Acer Predator Xb273KP

144Hz refresh rate, at 4K, with an IPS panel? No, it’s not a dream!

PRICE $ 1,999 acer.com.au

Acer’s had a good run with its Predator displays, releasing some truly excellent gaming monitors to the market such as the X34 and X34P. The 27-inch XB273KP is Acer’s latest addition to the Predator range, packing UHD 4K, IPS, DisplayHDR 400 certification, Nvidia G-Sync and a 144Hz refresh rate, making it worthy of the Predator branding.

Let’s start this review by looking at the exterior of the XB273KP, because it comes with a rather unique feature not normally seen on gaming monitors – a hood. If you’ve hung around professional photographers or graphic designers, you might have noticed a plastic frame around their displays to keep stray sources of light away and maintain colour accuracy. But on the XB273KP, Acer claims the hood is there so you can focus on your game. Like a horse on a racetrack wearing blinkers, I guess? Luckily, the hood is removable.

The included stand is solid and allows for a good range of adjustments to suit your preferred ergonomics. The stand is kitted out with LEDs that can project a cool user-configurable glow onto your desk and there’s even a little latch on the back of the stand that when pulled down, is a spot to store your headphones. If you need more adjustment than the stand provides, there’s a VESA mount in the box you can use to attach the XB273KP to any stand you like.

As soon as the XB273KP is powered up, a small fan turns on to keep the monitor’s internals cool. It makes sense a fan would kick in at 120Hz or 144Hz as the display processing hardware is working hard, but at a regular 60Hz for desktop use, the fan can be annoying in a quiet room. In an ideal world Acer would have configured the fan to only run at high temperatures.

Putting aside the XB273KP’s quirks, it’s a damn fine monitor. Thanks to the IPS panel, colour accuracy is well above most traditional gaming monitors with TN or VA-type panels, providing 90% coverage of the DCI-P3 colour gamut. IPS panels are normally shunned by gamers as there’s a trade-off between colour accuracy and high refresh rates, but Acer’s pulled a rabbit out of their hat and provided the best of both worlds – high colour accuracy and high refresh rates of 120Hz and 144Hz with Nvidia G-Sync support to keep everything smooth as butter. Even more amazing is that the XB237KP does all this at 3840 x 2160!

The catch for all this amazing performance is price. The XB273KP retails for $1,999. That’s a lot of coin for a monitor and unfortunately out of the price range of most gamers and other enthusiasts. That said, if you can afford a rig that can actually achieve 120fps or 144fps at 3840 x 2160, maybe $2,000 for a monitor is no big deal. Not buying the XB273KP to go with your dual RTX 2080 Ti GPUs in SLI would be like owning a Ferrari and getting a set of $90 eco tyres – pretty stupid.

Acer’s pulled a rabbit out of their hat and provided the best of both worlds – high colour accuracy and high refresh rates of 120Hz and 144Hz.