Acer Predator X35
Is this the holy grail of gaming monitors, or just a sacrilegiously expensive one?
Ticking off just about every monitor spec a modern PC gamer could dream of, this 35-inch LED-backlit VA screen from Acer has been a long time coming. First revealed back in August 2017, the X35 has taken nearly two years to come to market, and it’s joined by near-identical competitors from Asus and AOC, with all three employing the same ultrawide panel from AU Optronics (AUO).
At an eye-watering $3,999, this Acer model is in another league entirely, putting it out of reach of all but the most well-heeled of gamers. But that said, there’s nothing that even comes when it comes to specs: that curved panel promises a 200Hz refresh rate alongside G-Sync, DisplayHDR 1000 support, fullarray local dimming (FALD) backlights and a designer-friendly 90% DCI-P3 colour gamut. Its 3,440 x 1,440-pixel resolution doesn’t need an array of topshelf cards to drive it… well, not unless you want to hit 200 frames per second to match that refresh rate.
Out of the box, it’s colour accuracy is excellent too – we ran it through an X-Rite i1Display Pro calibration, and found it matched Adobe RGB/6500K settings without any tweaking required, and its colour uniformity was also outstanding, with exceptional backlight evenness and no indications of light bleed around the edges – so it’s immediately ready to go for basic colouraccurate design work.
This really is a monitor that’s intended for entertainment, though, and there it doesn’t disappoint either. In games that support high dynamic range colours (such as Metro: Exodus and Shadow of the Tomb Raider) that DisplayHDR 1000 spec – the second highest available – translates to an immediately noticeable bump in image depth when activated. Blacks are deeper and with more subtle detail, and bright colours pop with more vibrancy and realism, and that broader colour range imparts a much greater sense of three-dimensionality overall.
When coupled with that 200Hz overclocked refresh rate (it can hit 180Hz natively, but we had no issues running it at top speed in terms of image quality or glitches) and G-Sync, that adds up to an unmatched gaming experience, particularly in first and third-person titles, where the onscreen action feels more immediate and responsive than on any other monitor we’ve every tested.
Subjectively speaking, this 35inch size also feels significantly more substantial than the more common 34-inch ultrawide gaming screens – the extra physical vertical height means it fills more of your natural field of view, and doesn’t feel like a narrow viewport.
There’s one glaring fault with the X35, however, and that’s ghosting. VA panels have been a bit notorious for this in the past, and sadly AU Optronics and Acer haven’t been able to completely eliminate it here. The problem’s particularly noticeable when you have a dark-black element against a lighter background, with that high-contrast visual causing dark trails to lag along behind the black area when it’s in motion.
As much as we love the other aspects of this display, however, for this kind of price we’d be expecting perfection – and unless you can categorically say you never play games with these kind of high-contrast visuals, we’d have trouble recommending this otherwise stonkin’ screen.
DAN GARDINER