Gadgetory

so let's take a look at Aces xB 280 HK which is a 4k monitor that's meant for gaming but how good of a gaming monitor is it let's find out today ladies and gentlemen welcome back to tech your cities Brian coming back to you guys finally with the long-awaited review of the ASA xb2 a thk now this is a interesting monitor because it's 4k I know right that's a lot of pixels going in that 28 inch monitor so it's also touted as having fast response times and also having low input lag which I'll give you guys some numbers later on the review but before we get to onto that let's take a look at the design of this monitor and what it features so as soon as you get this monitor in you'll notice how extremely well packaged this thing is you probably throw it off a mountain and it'll still be intact well maybe not throw it off a mountain then you know what I mean it comes pretty well packed as soon as you unbox it you get the power brick there you also get the DisplayPort cable and one thing to note as well is that this monitor only has connectivity for one DisplayPort so if your DisplayPort goes out then your whole monitor is going out which is a bad thing I would like to see more connectivity on this monitor though that DisplayPort is needed for g-sync which is also supported on this model and since it is 4k at 60 Hertz DisplayPort is one of the few ports that does support and help run this monitor also included with the monitor is a USB cable and the side and also underneath have for USB cable three ports there so it works as a USB host if you need to plug in USB three devices looking at the dimensions of this monitor at 657 millimeters wide by 382 millimeters tall by 59 millimeters deep which makes it a pretty good or a pretty big monitor if you're going to versa mount it and one thing is that's good with this monitor is it's VESA mount Abul as well however let's quickly talk about the monitor stand that comes included with this monitor it's actually a really good stand I was surprised it's one of the best actually it is the best stand for a monitor that I've seen in my life today it's height adjustable and you've got a lot of height adjustment there so if you've got it on any desk situation this will support a good height it's also tilt adjustable and swivel adjustable and you can put it on any desk and know that it won't slip around it's got a really good grip on the base so now onto the actual color scheme of the monitor stand itself and this is where it left me scratching my head they've gone with matte and gloss and generally in the monitor business you either go with either or not both together it doesn't make any sense so it's got gloss on the base and then matte on the actual stand and they've got a nice blood orange ring around it which is kind of aces themed color I guess now moving on to the monitor itself they again decide to go with this same gloss and matte combination I don't know what's going on in the design department there but the bezel is a gloss reflective surface and then the actual screen coating itself is a matte non reflective surface now the coating matte versus gloss that's up to you guys they have their disadvantages and advantages for instance gloss the colors are more vibrant and they will pop more however matte there will be less glare and also your sunlight environment won't be such a disaster to work in so they're the trade-offs between the two this is a matte coating and I must say it's not it's actually a really good coating for a matte coating now on to the actual monitor itself the panel in there is a TN panel so it's not an IPS panel it runs at 60 Hertz at 4k resolution and I'm delighted to say that the response times on this monitor are very crisp you've got also three settings there to change different overdrive settings you've got off normal and extreme I like to play around with normal and extreme I find normals the best for general gaming though in some cases I do like to put on extreme especially in dota 2 when I've got characters moving really fast I like to be able to see them crisp even though on extreme you do start to notice overshooting it's kind of like this black shadow that comes out of the characters and it is a little bit weird but the text is so crisp with the setting on extreme now quickly talk about the viewing angles than the brightness the brightness is advertised as 300 nits and I believe this to be true as when I got this monitor out of the factory it's set at a hundred and it was really bright I had to turn all the way down to 45 just to be able to use this normally also the viewing angles are extremely good for a tan panel and also the color balance is actually really well calibrated out of the factory now another thing on that note is since it is a tan panel the colors while will look a little bit less not as good as an IPS panel for instance these two gloss IPS panels in the background the colors are so vibrant and they pop more than or better than any other monitor I've seen in my life so that's something to keep in mind when you're buying a monitor like the xB 280 HK is that it won't have as good as colors as an IPS panel especially in IPS gloss panel or even a TN with gloss coating for that matter the contrast ratio is also reported as being 1001 though I don't have any way of testing this as I don't have to get a testament but one thing I can test for you guys is the input lag and I'm delighted to report that the input lag is really good on this monitor when I hooked it up and tested it against my korean panels here which i know have really low input lag because they'd have no built-in scalars and