Gadgetory

acer has finally woken up and is paying attention to the gaming monitor market again they've dabbled in the past they hadn't at the time excellent 3d vision monitor the GD to 35 Hz but since then they appear to have been sitting on their collective thumbs until now welcome to my video about one of the in my mind only to gsync monitors that really matters for high-end gaming the acer XB 280 HK corsair gaming RGB keyboards feature precision Cherry MX RGB key switches for sixteen point eight million color per key backlighting for virtually unlimited customization click now to learn more we'll start with a physical overview around this massive 28 inch sixteen by nine panel with the OSD controls embedded in the bottom right is an unfortunately thick and glossy bezel something I find particularly disappointing given how ahead of the curve Acer was on the super thin bezel thing when they released the h2 36 HL about a year and a half ago the stand is a circular base affair with an orange accent it assembles to lessly in about 30 seconds and gives the xB to a thk tilt swivel height adjust and pivot the quad facta of ergonomic display adjustment options it serves his purpose very well but I didn't find its build quality particularly confidence-inspiring especially at this kind of a price point although given that we know a g-sync module adds about $200 to the cost of a monitor and Acer's offering is priced about $200 higher than otherwise similar 4k displays that also don't feature beautifully over built stance I don't think acer is cutting this corner any tighter than anyone elses on the top bottom and right of the monitors a whole lot of nothing but on the left we're treated to 2 of the 4 USB 3 ports that run off the monitors internal hub then on the bottom we find the tell-tale signs of Ag sync monitor aside from the USB 3 uplink the other two ports that go with it and an AC power input we've got a whole lot not much going on down here just a DisplayPort 1.2 input this is because in videos first generation Jason module only supports a single DisplayPort input so then why would you want to gsync module and your monitor - great question g sync delivers smoother on-screen animations by eliminating screen tearing you know those ugly horizontal lines through the image where it seems like the top half of the screen has the last frame in the bottom half has a new one and leg which is caused by your GPU waiting for the monitor to be ready for a refresh when running with vsync on the way that we traditionally get rid of tearing but you can learn more about it in this video here just trust me it works and it's a pretty big deal but better perceived smoothness and gaming animation won't do us any good if it's not presented on a good quality panel so let's have a look shall we the XP 280 HK uses the same type of panel that we've already seen before in the other low ish cost 4k monitors that we've covered here and here so there weren't really any surprises contrast is pretty good color reproduction is surprisingly good for a TN panel and pixel response times we're good without excess ghosting and overdrive artefacts even on fast-moving scenes as long as you leave the overdrive setting at default within the on screen display in fact I found most of the settings in the OSD were best left alone I adjusted color temp to normal and everything else especially the image profiles just made the screen look much much worse so I didn't find myself using them in front of the flicker free DC controlled backlight we find a matte finished panel which is good if you hate glare and reflections with horizontal viewing angles that are good enough as long as you're sitting mostly centered in front of the screen the way most people use a computer the subtle green and Bend paint color shift is unlikely to bother you much on the desktop and is pretty much impossible to pick up with a full screen game or movie running vertical viewing angles just like the other low-cost 4 k's are less impressive though with a noticeable gradient from warmer to cooler looking from bottom to top even with your head in a stationary position again this is something that's nearly impossible to pick up in games and many people won't notice it at all anyway but I look at a lot of monitors so particularly on uniform backgrounds like when reading emails or message boards I find it a little bit distracting but let's change gears a bit here and talk about the gaming experience I suspect if a sir could have timed the release of their XP to a thk 28 inch 4k g-sync gaming monitor anymore perfectly the entire world would have imploded two weeks ago the GTX 980 and 970 wouldn't have existed yet and graphics cards with enough horsepower to run modern games at 4k would have started at 500 plus dollars rather than 330 and they would have been equipped with a mere three gigs of VRAM probably fine for now but not exactly future-proof had acer waited oh I don't know another year to release this monitor we'd probably have better cards capable of running triple-a titles pinned at 60fps so the need for variable refresh rate technology that masks stuttering when the framerate drops will be reduced but as it is the timing is great and this monitor and those graphics cards are a match made in heaven the way I benchmarked the XP to ATH came was a little bit different than normal because it's mostly about the subjective experience instead of firing up games and staring at my fraps counter then dialing in graphic settings until the number looks good I went the other way around I cranked everything to max started turning things down until the game felt 60fps smooth then fired up fraps to see what framerate I was actually running at even though I've evaluated jisuk monitors before I've never done it this way and I think the results may shock you I found that because of the pixel density of the display anti-aliasing was superfluous beyond 2x NSAA which gave me more head room to play with eye-candy options like tessellation and higher-quality shadows and to my surprise I discovered that as long as my game wasn't falling below around 40 frames per second during demanding sequences it was running to my eyes about as smoothly as if I was at 60fps constantly and this is coming from someone who has gained four years on high-end hardware and considers himself a bit of a framerate diva so while I feel that lower-cost 1080p g-sync monitors have a hard time justifying that $200 or so premium compared to their non g-sync cousins especially when that money could be spent on a better graphics card to keep frame rates up or a higher resolution monitor to improve immersion and image quality when you've already got a high-res monitor the addition of g-sync enables a smoother gaming experience with more details turned up then would have conventionally been possible potentially saving you some additional investment in more graphics cards this makes the xB 280 HK a very attractive option for high-end GeForce gamers but that doesn't mean that a sirs newBeauty is the only horse on the track there are two high res g-sync monitors that each bring their own unique value proposition to the table this baby is the resolution King and the only option for someone who wants a 4k display with g-sync today while the rog swift masseuse is an inch smaller diagonally and runs at a mere 2560 by 1440 resolution but delivers thinner bezels slightly better colors and up to 144 Hertz refresh rates so I guess this is what it boils down to if you're a sightseer and most of your gaming is done in third person or in casually competitive scenarios where lightning fast response times are not critical the xb2 ath K gets the nod if you're looking for the best monitor on the block for competitive play the rog swift gets my vote for sure guys thanks for watching like this video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment letting me know if your feelings are more 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