Gadgetory

welcome back to hardware unboxed and welcome to the first video from my new house those that have been following the channel particularly closely in the past few weeks you'll have heard about how I was moving things slowly disappearing from the set behind me and now everything is gone because I've just rebuilt the wall in the new place and you'll see some shelves and other interesting things go back up there in the coming weeks bit of a project so if you are interested there are some behind the scenes video is available for our patrons on that whole process the audio in here at the moment as well isn't particularly great it is a little bit echoey I still have to put up some acoustic foam all around the other side of the set area so they'll be happening in the coming weeks as well hopefully we'll be able to improve the sound quality a little bit and bring it back to where it was at the previous place so yeah a bit still to do on the audio front hopefully it's not too bad we'll do some things in post hopefully make it not as bad as it sounds in here at the moment and yeah that should be coming up nicely in the next couple of weeks anyway this video isn't about moving house it's about a particularly interesting monitor that asus sent over the Nitro XV 273k this is a gaming monitor that many of you have been requesting that I review in particular one of our patreon members who made sure I was following this up with us every few weeks anyway after months of waiting the XV 273k landed on my doorstep and I've been able to put it through its paces this monitor is particularly interesting because it's the first to bring a 4k resolution and 144 Hertz refresh rate to gamers and a more affordable price point than existing offerings you might remember my reviews of the ASA Predator X 27 and the SUSE rog swift PG 27 you - those were the first monitors ever to pack this combination of a high resolution and high refresh rate but because they also included proper HDR support and gsync ultimate they were priced well out of range of many buyers at around that $2,000 mark but the XV 273k is much cheaper often retailing for around $900 I wouldn't call this super affordable by any means but at half the cost of the original high refresh 4k monitors it could be tempting to some high-end buyers of course with any cheaper product some features have been cut to bring the price down the bigger mission here is the FAL Dior full-array local dimming backlight that was found in the predator x27 the FAL D backlight is important because it brings proper HDR to the table so if that featured card from the XV 273k we're no longer getting true HDR capabilities it is still display HDR 400 certified but that validation stamp is pretty much meaningless G's Inc has also been cut in favor of free sync but now that in video also supports free sync that's no longer a really big deal and as expected adaptive sync worked fine with my NVIDIA GPU in fact this monitor is G sync compatible so the Nvidia control panel automatically detects it as an adaptive sync monitor and applies the appropriate settings for you ASA has given this monitor a definite gamer aesthetic but they haven't gone overboard The Stand uses silver metal prongs and there's a bit of flair to the base with a red highlight but otherwise we're getting a standard black plastic construction it's not a particularly slim monitor it's perhaps slightly thinner than the ex 27 as there's no F alt backlight but you'll mostly be viewing it from the front where the bezels are moderate if a little larger than normal as for other elements we get a little bit of RGB LED action along the bottom edge but it thankfully it can be disabled the stand is height to tilt and swivel adjustable but there's no pivot motion so you can't use it in a portrait orientation overall the stand is very sturdy so that's great to see there's also no active cooling fans that the monitor is silent unlike the two chasing ultimate monitors I mentioned earlier for ports there's two HDMI ports and two display ports plus some classic USB hub action the monitor requires an external power brick as well then for the on-screen menu we do get a directional toggle so that's a tick in my book plus a few shortcut buttons unfortunately the OSD is quite sluggish to navigate the performance here is surprisingly poor which isn't something I often find about these menus where you will find in the menu though are some neat features including a black frame insertion mode for increased clarity I personally never use this mode but I know some people do find it useful there's also a low blue light mode a mode that uses the ambient light sensor to automatically adjust settings a few cheat crosshairs and some other typical stuff ace has a pretty good feature set here moving into the performance section there are a few refresh rate oddity I want to talk about first while this panel is capable of a 144 Hertz refresh rate enabling it is hidden away in the on-screen menu on top of that to use the mode you'll need to run dual DisplayPort cables which introduces its own set of compatibility challenges but worst of all is the fact that enabling the 144 Hertz refresh rate disables freezing not an ideal situation for gamers that benefit greatly from adaptive sync with such a high resolution there are some workarounds the buyers have discovered but they are pretty complicated and to be honest the difference between 120 and 144 Hertz isn't large enough to warrant the effort it is a bit annoying that a product marketed as supporting 144 Hertz is either compromised at that refresh rate or requires a lot of effort to get working properly but at least it's quite easy to get 120 Hertz working through a single cable with all of that said I can understand what Acer has tried to do here by supporting 144 Hertz through dual DisplayPort rather than a single cable like with the predator X 27 the monitor is capable of running at that refresh rate with 10-bit color for HDR without chroma subsampling so if you want to run at that refresh the image is clearer than with the equivalent juicing ultimate displays I'll be it without adaptive sync in most cases unfortunately you will be stuck with chroma subsampling if you want to run at a 120 Hertz refresh rate over a single cable and use HDR at the same time the SDR mode is fine but for HDR viewing over a single cable with native RGB you'll need to drop down to just 60 Hertz as there's no optimal 98 Hertz mode that makes the most use of display ports bandwidth so there's another minor annoyance we're taking into account all of this refresh rate and cable talk my recommendation is simply to run at 120 Hertz in the SDR mode over a single DisplayPort cable it's nice and simple you retain adaptive sync the difference between 120 or 144 Hertz is small and this monitors HDR mode really isn't good enough to bother using it and fluffing around with chroma subsampling the other reason to stick to 120 Hertz is in the response times the monitor comes with to overdrive modes normal and extreme however the extreme mode introduces