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that I only noticed because I went looking for it so I could tell you guys
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about it and there is a little bit of a bluish color shift at more extreme
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angles if you move horizontally again though not something I noticed using the
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monitor like a normal person speak speaking of using the monitor like a
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normal person I do have some thoughts on the truly not very normal 32in monitor
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size in general the last time I used something this big as a daily driver was
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the BenQ BL 3200 PT a VA
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2560x1440 Affair that was a compelling offering at the time if you felt like
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you wanted the pixel density of a 24in 1080p monitor but much much larger
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Brandon uses it everyday for video editing and loves it but that's not for
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me I don't find such a large panel particularly comfortable to use I mean
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you really need to move your head to look from one corner to the opposite one
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so for me the only way to justify such a large screen would be if I get more
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screen real estate to spread things out something that can't be achieved if you
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scale screen elements within your applications or Windows itself
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especially given how poorly all of that stuff works so that is what stood out to
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me about using the b326 h K the legitimate benefit of using it more
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sharpness is nice and once in a while I do catch myself sitting in front of the
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217 PPI 5K iMac retina that I've been
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using lately marveling at how fine the image is but from a productivity
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perspective nothing beats firing up an awesome window management app like
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display Fusion or Aqua snap and spreading out your work over an immense
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area so you can see more at once something this panel is the first to
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allow me to do at 4K I really really
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like this monitor but it could still improve the onscreen display isn't great
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to navigate and while it offers Sixaxis color adjustments for the custom picture
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profile srgb mode for designers who want accuracy Above All Else and reasonably
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robust picture in picture in picture by picture functionality it's a little
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tedious to manually select an input instead of just waiting for the autod
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detect to cycle through them and there's no control over pixel overdrive
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something that many game ERS like to be able to adjust the good news is that
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compared to other IPS monitors that I've used in the past the default setting for
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the b326 HK for Pixel overdrive is actually really solid with almost no
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visible overdrive artifacts and very minimal motion blur or ghost Trails
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behind moving objects it's still a 60 HZ
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display though and going from the 144 HZ Rog Swift that I've been using on my
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gaming rig was a bit of a kick in the teeth but after grounding Myself by
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throwing an older 60 HZ monitor on my desk for a more fair comparison I'm
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perfectly happy with the responsiveness of the b326 HK for gaming even though I
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couldn't find my stupid Leo Bodner thing to actually measure it which leaves us
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with just the conclusion should you buy this
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monitor I still have the same personal feelings that I've had for a while now
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about 21 by9 monitors and I'm not going to rehash all of that here but for me
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the answer is not quite but not everyone
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has any desire for an ultrawide and if you want Ultra HD for more seamless
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support in applications and games Pixel Perfect playback of UHD video content or
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any of the other numerous reasons that you might prefer it this monitor is a
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great choice unless you're a gamer maybe
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well hold the phone lus I thought you said that its gaming performance was
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perfectly happiness inducing or something along those lines I did and it
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is so I need to give kudos to Acer for
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making one seriously kick display at a great price but Gamers need to see
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what's around the corner what's going to be announced with free sync or g-sync
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support in the coming weeks before they can make a properly educated decision on
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whether or not this is the UHD monitor of choice even if right now it actually
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