Acer Nitro XV340CK Pbmiipphzx Monitor Review

The Acer Nitro XV340CK Pbmiipphzx 34 inch has a simple and minimalist design. It has thin borders on three sides with a slightly thicker bottom bezel. The stand is also simple; it has a plain metal bar mounted on a round base.

The stand has a round base that doesn't take up much space. It supports the monitor well, and wobbling is minimal.

The Acer Nitro XV340CK Pbmiipphzx 34 inch has good ergonomics. Like the Acer Nitro XF252Q, it has a base plate that can rotate freely within the plastic enclosure, allowing it to have a full 360-degree swivel range. It can't rotate to portrait mode due to its ultrawide format.

The Acer Nitro XV340CK Pbmiipphzx has a fairly plain back. It's VESA-mountable, but unfortunately, there isn't a quick release feature. There's a small hook at the bottom of the stand that serves as cable management.

The borders are thin and aren't distracting, great for multi-monitor setups.

The screen is relatively thin, and the stand doesn't take up much space either.

The Acer Nitro XV340CK Pbmiipphzx 34 inch has a decent build quality and very similar to the Acer Nitro XF252Q. The screen is entirely plastic and doesn't feel particularly premium, but there are no obvious gaps in the construction. The stand's trunk is metal, and there's also a metal plate under the base's plastic shell. The plastic used on the base feels cheap, and the adjustment hinges are of lesser quality. It's pretty stable, though, and doesn't wobble much.

The Acer Nitro XV340CK Pbmiipphzx has a mediocre contrast ratio, typical of most IPS panels. As a result, blacks look grayish in the dark. If you want a similar monitor that performs better in dark rooms, check out the Gigabyte G34WQC.

Note that the contrast ratio can vary between units.

The Acer Nitro XV340CK Pbmiipphzx 34 inch doesn't have a local dimming feature. The video above is provided for reference only.

The SDR peak brightness on the Acer Nitro XV340CK Pbmiipphzx is okay. It's incredibly consistent across different content, but it isn't quite enough to overcome glare in a bright environment, so it's better suited for a dark to moderately-lit room.

We measured the SDR peak brightness after calibration, using the 'User' Picture Mode, with Brightness set to max.

Poor HDR peak brightness. The Acer Nitro XV340CK Pbmiipphzx 34 inch can't get bright enough to bring out highlights, so HDR content doesn't look much different from SDR.

We measured the HDR peak brightness using the 'HDR Mode' Picture Mode, with Brightness set to max, and HDR set to 'Auto'.

Note that there's both an 'HDR Mode' Picture Mode, and an 'HDR' setting with an 'Auto' or 'Off' option. The 'HDR Mode' Picture Mode isn't real HDR, as it only adjusts the colors to look like HDR. For proper HDR support, set HDR to 'Auto'.

Although the Acer XV340CK Pbmiipphzx has an IPS panel, it only has decent horizontal viewing angles. When moving off-center, it loses brightness relatively quickly, and colors appear washed out. That said, unless you need to share work that requires the highest image accuracy, it should be okay for most uses.

Mediocre vertical viewing angles. This causes images to look inaccurate if you sit too close to the screen or have the monitor mounted above eye level.

Our unit of the Acer Nitro XV340CK Pbmiipphzx 34 inch has excellent gray uniformity. The sides are visibly darker, but thankfully, there's almost no dirty screen effect, and uniformity is much better in dark scenes.

Note that gray uniformity can vary between units.

Black uniformity is mediocre on our unit. There's clouding throughout the screen, as well as some backlight bleed along the top and bottom edges. If you want something with better dark room performance, including better black uniformity, then look into the LG 35WN65C-B.

Out-of-the-box, the color accuracy is okay. Most colors are only slightly inaccurate, but white balance is visibly off. The color temperature is very close to our 6500K target, leaning just a bit on the cooler side. Gamma doesn't follow the sRGB curve well, making most scenes too bright and dark scenes too dark. There's an 'sRGB' Picture Mode; however, it isn't as accurate as the 'HDR Mode'. The 'HDR Mode' isn't real HDR; it adjusts the colors to make SDR content look like HDR. The sRGB mode results in a higher average color dE of 4.15, a white balance dE of 5.58, a 6275K color temperature, and a 98.1cd/m² luminance.

Note that color accuracy can vary between units.

After calibration, the color accuracy is exceptional. The remaining color inaccuracies shouldn't be visible. White balance is almost perfect, and the color temperature is a little closer to our target. Gamma has improved, but very dark and very bright scenes are over-brightened.

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.

