ACER PREDATOR XB271HU
A stunning monitor, but it isn’t the only option
WE’RE GETTING THERE. We’re getting mighty close to the perfect monitor. The Acer Predator XB271HU is a frankly gorgeous display, and ticks almost all the boxes for the ideal gaming monitor. But, sadly, it’s turned up to the party the wrong side of fashionably late, and wearing the same outfit as the host. Though not quite as well.
Acer has got so much right with the new Predator; it’s rocking a high-end-GPUpleasing 2560x1440 native resolution, lovingly laid out on a 27-inch IPS panel. It comes sporting Nvidia’s G-Sync frame synchronisation tech, and is capable of hitting a top refresh rate of a kitten-smooth 165Hz. The beefy GPU brigade may be hankering for a 4K IPS panel in there, like the Asus RoG Swift 27AQ, but we’re still some way off getting one running at those silky refresh speeds.
The 27-inch screen is the perfect scale, in terms of pixel pitch, for a 1440p resolution—and, with a decent GPU, you’ll be running games at the native res of the panel at speeds which will make G-Sync look its best. Though that 165Hz refresh rate is a thing to behold, too, and damn us if it isn’t actually noticeably better than the ol’ 144Hz panels. Don’t get us wrong—144Hz monitors still look great, but you can see a boost in visual clarity when things are shifting around the screen. Running two identical panels side by side, one at 144Hz and the other at 165Hz, you can easily see the difference. THUNDERSTRUCK It’s those two identical panels that are the problem for Acer, though. Asus beat Acer to the punch when it released the RoG Swift PG279Q earlier this year—that monitor runs the same AU Optronics AHVA panel as this Acer Predator. So Asus has stolen some of Acer’s thunder by releasing its own 165Hz IPS beast, and that meant that when we turned on the Predator, we were impressed that it looked pretty much just as good, but not as blown away as we had been when running the latest Swift in.
To find a place for it, Acer has more sanded off the corners than cut them, which means it can offer the Predator for around $100 less than the RoG Swift. As a result, it doesn’t look as good; the slightly weird, aggressively angular feet are a little off-putting, the controls are rather basic and unintuitive, and the screen has that faux bezel-less look, where it’s recessed to the same level as the panel. We much prefer the slimline bezel of the Swift. More importantly, though, we also prefer the visuals of the Asus screen.
They’re rocking identical panels; how could we prefer one over the other? AUO only delivers the panel itself to Acer and Asus; the extra electronics and calibration are polished off at the manufacturer level, and no matter what we tried with those awkward controls, we couldn’t get the Predator to look quite as good as the Swift—there was something a shade yellow to the white reproduction of the Acer, and we just couldn’t shift it.
But therein lies the rub; our preference for the Asus is born from testing the two cheek-by-jowl—most people are unlikely to sit these two stunning monitors together. Everyone else is just going to be too busy picking their jaws off the floor, and falling in love with the incredible clarity, color reproduction, and impressively accurate blacks they both produce, to possibly care. The marginal differences really are that small, and we really doubt anyone gaming on their Predator will shed any salty eyejuice over their experience because of anything other than enraptured awe.
When it comes down to it, the Asus RoG Swift PG279Q is the better all-round monitor. We’ve checked out a couple of different samples now, and have experienced none of the initial problems some users had. But the extra saving you get with the still-lovely Predator makes the decision between the two one born of cost above anything else.