Acer 4K with Gsync: XB281HK. 4K overkill at 28'?

[moidave]

Hi,

 

I am looking for a new monitor to go along my new GTX 1080ti (CPU i5 4690). I now have an Acer p243w at 1200p, but the 1080ti (a present from my family) is overkill for such resolution.

 

As I mostly play RPG, AAA, and single player games, 4K seems more enticing than 1440p at high refresh rates, although I have seen neither in action (I Live hours away from any big stores)

 

Gsync is to avoid, or at least delay, obsolescence of my system. 

 

I know IPS is better but given the prices in my country, I can only afford the Dell S2716DG (1440p, 144hz, gsync) or the Acer XB281HK (4K, 60hz, gsync). I have read plenty of review of the Dell which seems like a good TN monitor. But what about the XB281HK, any opinions?

 

Is 4K noticeable at 28'?

 

Thanks,

 

David 

[MadyTehWolfie]

I had this monitor twice and the earlier XB280HK. Same panel and everything but non of the gamer stuff. I also owned the IPS acer panel as well. The ips ones suffer from back light bleed the XB281h while not as good on colors as the IPS offers solid visuals and the least amount of back light bleed of the two. It also is a good size for 4k I found myself having to come about a foot away to see all the extra details on the panel and it never looked pixeladed to me at that res and size I say go for it youll be happy just order from Amazon if you can. 

[phongle123]

There's a lot of speculation on this. People saying 1080p is pixelated at 27 inches and 1080p is pixelated at 34inch Ultrawide. I and about 90% of the world are fine with a 1080p 55 inch TV. In which no way looks pixelated. But when compared to my 27 inch 4k IPS, (only in Side-by-Side) the 27inch 4k obviously looks more crisp. Perhaps it's because of the better colors from IPS. But apart from each other. Couldn't really tell a difference. The same between a 55inch 1080p and a 60inch 4k.

 

 

[moidave]

 

Quote

 

 

I had this monitor twice and the earlier XB280HK. Same panel and everything but non of the gamer stuff. I also owned the IPS acer panel as well. The ips ones suffer from back light bleed the XB281h while not as good on colors as the IPS offers solid visuals and the least amount of back light bleed of the two. It also is a good size for 4k I found myself having to come about a foot away to see all the extra details on the panel and it never looked pixeladed to me at that res and size I say go for it youll be happy just order from Amazon if you can. 

Thanks for the reply. So you would say that the 281 is mostly the same as the 281? It was hard to find reviews of the 281 whereas the 280 has many of them (mostly positive).  I will play less than 2 feet away from the screen. 

[moidave]

4 minutes ago, phongle123 said:

There's a lot of speculation on this. People saying 1080p is pixelated at 27 inches and 1080p is pixelated at 34inch Ultrawide. I and about 90% of the world are fine with a 1080p 55 inch TV. In which no way looks pixelated. But when compared to my 27 inch 4k IPS, (only in Side-by-Side) the 27inch 4k obviously looks more crisp. But apart from each other. Couldn't really tell a difference. The same between a 55inch 1080p and a 60inch 4k.

 

 

I guess once you see the difference, it is hard to go back. 

[phongle123]

Just now, moidave said:

I guess once you see the difference, it is hard to go back. 

It is haha. Unless it's side by side you can't really appreciate it. I can only say this for the simple fact that I went from 1080p to 4k. WITHOUT side by side comparison. And I couldn't tell whether I was looking at 1080p or 4k. Because they looked exactly the same. I downloaded a 4k wallpaper and though 4k was worse because the edges were pixel-yy. 4k stuff aren't as optimized as 1080p stuff are. Only when I compared it side by side could I see a difference.

 

But going back to the NOT side by side comparison where I couldn't really tell a difference. Besides color accuracy of course. I'm guessing that the pixelated argument is exaggerated. And maybe, some people CAN tell the difference. But if 1080p actually looks "pixelated" at 27inches then I'm guessing here that it's not because they have good eyes. It's beacuse they have bad eyes. It doesn't look as good, I agree but pixelated and unusable? There no way I can agree with that.

