Gadgetory

I bought the cheapest 4k monitor I could find there's been overwhelming demand for budget oriented content lately presumably in light of the high graphics card prices saving money elsewhere in the budget can mean the difference between a 1050 TI and something like a gtx 1070 and those two are worlds apart so if you're interested in an affordable monitor for content creation or gaming or just the crispy desktop wallpapers do what we did and buy something like this on sale for about 250 bucks it's 4k the be quiet dark bass 700 brings luxury and silence to the mainstream luxury thanks to subtle RGB integration full case modularity and even USB type-c support and silence thanks to three included silent wings three fans and sound damping foam all around click the link in this video's description for more details meet the Acer CV 28 one HK for short we'll call it the CV 1 now it's porting a 28 inch 3840 by 2160 panel it is the most spectacular looking thing on the market but the price surely was we paid about 250 a US dollars for it and our local Best Buy now this admittedly was quite some time ago actually around Black Friday the deal was so good we actually purchased two of them and just on merit alone now out of the box I wasn't too impressed with the way it looked at least physically the bezels are pretty thick and ugly they protrude from the display itself by nearly six and a half millimeters that's thicker than some smart phones by the way and just when you think they couldn't get much worse they also have a glossy texture which means that they attract finger prints and they scratch easily the entire profile for that matter isn't very slim I kid you not while the bezels are almost 6.3 5 millimeters thick the depth of the monitor is about 6.35 centimeters and from front to base we're looking at just under 24 centimeters so it's a pretty large monitor remember it is a 28 inch panel that's a diagonal length there but this believe it or not is where the negative stop actually starting from the structure and stand the cb1 rotates a full 90 degrees for both portrait and landscape views and is also a swivel and height adjustable it's one of the nicest integrated monitor stands I've used to be completely honest it's even got a cutout for cable management so you know they're they're really focusing on all the fine details here the panel itself has several quality features for the price for one an integrated AC converter which means no annoying power brick to deal with ports underneath include DVID hdmi and displayport remember you'll need DisplayPort 1.4 or two DVI DS or HDMI 2.0 for a true 4k picture here CV ones also sporting a dedicated audio in Jack as well as a headphone jack I think the best part is that Acer actually includes cables for all three video ports including DisplayPort which is pretty cool these aren't cheap cables you'd think that at this price point they would find every single place they could to save money but they didn't with respect to cables now the C one also has built-in speakers another cost-saving feature for gone for the sake of the consumer despite the lackluster lows and distorted highs at just two watts of peace the duo is actually a pretty great substitute for those awaiting a decent set of desktop speakers or headphones oh and one more thing I forgot to mention about the CB ones physical characteristics its evasive mountable so pairing up two or three of these things actually shouldn't be a problem at all and because they're so cheap you know it probably wouldn't break too many banks out there to buy two or three of them to have that duo or triple display now I'm moving over there because this angle is really awkward alright now on to my personal impressions of the panel I will say first and foremost the calibrations right of the box are pretty sweet now remember that the cameras going to incur bit of distortion when it comes to the picture quality that replication that you're seeing in this video is not going to be true to life so the panel actually looks much better in person and I can't really show you how it looks to be a camera so you're kind of gonna have to take my word for it here but I'm gonna be very critical just because I know that most of you are going to be as well when it comes to a 250 to roughly 300 dollar price tag you expect this thing to fall short in a few areas but I'm here to tell you that it really doesn't and I find any fault that I could the first thing I noticed right out of the box was the color reproduction it was spot-on so no calibration needed on my end in fact of what you're looking at right now is like the normal that's the normal picture I didn't actually do anything to it this is what it should look like right at the box it will vary from unit to unit slightly I expect but I mean as long as the quality controls decent on these monitors there look pretty similar to one another and this one looks spectacular there is no warm or cool tent at all I think the white balance is spot-on contrast is decent especially given the fact that this is a TN panel now your viewing angles are gonna be pretty trashed that's typical of a cheaper TN panel I would say anything within 30 degrees of center is going to be okay but passed 30 degrees you will see that color