Gadgetory

to ensure you don't miss a single hardware unbox video hit subscribe then tap the bell welcome back to hardware on box today we're looking at the cheapest high refresh rate monitor you can currently get in Australia at least through a favorite retailer PC case gear you guys been asking for more budget model content so today thanks to PC Casey and ASA we're looking at something very affordable the monitor in question is the ASIC kg to five 1qf which retails for $2.99 ozzie dollars when and if this monitor comes to the US it should cost just two hundred dollars or so which is right at the bottom end of pricing to this kind of monitor the right now it is available in Europe as well for a great price so yeah it is a highly affordable budget monitor for this price the KZ 250 1qf provides a twenty four point five inch 1080p T and LCD panel with a maximum refresh rate of 144 hurts that 144 Hertz refresh rate is the key thing here you can get 1080p monitors for less than 300 or zero or 200 u.s. but you won't find many or anything that provide 144 Hertz for less so if you really want to get into high frame rate high refresh gaming and you only have a few hundred to spend this is the best option so what does 200 bucks get you well as I mentioned it is a pretty basic ten-pound it's on the smaller size for modern displays and it is just 1080p all of that is pretty much a given at this sort of price point it does pack freezing support though which is great for AMD GPU owners and it has low frame rate compensation so you get adaptive sync throughout the entire refresh range and the kg 250 1qf shouldn't be confused with the older k g2 v 1q which is effectively the same monitor just with a 75 Hertz refresh rate if you want the full 140-foot Hertz refresh and LFC you'll need to look out for the k g2 v 1q f confusingly there's also a new k2 20 v 1q with a 240 hertz refresh rate so just double check the spec sheet before you buy as aces monitor naming scheme is pretty confusing most of the time I'm going to talk more about space and calibration a bit later in this review so first let's take a look at the design as this is a budget monitor I wasn't really expecting much so it's no real surprise that Acer has delivered a pretty basic build here it looks decent for a cheap motor if I'm honest they're almost all of the exterior is built using plastic including the stand you're not gonna get that premium finish here any crazy game elements like RGB mood lighting though thanks to some metal reinforcing the entire build is quite sturdy ASA did deliver in one important area and that's bezel size the top and sides are just six point five millimeters thick which is in line with most modern monitors and will be great for those looking to create a multi-monitor setup however the stand is thoroughly inflexible and extremely basic supporting just tilt adjustment no high no swivel and no pivot adjustments can be made these features are left a more premium monitor designs for connectivity we have hdmi displayport and DVI inputs and there's also a couple of audio jacks both for input to the internal speakers and output from hdmi displayport to headphones or other audio devices the included jewel for what speakers are rubbish so I wouldn't consider using them seriously for even one second but that's not exactly unusual for built-in monitor speakers unfortunately to access the on-screen menu you'll have to suffer through the torture of non directional controls at least the buttons are on the front of the monitor so you can actually see what you're pressing but no d-pad makes and navigating and changing settings a bit of a chore I guess d-pad controls is something restricted to high-end monitors at this point in any case there's nothing overly exciting in the on-screen controls apart from all the usual stuff you're used to seeing in modern monitors in fact it looks like everything from Asus high-end gaming monitors is in here including cheap crosshairs low blue light modes adaptive contrast multiple presets and more if you're moving from just a 60 Hertz display to 144 Hertz for the first time the difference is seriously enormous for gaming especially if your system is good enough to push frame rates into the high end of the Refresh window games seem more fluid and more responsive and the and clarity of a high refresh increases the amount of perceptible detail during fast motion scenes when you're pushing or above 100 FPS on a high refresh monitor it's simply a better way to game and moving back to 60 FPS on a 60 Hertz monitor can feel sluggish in comparison high refresh rates are definitely not a gimmick and in my opinion it's worth the extra cost if you can't afford it there is some debate about whether you need adaptive sync at high refresh rate so I tend to find it more useful in the sub 75 FPS range so if you're gaming at those sort of frame rates you will get a better experience with an AMD GPU as it can actually make use of free sync with the kg2 5 1qf but if you have an NVIDIA GPU I still think this display is a great option as equivalent g-sync monitors a fair bit more expensive if you're running games at high frame rates it's not a significant loss and you'll still be getting the benefits of a high refresh rate this monitor uses a TN panel so it has all the usual strengths and weaknesses of this panel type response time is a very good rated at one millisecond greater grain from what I could see motion blur and ghosting aren't a problem especially with overdrive enabled viewing angles though are quite weak especially vertically which tends to be a major issue with TN panels of course it's fine when you're viewing the panel from straight on the kg to 5 1qf provides a level of brightness that exceeds aces specifications I measured around 458 nits of peak brightness using the default calibration while Asus suggests a brightness of 400 nits so that's not a bad start for this monitor I don't actually recommend using