Gadgetory

this video is brought to you by the Taiwan Excellence Awards that's right Paul established in 1992 in well Taiwan the TE A's were created to recognize innovation and value among Taiwanese products like the Acer predator x34 that I'm reviewing today exceptional items are selected for the robust R&D design quality and international marketing these awards epitomize the state's ability to use innovation to create added value in the design and manufacturing of cutting-edge products you can find more info about the Taiwan excellence awards and their products in the descriptions below what's up gasp so about one year ago Acer released a premium monitor that was critically acclaimed by numerous reviewers to be the best gaming panel to ever hit the market unfortunately I wasn't able to snag one for review at the time and after many dead ends I eventually gave up all hope of ever seeing one arrived on my doorstep until it did twelve months after its initial release in the United States I am finally giving you my review on the Acer predator X 34 now in case this thing has somehow flown under your radar for the last year and you've got your credit card at the ready at this very moment I'm gonna crush your dreams at the start of this video by saying this monitor retails for about $1,300 trust me it's better you find out sooner granted the ludicrous price tag may not bother any of you high rollers out there so at this point the only thing that matters is what makes this monitor a cut above the rest well firing off the main specs first we're dealing with a curved 34 inch 21 by 9 ultra wide IPS display with a resolution of 34 40 by 1440 the panel sports an advertised greater gray response time of 4 milliseconds not bad for IPS and a default refresh rate of 60 Hertz that's overclockable to 100 Hertz top that off with built-in g-sync support and it's not hard to see why I am a quick tour before we get into the fun stuff the screens matte finish keeps glare and reflections to a minimum for the most part and I think the subtle curvature strikes a nice balance between offering and immersive gaming experience and a reasonable landscape for browsing and productivity sleek black bezels on the top and sides measure a centimeter in thickness making their way to a stylized chin bar with super cool branding and under glow LEDs to let your friends know that you paid a lot for this thing within the on-screen display users can between LED colors including red blue green orange white and my personal favorite off as well as a few preset lighting effects in my opinion the OSD itself could be much improved here with the buttons underneath the right side of the panel it's kind of difficult to know which one you're pressing which makes it all the more frustrating that the menu navigation is not intuitive at all even after getting used to the button layout it still takes way too many clicks to adjust any given setting it took me 15 clicks just to overclock the monitors refresh rate that's right you actually use the on-screen display to overclock the refresh rate of the panel I do like the option for throwing up a refresh rate counter though along with other settings like pixel overdrive DTS tuning for the built-in speakers and user-defined profiles that you can switch between on-the-fly the back side of the predator looks all aggressive and stiff and I've left my fingerprints on the glossy finish to convey my thoughts on glossy finishes supported stand adjustments include lift and 40 degree tilt five down and 35 up I would have liked to see some swivel action here for sharing the screen with someone in the room but there is a 100 by 100 vase of wall mount for those with more specific needs the stand also features a carrying handle for easy transport and a cable routing hole that I wish had a small break somewhere to pass cables in and out more easily if you have a small desk like myself another thing to consider here is that the stand while gorgeous has a massive footprint and since its kind of designed like a tripod with three legs it's not like you can just let the base overhang the edge of the desk if you wanted to position the monitor further away from you so make sure that your desk space isn't just wide enough but has the proper depth as well for the rear i/o you'll find a DC input 3.5 millimeter audio out a USB 3 upstream port and for USB 3 inputs video outs include HDMI 1.4 which is overclockable to 60 Hertz but you'll have to connect to the DisplayPort 1.2 ports with a supported Nvidia card if you want a taste of that g-sync lifestyle now I've tested out this technology several times on the convention show floor but being able to set up a g-sync panel in my own room for the first time without any crowds or blaring music from the booth next door look at @ug skill was so much better err meh gerd having your monitors refresh rate dynamically adjust to metro GPUs frame rates is a simple concept to understand but has to be experienced to appreciate the full effect by completely eliminating the issue of screen tearing that comes with traditional vsync disabled and stuttering that occurs with vsync on visibly there's nothing left to disrupt the rendered frame output and pairing that with the 100 Hertz refresh rate for the first time feels like someone dumped a vat of hot Lube on your whole gaming experience seriously it's like Lube on everything gameplay is so smooth it's almost silk like and while this goes for any kind of genre really fast-paced games like first person shooters tend to pay the biggest dividends with an enormous reduction in motion blur then there's that sexy curve an ultra wide aspect ratio which envelops your head and peripheral vision to suck you even deeper into the game much more effectively I might add than a triple display setup this is of course assuming the game you're playing supports 21 by 9 otherwise you get these thick black bars on the sides that are kind of annoying but I'll gladly live with it all things considered in terms of pixel counts the resolution we're dealing with here is much closer to 2560 by 1440 than it is to 4k but to run it high refresh rates you'll still want a high end GPU akin to something like the gtx 1070 or better as an extension of gaming twitch streaming with this panel was actually fantastic with plenty of real estate for things like chat and xsplit while still allowing me to game at 2560 by 1440 ultra wide at this resolution also works like a dream for general desktop browsing and workstation applications like video editing though I can't see how the screens curvature might distort the perspective of those looking for pinpoint accuracy with their compositions content creators who deal with color correction on the other hand will appreciate the IPS displays 100% srgb color gamut and 10-bit color depth aided by dinner rate luckily us gamers benefit from these specs as well now when streaming the usual fanfare of online video Netflix doesn't appear to support 21 by 9 as of yet so you're stuck in sidebar city unless you use a browser extension to fill the screen but that adds a significant vertical crop to your image however nothing's worse than getting the sidebars and the cinematic strips on the top and bottom I've seen arcade cabinets with better-looking bezels at the very least there is some 21 by 9 content on the youtubes that looks pretty damn good but it seems we're still far from making this a mainstream aspect ratio on content platforms as for backlight bleed there are some affected areas in the corners of screen but it's minimal enough to go unnoticed in the majority of scenarios summing things up here there's a lot to love about this monitor black bars OSD and the price are not any of them but if you're really into PC gaming with a high-end system to boot haha this is by far the best gaming monitor I have ever come across even now a solid year after its initial release but that's gonna do it for now guys so let me know what you think of this thing in the comments below and don't forget to toss me a like on this video if you enjoyed it before you guys go check out my store for shirts and stuff and feel free to follow me on Twitter Instagram and twitch to see what I'm up to or just say hi it's lonely sometimes as always thank you guys for watching subscribe to the channel if you haven't already and I will see you all in the next