Distortion and you can definitely see it from above and below so make sure this monitor is at least eye level anything 10 or 20 degrees above or below your line of sight that's the horizontal line of sight is going to incur some degree of color Distortion now if you want to know more about TN technology and how it differs from say IPS technology then I invite you to check out this video right here but in general a liquid crystal in a twisted nematic TN display is slightly curved from top to bottom and then when you run a current through it it'll either untwist slightly or twist a bit more and that affects how light travels through the liquid crystal to either turn on or off that given pixel a course of LCDs are backlit so each pixel is basically controlling the amount of light that passes through the crystal from the backlight below now this technology generally sports a bit more overclocking Headroom but in a 4k monitor it's not really going to matter much look you've got 3840 by 2160 pixels multiply those two numbers together and that's how many pixels there are packed into this display so it does get increasingly difficult now the higher the pixel count to overclocked a monitor this one really didn't overclock much of all I think I got like 62 or 63 Hertz which is basically undetectable from sixty Hertz it's not going to matter much here but you do have a consistent 60 Hertz refresh rate with this monitor and it's good enough for 4k I would say I think if you're gonna invest in a 4k monitor anyway you're more interested in the picture quality and clarity then you are the overall smoothness if you want you know 144 Hertz or 240 Hertz they do have to drop to something like 1440p or 1080p something else I was very impressed with was the on-screen display there are several buttons down below that really aren't dedicated to any particular function if you click them it opens up a menu and then each button changes at least what it does based on the little pictures that you see above each of the buttons on the frame it was actually very easy to navigate through it didn't require any you know learning curve at all it's very straightforward and this is what I want to see in all monitors you know buttons that aren't necessarily dedicated because it's hard to see the little pictures that are engraved on the frames at times if you just have you know the description of the button on the screen instead it makes things much easier to navigate through now if you're worried about backlight bleed don't I would only be concerned about that on IPS panels this one being a TN panel really doesn't have much of anything in the way of backlight bleed I would say there's a tiny glow all the way around the frame and that's just because it's you know it's not a very expensive panel so the panel terminates right at the ends of these plastic frames and that is where you see a bit of that light bleed through but it's really only detectable when you have a perfectly black screen displaying and when you're in a very dark room I actually had to boost my cameras I said like 1600 with an f3 aperture to even notice that there was a bleed there other than that I've got to say paying 250 bucks for this was an absolute steal and I really wish that they would drop the price consistently I've been looking online recently you know it's been two or three months since Black Friday around when I purchased this and the prices have gone back up to around 350 bucks and that's that's like average for this panel I'd say 350 $400 is what I would set this price to MSRP and that's usually what you'll find it at but I recommend waiting especially you don't need a panel right now wait for something like this to drop in price maybe around a holiday check your local Best Buy or Micro Center for this particular model or whatever newer model they have come out later and you might be able to find this for under 300 bucks if so buy two of them because you're not gonna regret it the quality here is insane for what you're paying now if you want this monitor or one like it I invite you to check out the video description I have Amazon and Newegg affiliate links tied to products that if they're not this one are very close to this one that should impress you for the money I try to keep things you know around 400 bucks or below and in the 4k resolution if you're interested in something like that I also have a few 1080p panels in 1440p panels down there that I would personally recommend if you're looking for a higher refresh rate monitor which is you know those are the resolutions you want to look for if you want that if you're going 4k unless you want to spend you know thousands of dollars you're gonna stay around 60 Hertz that's just how it's gonna be so you have to weigh these out you know ask yourself if you prefer image clarity or if you prefer a faster image you know a higher refresh rate he really comes down to the games you play and what you prefer overall let me know what you think about this monitor in the comments below be sure to give this video a thumbs up if you thought it was cool thumbs down for the opposite click and subscribe but if you have it already stay tuned for more content like this this is science studio thanks for looking with us this thing really does look good