Gadgetory

welcome back to hardware unboxed a couple of weeks ago you might have spotted my review of the Asuza rog swift PG 27 uq the first monitor on the market to sport a 4k resolution up to 144 hertz with full display HDR 1000 certification and of course chasing HDR it's a very impressive monitor certainly one of if not the best you can get though I didn't exactly give it a full recommendation due to its $2,000 price tag and a few early adopter issues well the PG 27 uq isn't the only such monitor on the market a suit has some competition in the form of the Acer predator X 27 which I'm looking at today both the PG tweet 7uq and X 27 used the same a Optronics panel so they're both equipped with the same specifications but that doesn't mean they perform the same as I'll discuss a bit later in fact I guess the whole point is video is to determine whether the a suit or ASA model is the better by considering both command the same price tag in terms of design it's an easy winter I see here the predator X 27 is simply a far more attractive and well-built product compared to the PG 27 UQ certainly more fitting of its monstrous price tag the front of the display itself isn't all that different to the Zeus model with the similar bezel sides and similar simple design but it's the stand with the X 27 starts to differentiate itself with a much more elegant and less overtly gamer design up until the pillow The Stand uses a unique and entirely metal construction per fitting of a premium display with that ridiculous light projection features or colored highlights the chunky pillar on the rear which provides height and swivel adjust along with the usual tilt support does ruin the elegant sign a little bit however you can't see it from the front which is good news the rest of the rear looks reasonable though it does fall a bit into the gamer category however it's not nearly as bad as the suitors ridiculous tech pattern on the PG 27 UQ so in comparison the X 27 is basically the most beautiful monitor ever created the X 27 does use plastic everywhere but the legs featuring two different finishes on the rear and it does still feel a little trip the monitor is also a bit of a chunky beast though I spec that's mostly due to the FAL D backlight there are also two RGB LED strips integrated into the design one in the v-shaped event towards the top and the other along the bottom edge certainly a cleaner way to integrate RGB than simply chucking it into a massive logo on the rear though personally I'd still disable it all the inputs you're getting no different to other g-sync monitors a single DisplayPort and single HDMI port plus an audio jack and USB 3.0 hub with a couple of handy quick access ports on the left side the OSD is controlled through a directional toggle which is great to see and navigating aces feature back menus easy and fast most of the things you find here relate to color and backlight controls but there is still favorites like you know you cheap crosshairs dark blue stop shion's but there is no ultra low motion blur the other thing you'll be interested in I'm sure is the active cooling fan I criticize the asou speed 7 you for having an audible cooling fan for the chasing HDR module and I'm sorry to say the Acer predator X 27 also requires a fan to cool the internals however AC uses a noticeably different controller for its fan which allows it to vary the fan speed these suits version of this monitor runs the fan at the same speed all the time while the Acer model ramps up the fans slowly from idle which is a more pleasant and gentle way to introduce the noise the monitor creates the X 27 also appears quieter in its SDR mode while running HDR content fires up the fan to around the same level of noise as the PG 27 UQ that said the fan is still audible during SDR operation which can be a bit annoying depending on the ambient noise in your room ideally this sort of monitor wouldn't require a fan and if it did the fan will be larger slower in the asylum Plaza mentioning the PG 27 new Q review this is one of those issues that comes about with early adopter products moving into performance and we'll start with HDR features because it's the key feature of the predator X 27 nothing here is really all that different to the PG 27 UQ so if you're interested in a more detailed sort of thoughts on how this monitor fares in terms of HD I'd suggest going back and watching the XJR section of that review but I will summarize I guess the key points here the predator X 27 ticks basically every box in my ex gr monitor checklist including great brightness support of 600 nits sustained and over a sour it's peak brightness accuracy is decent so when content requests say 700 nits be displayed the x27 gets pretty close to that mark with its default settings I also retrieved around 1100 nits maximum from a 10% window or smaller which is certainly very good contrast is excellent thanks to a full array local dimming backlight with 384 zones it's very fast and produces no visible afterglow even after bright objects disappear from view each zone is small enough that you won't notice glow around the edges of bright objects in typical movies or games it's only in desktop usage that you might run into those artifacts with local dimming enabled the contrast ratio is as high as 50 mm to one though that various depending on the brightness of the content of course maximum sustained contrast ratio is around thirty thousand six hundred to one in the HDR mode with black levels significantly lower than any other LCD monitor without local