It won't suffer from lag, screen tearing, or other issues that may crop up

Aug 20, 2014 08:33 GMT  ·  By

Monitors may not be as celebrated as, say, CPUs and graphics cards, but that's mostly because more of them are released each year, and a lot more often. On the bright side, that means that there's always incentive for their designers to add cool stuff to set them apart from the rest.

Whether or not Acer has managed to make the XB270HAbprz LCD display feel more appealing than the rest of the ones on sale is debatable though. Not because it lacks perks (which it doesn't), but because none of those perks is unique.

The Full HD resolution is a no-brainer. After all, 1920 x 1080 pixels has been common for years now, and it has been slowly making room for 4K (3840 x 2160 pixels) and WQHD (2560 x 1440 pixels).

The TN-film panel is nothing to gawk at either, since it's the same core technology that has been used for LCDs for many, many years. It's why IPS panels get special mentions when they're used instead, which is not the case here.

Not that IPS doesn't have its disadvantages. While it does provide better viewing angles, it has a lower response time.

Which brings us to the first of the high-end traits possessed by the Acer XB270HAbprz: the response time of 1 ms. You won't get much faster than that, and it will make sure you're always on top of things even in high-speed shooting games and the like.

The contrast ratio is a normal 1,000:1 (the static one anyway). Also, we may as well mention the viewing angles of the newcomer: 160 degrees vertical, 170 degrees horizontal. Not bad really, even if IPS has 178 degrees for both.

Brightness is of 300 cd/m2, which, while not amazing, is not poor either. We've seen plenty of monitors and TVs with 200-250 cd/m2.

Then there's the refresh rate of 144 Hz, which lets you display 3D media, be they films or games actively being converted into that dual-image mode (72 Hz for each image set, aimed at the left and right eye, respectively). 120 Hz would have been enough to 3D (60 Hz per image set), but Acer didn't want to settle for that, especially with most similar-level monitors offering 144 Hz as well.

Finally, the NVIDIA G-Sync module is included, synchronizing the refresh rate of the display to the texture fill rate of the GPU, eliminating all possibility of screen tearing or other visual glitches without lag. Kind of like V-Sync, but without the horrible drop in performance.

The Acer XB270HAbprz, complete with dual-link DVI, DisplayPort 1.2 connector, and 40port USB 3.0 hub, should start selling soon. The price is a mystery though.