The Acer Nitro XV340CK Pbmiipphzx 34 inch has an excellent SDR color gamut. It covers the widely-used sRGB color space almost entirely, and it has good coverage of the Adobe RGB color space used in photo editing.

Outstanding SDR color volume. It has difficulty displaying dark and saturated colors due to its low contrast ratio. It has trouble with bright blues, but that's typical for LCDs.

Unfortunately, the Acer Nitro XV340CK Pbmiipphzx 34 inch can't display a wide color gamut. The DCI P3 coverage is much lower than the Rec. 2020's due to the monitor's low brightness, as it needs to de-saturate colors to reach our target brightness for measuring the color gamut. It doesn't need to perform such de-saturation at a lower brightness target; however, we kept the stimulus at 50% to be consistent with other reviews. If you want an ultrawide monitor that can display a wide color gamut, check out the ASUS TUF Gaming VG34VQL1B.

The Acer XV340CK Pbmiipphzx 34 has a bad HDR color volume, mostly due to its color gamut. It has trouble displaying both very bright and very dark colors.

There are no signs of image retention after displaying a high-contrast image for ten minutes. However, this can vary between units.

Gradient handling is superb. You shouldn't see any banding in regular content.

There are no signs of color bleed on this monitor.

The Acer Nitro XV340CK Pbmiipphzx has good reflection handling. However, visibility can still be an issue in bright rooms due to the monitor's low brightness.

Text clarity is good. Windows ClearType makes the text look more even and fleshed-out (top photo), especially with diagonal lines. The pixels look blurry due to the monitor's matte anti-reflective coating.

The Acer Nitro XV340CK Pbmiipphzx 34 has excellent response time at its maximum 144Hz refresh rate, resulting in clear motion in fast-moving scenes. The best overdrive setting is 'Normal', which provides the best performance while keeping overshoot to a minimum. The 'Off' setting is slower, and the 'Extreme' setting causes far too much overshoot. If you want an ultrawide gaming monitor with faster response time, check out the LG 34GP83A-B.

The response time at 60Hz is good. The best overdrive setting is 'Off', as the 'Normal' and 'Extreme' settings cause significantly more overshoot and don't improve the response time. This means that you need to change the overdrive setting if your game tends to run closer to 60fps.

The backlight is flicker-free at all brightness levels, great for helping reduce eye strain.

The Acer Nitro XV340CK Pbmiipphzx has an optional Black Frame Insertion feature to help improve motion clarity. However, it causes motion duplication due to the flickering frequency. Also, like most monitors, it isn't usable when VRR (variable refresh rate) is enabled.

Update 01/13/2022: We retested the VRR using an HDMI connection with our RX 6800 graphics card. We confirmed that FreeSync works over its entire refresh rate range with HDMI, but only with newer graphics cards and not older ones.

The Acer Nitro XV340CK Pbmiipphzx 34 inch has an outstanding refresh rate, resulting in a smooth and responsive gaming experience. It has native FreeSync support and G-SYNC compatibility to reduce screen tearing, and it works with DisplayPort and HDMI with newer Radeon graphics cards. On older cards, FreeSync causes the screen to flicker and shut off over HDMI and would require a power cycle to get the monitor working again. If you want an ultrawide monitor with a higher refresh rate, check out the Samsung Odyssey G9.

The Acer Nitro XV340CK Pbmiipphzx 34 inch has an exceptionally low input lag, and it remains low even with VRR enabled. Unfortunately, we lack the necessary tools to measure the input lag with 10-bit HDR over a DisplayPort connection. Over HDMI, we can only get an 8-bit signal at 100Hz with an input lag of 5.2ms, or a 12-bit signal at 30Hz with an input lag of 50.1ms.

The Acer Nitro XV340CK Pbmiipphzx 34 inch has an ultrawide screen and 1440p resolution that are excellent for gaming and productivity. There's enough screen space to have multiple windows opened side-by-side and gives you a wider field of view in your games. However, not all games support ultrawide formats, so you might see some black bars on the sides, or the picture might be stretched out to fill the screen.

The Acer Nitro XV340CK Pbmiipphzx 34 inch has a few additional features, including:

• Crosshair: Adds a virtual crosshair for shooter games.
• Low blue light mode: Filters out blue light to help reduce eye strain.
• Picture-in-Picture/Picture-by-Picture: Allows you to display images from two input sources simultaneously.

The controls are located at the right bottom backside of the monitor. There's a power button plus four additional buttons to navigate the on-screen menu.

• User Guide
• DisplayPort cable
• HDMI cable
• USB-A to USB-B upstream cable
• Power cord