Acer Nitro VG271UP Pbmiipx Monitor Review

The design on the Acer Nitro VG271U is very simple. The whole monitor is black, except for some blue on the stand. The back of it has a premium feel, and it looks good in an office or gaming environment.

The stand is relatively small, and has an identical design to the VG271, but with a blue finish. It supports the monitor well overall but wobbles quite a bit when nudged.

Update 01/20/2021: For consistency, we've changed the height adjustment from N/A to '0.0'. The score has been adjusted accordingly.

Bad ergonomics. Besides a limited tilt range, the stand doesn't allow for any other adjustments.

The back has a sleek design to it. The top half is plastic made to resemble metal, which gives it a premium feel. There's a quick-release button and it can be VESA-mounted. Unfortunately, there's no cable management.

The bezels are very thin on three sides, which is good for a multi-monitor setup.

The monitor itself isn't very thick and looks good if VESA mounted. The stand sticks out a bit, though, and prevents the monitor from being placed fully against a wall.

Update 07/19/2019: A reader pointed out an issue that we had overlooked. There's a slight gap between the panel and the inside edge of the bezel, and this gap is slightly wider on the right side of the monitor. We don't think this is a serious issue, but it is present on our unit as well.

The Acer Nitro VG271U has decent build quality. Except for the above issue, there are no obvious issues or concerns.

Mediocre contrast ratio, similar to the VG271. In a dark room blacks appear gray, which is fairly typical for monitors with IPS panels.

The Acer Nitro VG271U doesn't have a local dimming feature. The above video is provided for reference only.

Good peak brightness in SDR, although the Acer Nitro VG271U doesn't get as bright as the VG271. It maintains its brightness across different content, which is great.

Decent peak brightness in HDR, slightly brighter than the Gigabyte Aorus AD27QD.

Note: For HDR to work, you have to choose the 'HDR' Picture Mode and set the HDR setting to either 'Auto' or 'HDR400'. For the purposes of our testing, we chose the 'HDR400' setting.

Outstanding horizontal viewing angles. You won't lose much image accuracy when viewing from the side, which is typical for an IPS panel.

Alright vertical viewing angles. The edges of the screen appear darker if you sit close to it. Also, you lose some image accuracy if it's mounted above or below eye level.

Excellent gray uniformity. There's some vignetting visible in the corners, and the sides of the screen are slightly darker. The center of the screen is very uniform, though, and there's very little dirty screen effect.

The Acer Nitro VG271U has terrible black uniformity, with significant clouding and backlight bleed throughout. This varies between units, though, and depends on the manufacturer's quality control standards. If you have the VG271U, let us know how you find the black uniformity in the discussions down below.

Update 08/16/2019: We retested the pre-calibration of this monitor with the Color Space set to 'sRGB'. With this setting, the monitor is more accurate out of the box. We've updated the results and scores, and our text below.

Good out-of-box color accuracy. Most colors are somewhat inaccurate and the color temperature is warm, so colors are closer to yellow/red. Luckily, the gamma follows the target curve very well, so most scenes are at their correct brightness.

Update 08/16/2019: After remeasuring the pre-calibration results of this monitor, we've recalibrated it as well. We've updated the results and scores, as well as our ICC profile.

After calibration, the Acer Nitro VG271U has outstanding accuracy. Colors and white balance are almost perfect, with no noticeable inaccuracies, and the color temperature is very close to our target of 6500K. Gamma follows the target curve almost perfectly.

You can download our ICC profile calibration here. This is provided for reference only and should not be used, as the calibration values vary per individual unit even for the same model due to manufacturing tolerances.

Excellent SDR color gamut. It can display the whole sRGB color space, which is fantastic, and it has fantastic coverage of the Adobe RGB color space, which is used for professional photo editing.

The Acer Nitro VG271U has an excellent SDR color volume. It can display most colors at almost all brightness levels, but can't display dark saturated colors due to its low contrast ratio.

Acceptable HDR color gamut, as it can display a wide color gamut. The Acer Nitro VG271U has very good coverage of the commonly-used DCI P3 color space but limited coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space.

Disappointing HDR color volume. It struggles displaying dark, saturated colors due to its low contrast ratio.

There are no signs of temporary image retention, which is excellent.

Excellent gradient performance, with very little banding.

Note: The gradient was measured with 10-bit color, which is only possible at 120Hz and not at the monitor's native 144Hz refresh rate. At 144Hz, the color depth is limited to 8-bit, and there's more noticeable banding.

Unfortunately, there are noticeable signs of color bleed on the Acer Nitro VG271U, similar to the AD27QD. This isn't very noticeable in real content, but it's not ideal for photo editing.

Decent reflection handling. It performs well in a moderate-lit room, but the reflections in bright rooms might be distracting.

Text clarity is okay. It can be improved by using ClearType (top photo), which makes the diagonal lines on the letters R and N clearer.

Good response time on the Acer Nitro VG271U, although it might be a bit disappointing for a 144Hz monitor. The best Overdrive setting is 'Normal'. It's quicker than 'Off' and unlike the 'Extreme' setting it doesn't have any overshoot, but motion is still a bit blurry. The Gigabyte Aorus AD27QD is a 144Hz monitor with much better response time.

Good response time at 60Hz, similar to the response time at 144Hz. Once again, the best Overdrive setting is 'Normal' as it doesn't have any overshoot, but still has some motion blur.

The Acer Nitro VG271U is flicker-free, which helps reduce eye strain.

There's an optional black frame insertion (BFI) feature known as VRB, and there are two modes, 'Normal' and 'Extreme'. The charts above were taken in the 'Extreme' mode. The 'Normal' setting is a bit brighter, as shown here, but slightly less effective at reducing blur, as you can see in this motion photo.

The Acer Nitro VG271U has an excellent refresh rate. It supports FreeSync, even when connected to a recent NVIDIA graphics card, although this model isn't officially supported by NVIDIA.

Note: FreeSync isn't available if the overdrive is set to 'Extreme' or if the black frame insertion feature is enabled, which is normal.

Incredibly low input lag, even when connected to a 60Hz source like a game console.

Note: Since 10-bit color is only supported at 120Hz, we measured the HDR input lag at 120Hz. The other input lag measurements were taken at 144Hz.