Acer 28-inch 4K gaming monitor experience

Tencent Digital Message (compiled: Chenzai) Acer XB280HK, the company's flagship model for gaming display, is a 28-inch display with a resolution of 4K, which supports Nvidia's G-sync technology, which is clearly tailored for players.

The game monitor has little practical significance in some way. Although the display has a slightly faster response time with this type of banner, the response time of the general monitor is so fast that this little advantage can be ignored. Players are also aware of this, so they typically choose a high quality IPS display.

But last year, AMD and Nvidia introduced their own display synchronization technology, which has finally made the "game monitor" a little more meaningful. Monitors that support this feature can keep their refresh rate consistent with the game's frame rate, eliminating cotton, screen tearing, and other display problems. However, this is not a feature that can be added via software upgrades and you can only buy new monitors.

XB280HK is priced at $800 trillion (about 4901 yuan), making it one of the most expensive gaming displays on the market. Is it worthy of its own high price?

　Hardware design

The XB280HK features a slim, shiny screen border that looks very sophisticated. Although the plastic material borders may produce reflective light in very bright rooms, the problem is not large because of the narrow borders. On the back of the display, Acer replaced the material with frosted plastic, which, although ordinary, felt durable. Overall, XB280HK's work is worth 800 of dollars in price.

This display has ergonomic design and can tilt, rotate and adjust height. The surface of the bracket is also a plastic material, it feels very solid, the circular base can also isolate most of the vibration. XB280HK is compatible with VESA, so users can use other brackets.

The XB280HK connection provides only a DisplayPort 1.2 choice. This may be confusing to some users because the size of the display typically has 3-4 types of input. The reason for this limitation is related to the XB280HK 4K resolution and the G-sync function because DisplayPort is the only input standard with sufficient bandwidth to drive the display.

The monitor also has 4 USB 3.0 connectors, with 2 sides of the fuselage and back, which can be used as USB hub.

　Control problems

Although the price is very high, but XB280HK screen control options are very basic, and other cheaper monitors are not much different. There are 5 menu navigation buttons in the lower right corner of the screen, and different options will be indicated by some icons but in addition to brightness, they do not clearly indicate what their function is, you can only explore yourself.

Although XB280HK provides several preset image patterns, its large number of options are concentrated in the same submenu. The user can adjust brightness, contrast, color mild gamma. It is commendable that gamma control can adjust specific values instead of only vague presets, but this advantage is offset by the lack of color control options. Even simple RGB adjustments can not be done on this monitor.

Overdrive is a unique feature of this display, and it is said to eliminate ghosting by increasing the pixel response time. However, because the display in the default settings almost no ghosting problems, so the function on or off the difference is not.

　Display quality prior to calibration

The limited visual angle gives us a bit of doubt about the first impression of XB280HK, which is most evident in longitudinal observations. When observing the display in a standing posture, the image quality will be greatly reduced. Fortunately, you can fix the problem by adjusting the bracket.

After a deep understanding of XB280HK through the calibration tool, we found that the monitor actually had a very superior quality. XB280HK can render 96% sRGB colors and 71% adobe RGB colors, and 620:1 contrast is excellent. Although the gamut is not as good as LG 34UM95, its contrast has surpassed the AOC g2770pqu.

We were also impressed by the xb280hk of the color. Its average chromatic aberration value is 2.31, the concrete difference value is not higher than the average 2 points. As we all know, the maximum chromatic aberration that the human eye can distinguish is 1, so XB280HK is not perfect in color, but also very close to perfect.

This is on top of all the monitors we've tested this year (or flat), except for Samsung S27D390H. In addition, the gamma curve of XB280HK was measured to be 2.1, slightly biased against the standard value of 2.2.

Like most monitors, xb280hk the highest brightness when it leaves the factory. After testing, this display screen brightness reached 306.5 lux, which is one of the highest values we have seen. Although this is very suitable for the display in the store, it is not so good in the ordinary family environment. This setting causes the shadow details to be lost, and will allow a few minutes of use to produce eye fatigue. Due to the use of a half smooth coating, xb280hk almost does not produce reflective.