i've already tested them against the del p 2 4 1 4 h which has virtually no input lag I was really surprised this was only the ASA was only like losing to the Korean panels by maybe half a frame it was really slow it was just a B stick there wasn't much in it and so basically for gaming especially since it's a fork a panel with g-sync support the input lag in my opinion is really good for this type of monitor honestly though the exact figures for input lag there will be a little bit of variance since my method is pretty much just stopping down my camera to four thousandth of a shutter speed and then taking multiple shots with time at three timers on the screen and then I'll also I take many different shots and I put the ports in and out just to get accuracy though I will say that it is pretty good if I had to guesstimate the input lag it would be somewhere between 8 to 10 milliseconds maybe could be less could be more but it's actually really good so if you're a competitive gamer and you want to kind of step it up to 4k then this would be one of the best choices in my opinion so lastly let's talk about the 4k experience gaming on this monitor how was it brain obviously you've got that trade-off there where you've got 60 Hertz versus 144 Hertz at 14:40 P and in my opinion I'm glad I took the jump to 4k even though the motion isn't as fluid as 144 Hertz monitor the picture is just beautiful like games on this monitor look gorgeous they're really good they're really crisp you pretty much just leave the anti-aliasing off in a lot of your games and it will still look amazing so the 4k experience I can highly recommend it to you guys and since the response times are really fast on this monitor and for instance if I'm gaming I don't notice any ghosting however on these IPS panels I can notice a little bit of ghosting in games and so I do prefer to play on a TN panel when it comes to games especially now that it's at 4k I've got even more the reason to play games on the Acer panel which I'm actually got in my gaming setup downstairs there keep in mind though this is an expensive set up and the monitor came in from me around about $600 that's if I converted yen into US dollars another thing as well you will need a good graphics card to power this monitor I'm currently powering it from a 980 TI which I overclocked and I managed to get good frames in a lot of games if I'm not getting 60 frames per second then I usually turn down the settings to accommodate for that and I'll be getting 60 frames regardless so all in all the ASA xb2 ath K is a very good monitor also one thing that I missed out was the on-screen display it's got different modes that you can choose from preset modes like graphics movies and gaming I just use the custom mode there with the custom brightness setting besides that you've also got your contrast settings and also your overdrive settings down there which you can change on the fly as well and your brightness as well you can change that on the fly besides that you've also got an ultra-low motion blur setting which for some reason is blurred out like it's grayed out and I could not get this to work no matter what I did I turned off g-sync in the Nvidia control panel I then put all my games in full-screen mode tried different settings and I just couldn't get it to work which I believe or maybe that this setting just doesn't work on this monitor altogether so they should kind of just take it out of the on-screen display Mesa what are you doing there anyway besides that you've got the last button there you've got the fully featured on-screen display panel menu we can change things like the gamma you can also change the color temperature though I do like to leave it at 2.2 and warm which is the factory default out of the factory as I believe it looks really good though if you're a counter-strike player you could turn this down to 1.9 as I know counter-strike players enjoy that extra gamma especially in those dark lit rooms now below that you've also got other settings you can change like your brightness and stuff like that on this menu as well so here I am left with nothing but a real big thumbs up for this monitor I'm absolutely loving it it's a really good 4k monitor really fast response times really low input lag really nice that's all I can say and you've got that added on bonus of having G sync so you're pretty much at 4k this is where it makes the biggest difference in my opinion so all in all they've hit a really good mark with the xB 280 HK and I can give it nothing but flying colors I really love this monitor though keep in mind though it is a TN panel and it is a matte coating so your colors are not gonna be as good as something like an IPS panel that I have in the back here with a gloss or a glass screen coating on there with PD C so that's something to keep in mind though for what it's worth I just absolutely love this monitor and I can't recommend it highly enough for you guys especially if you have the money though keep in mind it is very expensive this setup you're gonna have to get a 980 TI or something similar and then you're gonna have to get this monitor which will set you back over a thousand dollars just to be playing games at 4k so that's about it for today guys if you liked this review then please give it a big thumbs up if you have any questions or comments about the xB 280 HK then be sure to drop a comment in the comment section below and I'll get back to you as soon as I can and if you haven't already hit that subscribe button for more juicy tech videos like this one and I'll see you in another tech video very soon peace out for now bye