Gadgetory

when I tweeted a picture of just the box of the Acer b3 26 HK I was surprised to see that I had responses right away from folks telling me that they were already sitting with a finger on the trigger waiting for my review to let them know if it was good or not and they were planning to buy it however it happened Acer has some hype around their 4k monitors these days oh and by the way for the gamers out there we've got an AMD value 4k gaming rig build blog coming up that investigates just how hard it is to drive mainstream and competitive games at this resolution so don't miss that or this general use review of what I think is the 4k monitor that a lot of people have been waiting for ensure swift victory with Corsairs highly responsive lightweight gaming mouse the Sabre RGB click now to learn more 4k naan TN monitors like the PQ 321 cue from a soos have been available for over a year now but that one even at half of its introductory price is $1,500 and a 2 tile display to boot not the most elegant solution especially for gamers and UHD TN monitors while available at great prices like $600 ish and in some cases I've actually got reviews of a few interesting ones here here and here offering very competitive performance for TN monitors are still TN monitors so a lot of you have been waiting for an IPS 4k monitor with the improved text readability viewing angles and color fidelity that comes with that well here's a pretty darn impressive looking option let's take a run at the physical overview and specs of the b3 26 HK shall we the stand is actually surprisingly solid considering it has an 8 kilo 32 inch panel sitting on top of it and features swivel tilt and height adjust but no pivot although that's pretty uncommon on a monitor of this size the base has a textured surface finish that actually confused me until I started absent-mindedly piling things on it and I noticed that they didn't roll off Touche sir and it also features a sirs trademark paperclip magnet thing if you don't like the stand though the panels vaisseau compatible mounting holes on the back so you can use a third party option or wall mount the sucker since we're looking at the back we might as well have a quick look at the IO aside from a power input the uplink in two of the ports for the built-in USB three hub the other two are on the left side by the way and a headphone pass-through I would normally expect to see a DisplayPort input and an HDMI input or maybe two but instead I was pleasantly surprised you get HDMI with MHL full-size DisplayPort mini DisplayPort great for hooking up your laptop without any adapters and why dual link DVI it only supports running at up to 30 Hertz without manual overrides at 4k but it's a handy thing to have in a pinch for older computers Acer could have knocked my socks completely off with better out-of-the-box support for waking from sleep on a Mac and 60 Hertz Ultra HD HDMI 2.0 but this is still a really strong offering onto the panel itself what a pleasure this thing is to use at a pixel density of 137 PPI about 27% more than a 27-inch 1440p monitor it is amazing what a difference a nice high contrast panel makes to the usability of this product compared to other UHD monitors that I've tried the extra four diagonal inches is definitely helpful most of what I've used is in the 27-inch size range but I was still shocked to find myself actually able to use this beast without scaling quite comfortably in Windows 7 and based on this new egg review it looks like I'm not the only one now my eyes are pretty good but they're not perfect so it seems like the nearly imperceptible IPS glow higher contrast even when viewing at an angle something that's bound to happen more often than you'd think with the display this large and flicker-free backlight helps enormous Lee when reading we're working on it it's not perfect though mine did have a bit of a hot spot of backlight bleed in the bottom right corner although it's the kind of thing that I only noticed because I went looking for it so I could tell you guys about it and there is a little bit of a bluish color shift at more extreme angles if you move horizontally again though something I noticed using the monitor like a normal person speaking of using the monitor like a normal person I do have some thoughts on the truely not very normal 32 inch monitor size in general the last time I use something this big as a daily driver was the Ben QBL 3200 PT AV a 2560 by 1440 affair that was a compelling offering at the time if you felt like you wanted the pixel density of a 24 inch 1080p monitor but much much larger brandon uses it every day for video editing and loves it but that's not for me I don't find such a large panel particularly comfortable to use I mean you really need to move your head to look from one corner to the opposite one so for me the only way to justify such a large screen would be if I get more screen real estate to spread things out something that can't be achieved if you scale screen elements within your applications or Windows itself especially given how poorly all of that stuff works so that is what stood out to me about using the be 320 6hk the legitimate benefit of using it more sharpness is nice and once in a while I do catch myself sitting in front of the 217 PPI 5k iMac retina that I've been using lately marveling at how fine the images but from a Productivity perspective nothing beats firing up an awesome window management app like Display fusion or aquasnap and spreading out your work over an immense area so you can see more at once something this panel is the first to allow me to do at 4k I really really like this monitor but it could still improve the on screen display isn't great to navigate and while it offers sixaxis color adjustments for the custom picture profile srgb mode for designers who want accuracy above all else and reasonably robust picture in picture and picture by picture functionality it's a little tedious to manually select an input instead of just waiting for the auto detect to cycle through them and there's no control over pixel overdrive something that many gamers like to be able to adjust the good news is that compared to other IPS monitors that I've used in the past the default setting for the be 326 hk4 pixel overdrive is actually really solid with almost no visible overdrive artifacts and very minimal motion blur or ghost trails behind moving objects it's still a 60 Hertz display though and going from the 144 Hertz rog swift that i've been using on my gaming rig was a bit of a kick in the teeth but after grounding myself by throwing an older 60 Hertz monitor on my desk for a more fair comparison i'm perfectly happy with the responsiveness all the be 326 HK for gaming even though I couldn't find my stupidly Oh Bodnar thing to actually measure it which leaves us with just the conclusion should you buy this monitor I still have the same personal feelings that I've had for a while now about 21 by nine monitors and I'm not going to rehash all of that here but for me the answer is not quite but not everyone has any desire for an ultra-wide and if you want Ultra HD for more seamless support in applications and gains pixel-perfect playback of UHD video content or any of the other numerous reasons that you might prefer it this monitor is a great choice unless you're a gamer maybe we'll hold the phone - I thought you said that it's gaming performance was perfectly happiness inducing or something along those lines I did and it is so I need to give kudos to Acer for making one seriously kick butt display at a great price but gamers need to see what's around the corner what's going to be announced with free sync orgy sync support in the coming weeks before they can make a properly educated decision on whether or not this is the UHD monitor of choice even if right now it actually kind of looks that way speaking of looking that way today's episode sponsor Japanese accessory maker and mash is going to make your iPhone 6 or 6 plus look that way or well that way or that way or any of the 9 different ways depending on which color you like and meshes mesh cases designed manufactured and packaged in Japan and made from a strong not too soft not too hard elastomeric material the same kind of stuff that you might find on the grip of a tool it's available on Amazon in the US Canada UK France and Germany and they're looking to expand their reach to even more countries as soon as they can the case is available in nine different colors that is black yellow orange white blue turquoise pink red and clear and I know my pointing didn't correspond to the colors I was saying but don't worry too much about that and can be attached or removed as easily as really any other iPhone case so head over the link in the video description to check out and mesh if you're looking for a new case for your iPhone 6 or 6 plus thanks for watching guys like this video if you liked it dislike 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