Acer Predator X27 has been reviewed and the king is naked

[Lathlaer]

Okay, I don't know if this qualifies as a Tech News post but since the preorders of the new Acer Predator X27 (4k HDR Quantum Dot 144Hz monitor) have shipped, you can find new and interesting things about what you get when you spend $2000 on a monitor. 

 

Here is the video from English version of a German channel:

 

 

Now, he does not have many subscribers but that doesn't mean that he isn't right about some stuff. He showed exactly the bright halo Linus has been talking about in LTT's initial video about the Asus version of the monitor. It's clearly visible. 

 

But the pièce de résistance is that fan built in the casing of the monitor - a cheap fan that doesn't turn off even when monitor is turned off (though I can't believe there is no setting for that) and that doesn't do a thing when you want to mount the monitor because the airflow is completely blocked.

 

Ofc. standard issues like backlight bleed are still present though apparently a bit less so given the new lighting technology in the panel.

 

I'm personally interested whether or not Asus had similar approach to their version of the monitor and hey, guys - what about you, would you send the monitor back like this guy did? ;-)

[WereCat]

I can't watch the video right now but I am pretty sure that both ASUS and Acer use the same panel from AUO so they will both have the same "issues".

But if there really is a fan that can't be turned OFF when monitor is off... facepalm.

[McHox]

1 minute ago, WereCat said:

I can't watch the video right now but I am pretty sure that both ASUS and Acer use the same panel from AUO so they will both have the same "issues".

But if there really is a fan that can't be turned OFF when monitor is off... facepalm.

panel is the same,however asus usually has a better osd and controls for it

[Lathlaer]

1 minute ago, WereCat said:

I can't watch the video right now but I am pretty sure that both ASUS and Acer use the same panel from AUO so they will both have the same "issues".

But if there really is a fan that can't be turned OFF when monitor is off... facepalm.

I watched the video again and he said that it doesn't turn off when the PC is off so maybe it's some sort of power setting of the monitor that keeps it going and can be tweaked.

 

But it doesn't change the fact that the monitor was louder than that guy's PC

[ToastyBear]

This video is absolutely ridiculous. The monitor is plastic? WTF do you expect carbon fiber? At this price? No way you would get carbon fiber. If acer made the housing entirely metal, you would have just complained how it weighted 50 pounds. Plastic is absolutely fine. You can buy a $10k TV and it would be plastic. Metal is just not practical.

 

Now the fan. OMG the entire basis of his rant is just stupid.

This is what they give you in the box. This is not a mounting bracket. This is just a spacer to add additional space between the monitor and the vesa mount so the fan can breathe. The actual problem is the guy put the flat side on the fan and the completely open side on the vesa mount. Each side has the exact same 4 screw holes and there wasn't any instructions or pictures on the box so I guess Acer has too high of expectations for their users to have common sense.

 

But his point about the fan not turning off does annoy me. I have my computer in the bedroom so its annoying but I have a powerbar with a switch so I just kill the power.

[Lathlaer]

@ToastyBear Thanks for your input, always nice to have a second opinion from an actual owner of the hardware.

 

How do you rate the panel? Is that white halo as bad as the guy says or is it non-issue while gaming?

 

As for that spacer, I'm still having my doubts but since I don't have the monitor, I can't speculate further. My doubts come from the fact that he showed how the rear side with the fan looks like - ie. the square area is cut a bit inside the casing so that even if you use the spacer the correct way, at best you are leveling it with the rest of the chassis (6:05 in the video).

 

But like I said, maybe the perspective is off here and there actually more space than I thought ;-)

[ToastyBear]

Good news. THE FAN DOES TURN OFF. It does it after the internals are cool enough, it just need a few minutes. 

 

The spacer gives more space than the default configuration. There isn't much space to begin with. Im too lazy to take a picture. But you can be assured there is more space with the spacer. The fan isn't super high RPM and doesn't need to pull that much air anyway. 

 

As for the panel. Backlight bleed is absolutely terrible but what kind of IPS monitor doesn't have terrible backlight bleed anyway. 

 

https://imgur.com/pbgsGAY

Shot with auto iso which cranked it up to 6400 ISO for that overblown glow. The box is actually a dropdown menu with text. If you are not careful with your camera controls you can easily overblown your image when shooting a super bright object in complete darkness.

 

https://imgur.com/vPOrjfe

This is a better image shot at 2000 ISO. Here is with the FALD on and off. Backlight bleed goes away when FALD is on but it leaves a tiny bit of glow. The text is still overblown and you can only see a white square but thats because my camera simply doesn't have enough dynamic range. The halo effect is accurate.

 

But you have to take the second image with a grain of salt. The problem is what you see is not constant. It really depends on how adjusted to the dark your eyes are. I honestly could not see it at all for the first few minutes doing this test. Then I turned off all the lights in the room and adjusted my eyes to the dark before I was able to see it. If you aren't looking at exactly a black and white object in a pitch black room, its really not an issue.

 

Also something that completely surprised me. For the people who said 4:2:2 sub sampling is basically the same thing and doesn't matter. You guys are wrong. So super wrong. My god it looks terrible. Im not running this monitor on 4:2:2 ever. 

 

Good news. The monitor actually runs 444 sub sampling up to 120hz. It only drops to 422 when you are using a 10 bit source or displaying 144hz. You won't see any 10 bit sources outside of photo editing software so thats pretty much a non issue. 

[Lathlaer]

4 minutes ago, ToastyBear said:

Good news. The monitor actually runs 444 sub sampling up to 120hz. It only drops to 422 when you are using a 10 bit source or displaying 144hz. You won't see any 10 bit sources outside of photo editing software so thats pretty much a non issue. 

Well that is good news. 120Hz is double what we had before so it's still much improvement with 4:4:4. I was afraid it would be much lower (like 80-90Hz or smth). 

 

Again, thanks for the input. I get the feeling that the guy from the video is a bit particular about his monitor preferences or maybe he got a bad sample.

[ToastyBear]

2 minutes ago, Lathlaer said:

Again, thanks for the input. I get the feeling that the guy from the video is a bit particular about his monitor preferences or maybe he got a bad sample.

That guy is hater. He opened with a rant about the monitor being plastic. A person who rants about that probably isn't looking at the world objectively. He sounds super entitled and thinks just because he paid $2000, hes suppose to get some mystical monitor of his dreams complete with 8k, 240hz, OLED, no burn in.

 

Seriously im paying the price of two iPhones so im not expecting a lot. I just wanted everything they advertised. IPS, FALD, 4k, 120hz. They delivered on everything. IPS means I get backlight bleed, I was totally expecting it. FALD so I get halo, ok fine whatever its not even that bad. I do expect 4ms response time because its not TN or OLED. I wasn't expecting it to transcend space and time break all technological limitations. The monitor was actually fine within the technology it employs. 

 

As for the plastic bit. I definitely did not expect this thing to be all metal and glass like an iPhone. Quite frankly that would just make it super heavy unless they made it carbon fiber. No way are you getting carbon fiber at this price.