　Quality of display after calibration

Although the effect of XB280HK in the preset has been very good, but there are still too high brightness, shadow details are poor, but also the color temperature of the cold problem. Fortunately, these problems can be solved by a simple round of calibration.

After calibration, the color gamut of the XB280HK is not much changed, and the contrast is reduced to 530:1 due to the sharp reduction in panel brightness. At the same time, it also reduced black brightness by half, thereby enhancing the performance of dark scenes in games and movies.

Color registration is the most important place to ascend. After calibration, the average chromatic aberration value of XB280HK dropped from 2.31 to 1.55, which was almost flat with the AOC g2770pqu (1.44). In addition, the gamma curve of XB280HK achieved a perfect 2.2 after calibration, which was stronger than the AOC equipment (2.0).

After the calibration, XB280HK's screen performance is very attractive. Game screen simply, vivid, exquisite. Even the display of text documents and browser Windows is accurate, clear, and balanced. While we may want to increase the contrast to bring better shadow detail, most people have no complaints about the display except for a limited visual angle.

4K and G-sync

Color and gamma are not all xb280hk. The 4K resolution and Nvidia G-sync technology of this monitor are also worth mentioning. XB280HK is currently the only 4K G-sync display, simply speaking, there is no more advanced display than it now.

Under the 4K resolution (3840X2160), the game has a better picture than ever before. Even fallacy such as the League of Heroes and Diablo 3 can benefit from it. The enhancement of texture detail is most obvious, and this is more lifelike than the 1080p or even 1440p display. But the benefits of enhanced detail can be said to be ubiquitous.

For example, in Battlefield 4, we find that explosions are more efficient and more authentic at 4K resolution, and in Diablo 3 the particle effects that are easily overlooked at low resolutions are now evident.

The elevation of resolution does not bring the UI or scaling issues, which we are happy to see. Even in the complex, MMORPG game of "Final Fantasy XIV: Kingdom Rebirth," the game still works correctly after the UI scaling is adjusted to 140% through the game settings.

But to drive XB280HK in an acceptable frame, you need a high hardware configuration. Even the currently strongest graphics card, nvidia GeForce GTX980, still has difficulty maintaining 30fps or higher frames at 4K resolutions. Although it is no problem to run Diablo 3, in Battlefield 4, the quality of the details can only be adjusted to medium. To run those high configuration requirements smoothly, you need to rely on expensive dual graphics configurations.

The 4K resolution also minimizes the attractiveness of Nvidia G-sync. This technology can bring a very high refresh rate, but because the 4K Resolution requires a lot of bandwidth, XB280HK only in the 60Hz experience is comfortable enough. When the number of frames is more than 60fps, you will not see the corresponding level of improvement in the game, but despite this, G-sync still carry out their own work. The screen cotton and sync problems completely eliminated, which also makes the role of animation and particle effects of rendering become extremely fluent.

The benefits of G-sync appear to be flawed by the flicker problem. Sometimes, this monitor will show the most severe flashes we've seen in years. This is the problem with the g-sync itself, and keeping the refresh rate and the number of frames synchronized means that when the number of frames in the game drops, the refresh rate of the display will decrease correspondingly.

While we understand the cause of this problem, it is still disappointing to see the flicker on such an expensive display. Moreover, we thought the problem had been solved long before. Therefore, we also hope that Nvidia can fix this problem by driving upgrades.

Conclusion

Acer XB280HK is a display that really improves the gaming experience. While competitors such as AOC g2770pqu are cheaper and closer, the combination of Acer's 4K and G-sync offers an unparalleled advantage for other competitors, bringing more detail to your favorite game and making it glow with new life, he added.

Of course, it's not a display for everyone. To play the game at the top of the screen, you need a pair of Nvidia's high-end graphics cards, such as GTX 780 TI,GTX Titan or GTX 980, which costs a lot less.

But this is not Acer's fault. The game itself is a hobby of burning money, especially if you want to have cutting-edge screen effects and performance. PC enthusiasts have accepted this. So if high-end gamers are willing to spend 800 of dollars to buy a monitor, Acer XB280HK is the best choice.