the monitor at 4:15 it's but brightness does tend to be a strength of 10 panels asa doesn't list a proper contrast ratio for this display instead opting for a garbage adaptive contrast figure which they give as 100 million to one in actual fact most TN panels are sub 1000 to 1 and that's the case with this monitor a contrast ratio of 929 to one that only dips slightly when brightness is reduced this is down to a relatively high black level though I wouldn't necessarily describe the panel's having a backlight bleed issue rather the entire panel just can't block out the backlight fully again that's a common issue for budget TN panels uniformity is the worst aspect of this displays performance and that's really the major difference between a budget monitor like the kg 250 1qf and something higher-end there are clearly areas that are brighter than others and it doesn't really require a measurement like this to spot them that said the center to edge Delta e value is as large as 5.0 in some areas which indicates a visually noticeable difference and keep in mind this is a relatively small monitor which makes uneven backlighting stand out more that said you aren't likely to notice the uniformity issues while gaming its most noticeable when viewing largely solid colors in desktop and productivity apps so that's just something to keep aware of default color performance isn't amazing by any stretch a scissor did target a correct white color temperature of 6,500 K and we get reasonably close with just a slight green tint however they forgot to calibrate the rest of the grayscale range there is a noticeable yellow tint to grays and poor gamma with a grayscale Delta a average of 5.3 to saturation performance is mediocre though a Delta II average of 3.88 isn't the worst I've seen and considering this is a budget panel we could be getting a lot worse straight out of the box it's definitely pleasing to see 97.7% srgb coverage some budget displays can't produce the full srgb gama so at least the top-end of colors will be well saturated within the bounds of srgb color checker results show an average delta T of 4.75 with the highest DS in skin tones and Red's which matches with the overall slight yellow tint this monitor provides in its default State I'll also show the luminance sweeps here which you can see the largest deviance from accurate in the low luminance range where the K G 2 v 1q F is particularly loose the good news is the K G 251 QF is calibration friendly both there just on-screen display controls and using external Hardware tweaking settings using the OSD controls won't get you perfect results but you can achieve tighter Delta ears across the board using the settings as you can see here of course there will be some deviants among all models of this monitor but these are the sayings that worked best for me this tightened up the grayscale Delta II average from five point four six to two point nine though it doesn't correct the yellow tint or gamma problem fully in fact the other available gamma settings just make the issue worse saturation improves from three point nine three to two point four for a decent gain and Colour check it comes in from four point seven five to three point two it doesn't make the display super accurate but it is an important improvement that you can get without any other hardware one thing I should note is calibration does reduce the contrast ratio down to about seven thirty to one which is getting to a pretty low value at this point I'm not surprised to see this behavior from a TN panel and it does remain one of the weakest aspects to this technology luckily if you fully calibrate the kg 250 1qf you can achieve great results using spectra Cal's Kalman v average Delta ease with sub 1.0 in every test gamma was corrected the CCT average is nee perfect and even the luminance sweeps are tightened up a fair bit there is still some looseness in performance near the bottom end of the luminance and grayscale range but that's just a nitpick and we are just talking about a budget display here if you're interested in using the software profile I created for my kg 2 5 1qf with your kg 2 5 1 qf if you decide to buy one that will be available through our patreon page I get asked from time to time to provide these profiles and I think it makes a nice bonus for those that support us through patreon thanks to all that do keep in mind no two monitors are identical so my profile might not be as accurate as it could be for your monitor but it should be world's better than the default profile head over to patreon compound one box to download the profile if you want so all up I'm impressed with the ASIC 8250 1qf it's always a bit of a gamble with budget monitors or really any budget product and sometimes you get a steaming pile of crap however this modeling is not crap at all into rivers great specs especially the refresh rate at an awesome price performance out of the box isn't amazing but it responds well to calibration and the only major issues are typical TN grievances like low contrast ratio some poor viewing angles and uneven backlighting the design and build is basic but it does the job I quite easily recommend this budget monitor considering what it provides for just $300 readers or around 200 us it's really good value for money and you'd be hard-pressed to find a better monitor without spending a lot more for an IPS or VA display and the great you see is there is a very similar 27-inch variant the cagey 271 a that's available for only 306 nine Australian dollars if you wanted a larger panel while I haven't tested that specific model yet it has a really attractive price point as well in keeping with aces aggressive targeting of the budget market that's it for this review of the ASIC a g25 1qf don't forget to head over to our patreon page where you'll find the calibrator display profile for this monitor subscribe for more monitor reviews just like this one and I'll catch you in the next one