14 DAY TRIAL // The launch of a new high-end graphics card or CPU always brings with it product releases on pretty much every other level of the PC market, since it's always a sound marketing strategy to ride the momentum of highly-anticipated products. Acer has just illustrated this.
Sure, it didn't say as much in its press release, but it doesn't take a genius to put two and two together. After all, NVIDIA has just released Maxwell-based GeForce GTX 980/970 graphics cards.
With such graphics cards will come a wave of new PC acquisitions. And even if people keep their PCs, they may get better monitors on principle since, unlike TVs, most of them haven't moved to 4K resolution yet.
Thus, it's a very ripe time for the launch of a monitor range with support for 3840 x 2160 pixels resolution, especially when the three awesome new technologies in NVIDIA GPUs are intended specifically for top-graphics settings (Dynamic Super Resolution, Multi-Frame Sample Anti-Aliasing, Voxel Global Illumination).
The Acer XBO 4K monitors
There are two of them. One is the Acer XB280HK, with a diagonal of 28 inches and a refresh rate of 60 Hz. The other is the Acer XB270H, a bit smaller at 27 inches and with only Full HD 1080p resolution, but 144Hz refresh rate.
That means that the latter will do better in multi-screen scenarios, especially for 3D quality, while the former is more for those who prefer single-monitor configurations.
Either way, both of them have NVIDIA G-Sync technology support, thanks to the special module integrated into their construction. It syncs screen refresh rate with the GPU, eliminating screen tearing or other artifacts while avoiding the issue of latency (a common problem with V-Sync).
Both Acer monitors have a response time of 1 ms by the way, which is as good as you can find among gaming monitors and TVs alike.
As for the look and feel, Acer kept the physical side simplistic (albeit with a round, height/swivel adjustable ErgoStand) but implemented technologies like brightness adjustability (down to 15% of maximum) and ComfyView (non-glare screen for clearer viewing).
Other details include 170/160-degree viewing angles (horizontal/vertical), 1.07 billion color coverage (16.7 million on Acer XB270HL), contrast of 1,000:1, 300 cd/m2 brightness, and 72% NTSC color saturation. In layman terms, the images on the screen look great.
Availability and pricing
The Acer XBO Series XB280HK and XB270HL are selling for $599 / €599 and $799 / €799, respectively. Both possess DisplayPort inputs and 5 USB 3.0 ports (1 up, 4 downstream).