dimming ISO provides several backlight speeds but for most users I'd recommend leaving it on the default gaming mode which is the fastest as for wide gamut support again the X between seven ticks all the right boxes here provides 93% DCI p3 coverage 99% Adobe RGB coverage and 150 % srgb coverage the panel is 8 bit plus frc not to be able to notice the difference compared to a true 10 bit panel in almost every situation but of course it supports 10-bit color processing all of this means you're getting a much wider array of colors in the HDR mode again as far as monitors go the x27 provides the best HDR experience you can get right now and gains the support HDR well really do look significantly better in the HDR mode on this monitor with brighter highlights a wider range of colors and spectacular contrast in fact this snippet from my PG 27 UQ review sums it up pretty well in games like Far Cry 5 that support actually are really well you're not only getting a more vibrant image as the panel can actually display more colors but there's so much more detail visible particularly in high contrast scenes taken an outdoor sunny scene with heavy shadowing this monitor has the ability to dazzle you with the Sun burning in a thousand nits while simultaneously providing plenty of visible detail in a dark shadowy area neither of these elements are blown out because the monitors dynamic range far exceeds a regular SDR display and it more closely simulates how the scene would look in real life so yeah hg on the ASA Predator X 27 is a lot better than any boring old regular SDR display whether that's worth two thousand dollars is another question which I'll touch on at the end of course like with the PG 27 uq there is the issue of refresh rate and chroma subsampling again I go to a lot more detail in my page a 27-year Q video but the basic issue boils down to DisplayPort bandwidth there's simply not enough for HDR SDR content at 4k 144 hurts instead full 444 RGB is only possible at 4k 120 Hertz in the SDR mode and for k98 Hertz in the HDR mode if you want to run at higher than those refresh rates such as the monitors maximum 144 Hertz refresh rate you'll have to put up with 4 to 2 chroma subsampling which reduces the Chrome resolution and can introduce artifacts in some situations chroma subsampling in my opinion it's extremely hard to spot in video content and in games but it is noticeable in desktop apps with artifacts around solid edges and text and still class the issue is minor but it's disappointing DisplayPort is limiting me as displays from reaching their full potential hopefully that's resolved with future tech and advise people using the display in a desktop SDR mode to cap the monitor to 120 or even 98 Hertz and for HDR gaming run at 98 Hertz unless you have powerful enough hardware to exceed 100 FPS at 4k let's move into looking at SDR performance because here there are a few differences between a sauna suits models in terms of brightness and contrast ratio everything is still quite similar though the x27 goes up to a maximum of 317 nits in the SDR mode with a native contrast ratio around 1100 to 1 that said I'd still recommend leaving the dynamic backlight enabled for most SDR content in which case we'll achieve a contrast ratio around 10,000 to 1 at 200 nits though of course that varies with the brightness level you set the monitor to black levels are outstanding for LCD with the dynamic backlight enabled as well response times one area where the x27 differs compared to the PG 27 you cube each company has the ability to tweak their overdrive controls despite using the same panel and in the case of the a sauna suits models aces overdrive controls I guess a lacking our standard test procedure involves finding the best overdrive setting that delivers less than a five percent overshoot and then using that setting for response time testing in the case of the a sous monitor that was the normal mode which produced an average greater gray response time of four point one eight milliseconds with no overshoot whatsoever however with the SX 27 their normal overdrive mode one of two modes the other being extreme is a bit more aggressive it produces a quicker response time but some transitions had upwards of 10% overshoot which is beyond our tolerances so for the x27 the best thing to use is actually overdrive disables a disappointing results as it's the only mode where overshoot is not present in this mode average grader great response times are six point six two milliseconds a few milliseconds slower than the asou smaadahl and that's with the dynamic backlight enabled which was also the setting used for testing the PG 27 UQ four point two to six point six milliseconds isn't noticeable jump in response time which leaves the x27 with more ghosting and smearing compared to the PG 27 UQ I reckon ASA could have tweaked their overdrive algorithm to deliver performance much closer to the page a 27 UQ but they didn't that said this result is still a lot better than popular VA panels and the average transition time is still lower than the refresh window of six point nine four milliseconds in better news the ASA Predator X 27 exhibits superior input latency falling from fifteen point six milliseconds to eleven point four milliseconds this means that overall when you factor in the input lag and pixel response time the X 27 is actually slightly faster than the PG 27 UQ I was expecting to see the same input latency for both monitors so it's a nice surprise that the X 27 is faster looking at color performance ASA factory