overshoot with many transitions I recommend using normal mode as a result but with a greater great average response time of 7.5 to milliseconds in this mode the display is effectively being Borel nectar around 120 Hertz which means there isn't much to be gained from jumping up to 144 Hertz anyway this response time result also puts the X V 273 K below both the asou speech in U Q and ASA X 27 in the charts despite having similar panels the seuss model still leads here with the best overdrive optimization I wouldn't say the X V 273 K is bad by any stretch and it's fine for 120 Hertz but at the same time it's really nothing special on the other hand input latency is great at around 3 milliseconds of lag which is an ideal result for a gaming monitor alright let's move on to some brightness and contrast numbers in the SDR mode we're getting around 413 it's peak which is more than enough for most viewers and when combined with great viewing angles particularly in the horizontal plane this is a highly viewable monitor as for contrast yeah it's typical for an IPS at around that one thousand two one mark you aren't going to get VA like numbers here but it's still decent enough for gaming monitors I tend to treat color accuracy as a nice bonus but considering this display is nearing that $1000 mark it's probably a bit more important than usual luckily Acer does provide a sheet claiming factory calibration to adults a average of less than one point oh and the monitor comes with a number of color modes for popular gamuts like srgb rec 709 and DC I will just quickly run through the default out-of-the-box performance here nothing amazing and I don't imagine too many people will run the monitor in this mode as expected the camera is fully unclamped so we're getting the entire 91% days who I pay through coverage this monitor is capable of even four srgb content which does mean over saturation there's also an incorrect white point and generally Delta averages are above 4.0 which really is not accurate for srgb work switching to the srgb mode and things do improve but perhaps not to the level I would have liked like with the default mode the monitors still has a slight red tint to grays which is noticeable when putting the monitor next to properly calibrated displays this behavior was a little unusual given the supposed factory calibration and it isn't quite close enough to the ideal white point to get my tick of approval grayscale Delta averages asked you around that 4.0 mark as a result however with our saturation testing you can quite clearly see the gamut is fully clamped srgb which is good for most content you'll be viewing Delta a averages for some colors are better than others but it evens out to around 2.5 not perfect not the one point of a so claims but for gamers I think this result is close enough and this carries through to the colorchecker tests which are pretty similar it's a similar story for the DCI mode so I'm not going to talk about that in detail but if you do need a wide gamut mode it is one to consider unfortunately fixing the incorrect white point does require a software profile if you find that your monitor is tinted slightly red it might be worth checking out the profile I generated for my review unit which is available on our patreon feed due to panel variants I don't think every monitor will ship with a red tint so it may not help out in your specific situation when calibrated using display Cal you can see the results here which as always are quite good with Delta averages around the 1.0 mark this combination of the srgb mode and the software profile would be fine for creatives especially as the monitor uses IPS technology with great viewing angles and decent wide gamut performance I'll touch quickly on uniformity here nothing amazing nothing overly poor a typical result for a gaming grade monitor the results I got from the Acer predator X 27 in uniformity and color performance in general are better than what this panel provides perhaps there's a higher level of factory calibration occurring therefore what is a $2,000 display HDR really isn't worth touching on in any great detail because we're looking at another fake HDR display with only display HDR 400 certification the XV 273k fails two of the three key metrics for good HDR performance namely brightness is too low as it fails to hit 600 and its peak and there's no local dimming so the contrast ratio stays fixed at around 1000 to 1 which is far too low for HDR content I wouldn't buy this monitor for HDR and I wouldn't bother using the mode altogether all up this is one of those monitors that's in a unique position because there isn't a lot like it on the market sure you have those super expensive g-sync HDR panels that cost two thousand dollars but if you don't care about HDR and just want a high refresh 4k monitor it's basically the XV 273k it's g-sync brother the xB 273 K that's essentially the same and costs a little more or well nothing if high refresh 4k is what you want the XV 273 K is definitely the monitor you should yet I really don't think proper HD is worth spending an additional $750 on going on current market prices considering this display is a relatively cheap $900 and offers nearly every other feature that the predator x27 offers it is much better value and I'm not saying that just because this is the only monitor available with these specs in a number of areas ASA is providing a great high-end gaming experience the build quality is great the IPS panel puts up respectable performance numbers including a true 120 Hertz refresh rate the included srgb mode is great for standard gaming and you get wide gamut support on top of that plus it supports free sync and comes Jacek compatible certified it's not perfect though my main concerns still surrounds that top-end 144 Hertz refresh rate which isn't as usable as I'd like I think 120 Hertz is going to be plenty high enough for buyers and that refresh rate still delivers a great fluid experience but it is advertised as 144 Hertz so that mode should be a bit better in my opinion the other complaints I had were less important like the slow on-screen menu and a few inconsistencies with the calibration plus a worthless HDR mode well I would recommend the XV 273k for people who want a high refresh ball came on it up right now I still think we're in the early adopter phase for these sorts of monitors the issue is getting that 144 Hertz motor work well are largely technical limitations that should be solved with future iterations and I also expect the price to trickle down over time $900 is still a lot to spend on a monitor particularly when high refresh 1440p is available at less than half the price and for most gamers in my opinion is still a better choice that's it for this review of the ace of Nitro XV 273 K you can find links to the monitors I've discussed throughout this review in the description below consider subscribing for more monitor content check us out on patreon for some cool perks and those behind the scenes videos of my moving process around here and I'll catch you in the next one