Acer Predator XB270HU 144Hz IPS G-Sync Monitor - The best I have ever seen?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,693 words · ~8 min read
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in the old days I could just go to the store with x amount of dollars in my
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hand till the sales rep I had amount of dollars x minus two then after some
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upselling I'd walk out of the store having spent x amount on whatever
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Samsung monitor fit my budget well thanks to Acer and LG my life has gotten
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a lot more complicated lately with LG seriously upping their game and
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delivering some amazing curved and ultrawide displays and Acer waking up to
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the existence of the gaming Market in a focused Fierce manner well today's
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ferocious gaming monitor is the Predator xb270hu from Acer and it might just be
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the best I've ever
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seen
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now this isn't the first time Acer has blown me away with a gaming monitor
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their xb280hk became my 4k monitor of
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choice for gaming thanks to being the first 4K display to feature support for
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g-sync a technology that eliminates the annoying screen tearing and that's
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associated with uncapped frame rates and the stuttering and leg associated with
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vsync for users of compatible NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards but I still had
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some issues with it for one the 3840 X
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2160 resolution is extraordinarily
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difficult to drive in AAA games even for a high-end graphics card so you got to
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factor in constant video card upgrades in the cost of your gaming setup and for
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two while TN monitors have improved dramatically in the last couple of years
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it's still a TN so that means lower contrast worse color performance and
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lesser viewing angles compared to VA or IPS type panels so ultimately the
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monitor that one the spot on my gaming desk was the ASUS Rog Swift pg278q which
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fixed a couple of those problems well that changes today the XP 270 hu
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delivers some absolutely jawdropping specs that will make it the
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weapon of choice for just about any gamer it features a 27in
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2560x1440 IPS panel with that g-sync
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technology I mentioned before giving folks who are willing to trade some
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response time and refresh rate for better visuals a chance to finally try
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g-sync which oh hold on sorry let me
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just put that away uh sorry so like I
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was saying IPS lovers can trade response times and refresh rate to finally try
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gsync okay for crying out loud sorry I got to take this just yeah what is
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it I'm in the middle of filming this
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what you're
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me okay that was Acer there there is no
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tradeoff the XB 270 hu is also the first
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IPS 2560 by 1440 monitor that supports a
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144 HZ refresh rate natively out of the
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box that's on par with the TN based
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pg278q with no overclocking Tom Foolery
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required to get that performance and while pixel response times are a touch
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higher than the top TN panels about 4 milliseconds versus 1 millisecond 3
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milliseconds of response time is definitely a trade that I'll make for
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the better experience of ips especially for only a
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$20 price premium over its closest
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g-sync supporting competitor so maybe the physical
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overview will reveal some fatal flaw or something uh the
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xb270hu features a rounded glossy B Bass
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with an orange accent ring okay so it's not doing that well here so far connect
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Ed to a stand with support for the full range of ergonomic adjustments tilt
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swivel height adjust and pivot all right this just got a little more interesting
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at the back we'll find the usual g-sync monitor IO so power and DisplayPort uh
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this is a g-sync limitation so there's nothing Acer can really do about it
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without implementing a full additional scaler like Ben Q did with the
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xl2430t along with a usb3 hub with two ports underneath at the back and two on
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the left hand side of the display and since we're moving in that direction
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let's have a look at the front ooh marks
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off here again Acer went and put a reasonably slim albeit not as Slim as
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the pg278q bezel on here but they went
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and made it glossy when will they learn
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thankfully the panel itself is a really nice semi matte so kudos for that moving
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on the onscreen display which can be accessed with the buttons at the bottom
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right is fairly limited this is once again a g-sync issue with brightness
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adjustment pixel response time adjustment that I'd recommend leaving on
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normal some rudimentary color profiles and then a couple of cool things you can
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put a very narrow refresh rate indicator on the left side of the screen so if
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you're obsessive about that kind of thing you can keep an eye on it and
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there's also the menu for ultra low motion blur a backlight strobing
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technique that unfortunately can't be used at the same time as g-sync but does
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have the extremely positive effect of significantly reducing the smear
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appearance of moving objects on the screen the only caveats here are that
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you're limited to 100 HZ which is still very noticeably better than 60 HZ by the
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way and maximum screen brightness is significantly impacted by this setting
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since it's effectively turning the backlight on and off many times per
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second to simulate the way that CRTs worked by flashing an image versus
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displaying and then holding an image on the screen until it updates so let's
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talk about using this puppy then shall we well it's awesome I actually don't
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really know what else to say about it uh g-sync has been and continues to be
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awesome 1440p continues to be a sweet
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spot for gamers who want more than 60 FPS without spending ludicrous amounts
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of money on three or four-way graphics card configurations that deliver results
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that are only sort of better in many cases as you'll see in this video here
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but don't want to be stuck in the 1080p Stone Age and the IPS panel on this
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thing is unlike any I've ever seen before you see the thing is that faster
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refresh rates have been done but it's the pixel response times that have been
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an issue for high refresh rate IPS monitors in the past so mouse cursor
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movement or in-game movement would feel really responsive because the game
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engine is getting more frequent updates but the onc screen image could often
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look blurry and kind of rubbish because it just wasn't able to keep up not the
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case even without ulmb so being able to
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take advantage of g-sync the experience of gaming on the XP 278 hu is absolutely
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fantastic okay hold on a minute here lonus there's got to be a catch Nothing
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in life is free and even if you claim gaming in front of this monitor is
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lights out amazing with very little perceptible motion blur no perceptible
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input leg better image quality thanks to its srgb IPS panel Etc there's got to be
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something all right well let's try then shall we if I had to come up with a
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reason not to drop your other plans and buy this monitor right the second I
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guess it would be this look how far we've come in the last couple of years
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monitors are changing at a rate that we haven't seen in years and new
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technologies like AMD freesync an open and lower cost competitor to gsync that
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only works on AMD cards right now are only just emerging so if you're afraid
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something better will come out very soon then this is a lot of money to spend on
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a display but the other side of that coin is that this is a really amazing
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monitor that I believe any gamer would be happy with the first no compromises
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display that I've seen and the one that I'll be using for gaming until a 3440 by
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1440 144 HZ IPS ultrawide equivalent
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steps onto the playing field well done Acer well done which I guess brings us
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right guys thanks for watching like this video if you liked it dislike it if you
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thought it sucked uh leave a comment preferably at the link to our Forum in
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to one with our affiliate codes so if you were to say for example buy this monitor we would get a kickback if you
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go through our link that kind of stuff helps us out a lot thanks again for watching and as always don't forget to
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subscribe and follow and all that cool
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