calibrates all predator X 27 units to a delta 8 accuracy less than 1.0 for SDR content which is an extremely tight professional grade certification bizarrely though they don't advertise this on their website anywhere or on their Amazon product page despite including a color accuracy stick on the monitor itself along with a calibration report in the box considering ASA calibrates the X 27 to a greater level of accuracy than the PG 27 UQ a Seuss only promises a delta e below 3.0 you'd think ASA would like to advertise this fact and default color performance is certainly very impressive the CCT curve isn't quite as tight as you get from full calibration but a delta average of 0.76 is excellent as is the near-perfect gamma curve this performance continues in the saturation and color checker tests both of which exhibit Delta a averages near 0.5 which is absolutely elite for a gaming monitor you'd be very happy with this level of factory performance from a professional monitor although my guess for $2000 you really should be getting full calibration like this and the important thing to note is the X 27 is more accurate out of the box in the PG 27 UQ the asustor model is still quite good with those to eat averages around 1.3 to 1.5 but the X 27 takes things one step further and with a few very minor tweaks to colors in the on-screen display the X 27 produces the best color results I've seen yet with an average Delta a of just 0.36 in greyscale a perfect CCT curve and a perfect saturation Delta eight of just 0.2 9 this increases the gap between the a sauna suits models is the Isuzu model doesn't change significantly with OSD tweaks this level of performance from a few OSD tweaks is better than I could achieve with the full calibration pass in Kalman 5 in a software profile so there isn't any reason to run a full calibration there's really no way to describe this level of color performance other than to say it's perfect to make matters even better the president x 27 exhibits fantastic uniformity at a maximum Delta II of 2.5 in the upper right corner and Delta s at or below 2.0 for the rest of the monitor the X 27 delivers professional-grade uniformity it will be very difficult for any typical user to spot unevenness in this panel I'm not sure whether its natural variants in panels whether SRS specifically requesting the more uniform panels that come out of the factory but the X 27 is noticeably more uniform than the PG 27 UQ which was a bit uneven along the top and bottom edges I could only go in one our tests and in this case the X 27 is the better option so when it comes to the conclusion of this review I wanted to answer one question first is the Acer predator X 27 or the Zeus rog swift PG 27 UQ the better of the two g-sync HDR monitors well in my testing it's pretty much a slam-dunk victory to the iCIMOD both panels have equivalent HDR performance but it's the ASA model that comes with better factory calibration and a more uniform panel delivering a professional-grade experience that the asustor area doesn't quite reach when you spending $2,000 you really should be getting professional level accuracy and of the two variants only the ASA model is truly providing that out of the box the ASA model is slightly slow in terms of response times but it's fast in terms of input layer creating a fairly even battle there overall and I also think the x27 has a much nicer design even if it still requires an active cooling fan then the question becomes should you spend $2,000 on the Acer predator X 27 at all and that's the trickier one to answer but I think what I said in my review of the PG 27 UQ also applies here the X 27 is no doubt a very impressive piece of hardware with excellent performance and great HDR support but the $2,000 price is still ludicrous when you can get a great 1440p 144 Hertz g-sync monitor for about 500 bucks it won't be as high-resolution and won't provide HDR but I don't think the bump to 4k HDR is worth $1500 I also think there are a few too many early adopter issues like the active cooling fan the expensive g-sync HDR module and chroma subsampling the panel does work well but I think a lot of these issues will be ironed out in a potentially more affordable next gen product and let's be honest these shoes are compounded by a lack of decent HDR games you're not only spending a lot of money to get hgr today but you're also limited to a small handful of tiles that make the most of this monitors top-end features with any sort of technology you can always fall into the trap of saying to wait for the next greatest thing but in the case of this HDR monitor by the time there is a large range of decent HDR games to play is likely this panel will be replaced by a cheaper better version and it's at that point I'd recommend jumping into the world of high-end HDR gaming whereas today I think it's still a bit too early to be investing two thousand dollars like with the PG 27 UQ I don't think x27 buyers will all be disappointed as it's a great flagship display with excellent ecology inside but personally I'd be waiting until the ecosystem is a bit more mature and there are a few more HDR monitors on the market to choose from that's it for this review of the ASA Predator X 27 links to check its current price are in the description hopefully in a few months if you're watching it a few months after this video went live it'll have dropped in price a bit consider supporting us on patreon so we can continue to create these monitor reviews and to get access to our fun discord chat and I'll catch you next time you