Acer Predator X27

HDR done right on the PC, but at a price

THE ARRIVAL OF HDR (high dynamic range) image rendering on the PC hasn’t exactly been a slam-dunk success. Take support for HDR within the Windows OS itself. Let’s be generous and call it patchy. Ironically, the very notion of what it means to be an HDR display has also been murky, thanks to numerous conflicting standards.

The result has been a bit of a blowout. Can you even be sure what you’re seeing is truly HDR? Often, it’s been far from obvious. But not with Acer’s awesome new Predator X27. When this new 27-inch monitor has its afterburners lit up in HDR mode, there’s no doubt you’re looking at something new, something special. This is HDR done right on the PC.

In fact, the X27 does a lot of things right. For starters, it’s based on a quality 27-inch IPS panel that supports full 4K. To that it adds 144Hz refresh rate and several other frills, including Nvidia’s G-Sync tech in HDR spec. But the showbiz feature is surely the X27’s backlight. It’s split into 384 dynamic zones. Yup, this monitor offers proper local dimming.

Combine that with a peak local brightness of 1,000 nits, and you have the makings of a monitor capable of true dynamic range rendering. Running the same content side by side with an SDR panel, even a high-quality 4K IPS model, the difference is little short of epic. There’s so much visual fizz and pop on the X27. What’s more, there’s little to no glow around bright objects on dark backgrounds. Suddenly, even a top-notch SDR screen looks flat, dull, and dead.

Of course, whether it’s video or games, genuine HDR content is relatively hard to come by. So, the X27’s performance with SDR content is critical. To cut a long story short, you have two options. You could run the X27 as a straight SDR display, in which mode it’s simply a very good conventional monitor, albeit one that offers the unusual attraction of combining a 4K native resolution with 144Hz refresh.

Enable HDR in Windows, however, and the X27 picks up the new signal format and switches modes. You can then use Windows 10’s newly updated HDR settings to boost the vibrancy of what would otherwise be very dull SDR content, including the Windows interface. The outcome is a monitor that looks great with SDR and HDR content at the same time. That’s important, as it means you don’t need to constantly toggle between HDR and SDR modes in Windows.

Admittedly, a few glitches remain in Windows HDR support, but recent updates have improved it dramatically, and the X27 shows that progress off in style. That doesn’t necessarily make this monitor easy to recommend, however. For starters, there’s the price. Yes, this is a fantastic display, but it’s one heck of a lot of money to pay for a mere 27-inch monitor. If you want something to watch HDR movies on, there’s far more value to be had from the HDR HDTV market.

The X27’s proposition as a gaming monitor isn’t a no-brainer, either. We tested the X27 with Nvidia’s latest uberGPU, the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. Even with that card, you’re not going to see high enough frame rates to fully take advantage of the X27’s 144Hz refresh in a lot of modern games. That isn’t the X27’s fault, but it begs the question of what, exactly, you’re paying for. In the end, the X27 lives and dies on pricing. It’s a truly fantastic display, but just like Asus’s almost identical ROG Swift PG27UQ monitor, the X27 is simply too expensive to be anything other than a niche player in the HDR monitor market. –JEREMY LAIRD