 

And let me validate this by saying I have 20:20 vision

[moidave]

5 minutes ago, phongle123 said:

It is haha. Unless it's side by side you can't really appreciate it. I can only say this for the simple fact that I went from 1080p to 4k. WITHOUT side by side comparison. And I couldn't tell whether I was looking at 1080p or 4k. Because they looked exactly the same. I downloaded a 4k wallpaper and though 4k was worse because the edges were pixel-yy. 4k stuff aren't as optimized as 1080p stuff are. Only when I compared it side by side could I see a difference.

 

But going back to the NOT side by side comparison where I couldn't really tell a difference. Besides color accuracy of course. I'm guessing that the pixelated argument is exaggerated. And maybe, some people CAN tell the difference. But if 1080p actually looks "pixelated" at 27inches then I'm guessing here that it's not because they have good eyes. It's beacuse they have bad eyes. It doesn't look as good, I agree but pixelated and unusable? There no way I can agree with that.

 

And let me validate this by saying I have 20:20 vision

The only time I could see 4K "gaming" was watching a 4K video of Andromeda on a 4K 50 inch TV. Not sure if it qualifies, but it definitely was glorious. 

I also heard that 4K allows you to see stuff that would never have noticed. Details in the background, and such. May I ask what screen/system you have?

[phongle123]

3 minutes ago, moidave said:

The only time I could see 4K "gaming" was watching a 4K video of Andromeda on a 4K 50 inch TV. Not sure if it qualifies, but it definitely was glorious. 

I also heard that 4K allows you to see stuff that would never have noticed. Details in the background, and such. May I ask what screen/system you have?

Dell P2715Q. Toshiba 1080p 55inch. Vizio 4k 60inch.

[moidave]

1 minute ago, phongle123 said:

Dell P2715Q. Toshiba 1080p 55inch. Vizio 4k 60inch.

The Dell looks nice. What about your GPU?

[phongle123]

Just a 1070 GTX gotta power those pixel and get decent frames somehow at 4k haha

[moidave]

1 hour ago, phongle123 said:

Just a 1070 GTX gotta power those pixel and get decent frames somehow at 4k haha

Some people on forums say that it is better to get all settings at ultra at 1080p, with high refresh rate than compromise and get medium on 4K at 60fps. What is your take on this? 

[phongle123]

I hear the 2nd option a lot too. But that's probably just the, "I own a 4k monitor, I'm going to be running my games at 4k" mentality.

 

Why don't you see for yourself doing 768/720p on ultra vs medium on 1080p. It's not an exact test since 720p can be blurry on 27inch monitors.

[Phate.exe]

I have a 27in 4k IPS.  I love it.  On games I can run on high it looks incredible, and while it hasn't happened yet, if I feel like I'm turning the settings down too far, you can drop the resolution to 1080p with perfect scaling.

 

27 is starting to be too big for 1080p in my opinion unless you're sitting a few feet farther back from the screen.

[moidave]

On 05/08/2017 at 0:03 PM, Phate.exe said:

I have a 27in 4k IPS.  I love it.  On games I can run on high it looks incredible, and while it hasn't happened yet, if I feel like I'm turning the settings down too far, you can drop the resolution to 1080p with perfect scaling.

 

27 is starting to be too big for 1080p in my opinion unless you're sitting a few feet farther back from the screen.

Would 1440p look strange on a 4K?

[Phate.exe]

1 hour ago, moidave said:

Would 1440p look strange on a 4K?

Unless you run it in windowed mode, yeah.

 

LCD's can't split pixels.  You can interpolate and upscale, but they'll never really look "right".  4K (aka 2160p) is 1.5x 1440 in each direction, so if you have a 1440 source image you'd have to attempt to use 1.5 x 1.5 pixels on the 4k panel to display it.  Since 4K is 2x 1080p in each direction, to display a 1080p image you just need to use 2 x 2 pixels of the 4k panel (pretty much just giving you a larger pixel to use).

 

Interestingly, 720p (half of 1440p) also scales evenly to 4K.  You'd just need to use 3x3 pixels of the 4K panel to display a 720p image cleanly.

 

Basically 1440p is great for gamers who either want sharper graphics, or want the same sharpness they get out of a 24in 1080p display on a 27in display, but it doesn't scale well to basically any other resolution.