Acer Predator X25 bmiiprzx Monitor Review

The Acer X25 looks pretty sleek and elegant, with gamer-oriented flourishes. It has a thicker bottom bezel with the 'Predator' logo that sticks out, while the others are very thin and designed to look barely there when the monitor is off.

The stand has a different design than the Acer Predator X27 bmiphzx. It's slightly raised with curved, metal feet. They're quite thin, but overall, the stand supports the monitor well.

The Acer Predator X25 has good ergonomics, so you can adjust it as you like. It can rotate into portrait mode in either direction, has decent height adjustment, and a wide tilt range, although the swivel range is quite limited. If ergonomics are important to you, the nearly-identical MSI Oculux NXG253R has a wider range of motion on the stand, so it might be easier to find an ideal viewing position.

The back is plastic with a patterned rectangular portion and RGB lighting. There's a cutout in the stand for cable management.

The borders are thin, which is great for dual monitor setups.

The monitor itself isn't too thick. It takes up more space with the stand, but you should still have plenty of room on your desk.

The Acer Predator X25 is made mostly of plastic and feels well-built, although it doesn't feel as premium as the Acer Predator X27 bmiphzx. There's not much flex on the back panel, but the bottom bezel on the front flexes easily. The monitor doesn't wobble or move, though, and it feels quite sturdy.

The Acer Predator X25 has a mediocre native contrast ratio, so blacks look more like gray when viewed in the dark. It's slightly higher than the advertised 1000:1 contrast ratio. That said, contrast can vary a bit between units.

The Acer X25 doesn't have a local dimming feature. There's a Variable Backlight setting, but it's a dynamic contrast feature rather than local dimming. The video is for reference only, so you can see how backlight on this display performs and compare it to a similar product with local dimming.

The SDR peak brightness is great. It can hit the advertised 400 nits, although most real scenes will likely fall slightly below that. It's very consistent across different scenes, and it's bright enough to overcome glare in most lighting conditions.

We measured brightness after calibration, in the 'User' Picture Mode, with the Max Brightness setting enabled, and Peak White set to '450'.

HDR peak brightness is okay. It meets the brightness requirement of its advertised DisplayHDR 400 certification, but it may not be bright enough to deliver a satisfying HDR movie experience.

We measured HDR brightness before calibration on the 'User' Picture Mode, with Max Brightness enabled.

The Acer Predator X25 has great horizontal viewing angles. For the most part, the image should stay accurate from the side.

The Acer X25 has decent vertical viewing angles, but you may still notice some image inaccuracy if you mount it above eye level.

The Acer Predator X25 has excellent gray uniformity, although this can vary between units. While the top corners and edges are noticeably darker, the screen is very uniform overall. In near-dark scenes, it's even better.

The Acer Predator X25 has mediocre black uniformity. There's some blooming around bright objects and a bit of clouding throughout, but it's not bad for an IPS monitor. That said, black uniformity can vary between units.

The Acer Predator X25 has impressive out-of-the-box color accuracy, but this can vary between units. Most colors and the white balance are not too far off, and the gamma follows the curve very well, although some dark scenes may appear brighter than they should. The color temperature is on the colder side, giving the image a blue tint. There's an 'sRGB' Picture Mode, but we used the 'Racing' mode since it's more accurate.

After calibration, accuracy is fantastic. Any remaining inaccuracies shouldn't be noticeable without a colorimeter, and the color temperature is nearly perfect. Gamma follows the target even better, though dark scenes may still be over-brightened a little bit.

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

The Acer X25 has an excellent SDR color gamut. Its coverage of the sRGB color space is nearly perfect, but it's only decent when it comes to the wider Adobe RGB used in photo editing.

SDR color volume is excellent. It can't produce very dark, saturated colors because of its low contrast ratio, but it can display a wide range of colors at higher luminance levels.

The Acer X25 has an okay HDR color gamut, but it can't display a wide color gamut for HDR content. While it has good coverage of the DCI P3 color space, its coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 is sub-par.

Due to the way we measure the DCI P3 coverage, our measurement is likely lower than most other reviewers. We measure it by sending a Rec. 2020 signal, but unlike most reviewers, we limit the colors to the DCI P3 primaries. This results in a lower but arguably more accurate measurement.

HDR color volume is not bad, but it's limited by the monitor's low contrast ratio and lack of a wide color gamut.

There are no signs of image retention after displaying a high-contrast static image, but this may vary between units.

Gradients look fantastic. There's hardly any noticeable banding.

There's almost no color bleed on the Acer Predator X25. The little bit of vertical color bleed shouldn't be noticeable in real content.

The Acer X25 has very good reflection handling. It diffuses direct reflections very well, but ambient lighting may still be distracting in well-lit rooms.

Text clarity is decent. With ClearType enabled (top picture), diagonal and curved lines appear a bit clearer, as seen in the N or the G, but straight lines are less bold, as seen in the T and I.

The Acer X25 has a remarkable response time at its max 360Hz refresh rate, resulting in clear motion with minimal blur trail. The best overdrive setting is 'Off', since the other settings produce too much overshoot.

At 60Hz, the Acer Predator X25's response time is still fantastic. Once again, the recommended overdrive setting is 'Off', as it has the fastest total response time and no overshoot.

The Acer X25 is flicker-free, which can help reduce eye strain.

The Acer X25 has an optional Black Frame Insertion feature to help reduce motion blur further, called NVIDIA ULMB. You can adjust the pulse width for BFI in the on-screen display from a range of 10 to 100. Changing the pulse width affects the clarity and brightness of the screen with BFI. The picture above is with the pulse width set to 100. You can see how it looks at 10 here. The flicker frequency range is somewhat narrow, though, and BFI can't be enabled with VRR. Note that our BFI score is based on the flicker range and not the actual performance.

The Acer X25 is part of a slew of newer monitors with a 360Hz native refresh rate. It supports G-SYNC natively and has a wide VRR range. Over HDMI, the VRR range maxes out at 240Hz, which is the max refresh rate you can get over HDMI. Unfortunately, we couldn't confirm if FreeSync was working, as it tears during the test demo, but not while playing Destiny. At 360Hz, tearing would be hard to notice, though. Strangely, the Radeon control panel shows the monitor as being 'Adaptive Sync Compatible', and you can toggle 'FreeSync' in the control panel when connected via HDMI but the control panel still shows FreeSync as being 'Disabled.'

The Acer Predator X25 has an incredibly low input lag, even at 60Hz. The input lag with BFI enabled was measured with the flicker frequency at 240Hz. The max refresh rate with 10 bit HDR over DisplayPort is 300Hz, but we lack the tools to measure HDR input lag over DisplayPort, and the max refresh rate at 10 bit over HDMI is only 144Hz. We don't expect HDR to have a significant impact on input lag, though.

Update 08/20/2021: We corrected a mistake in the measured diagonal of the screen.

The Acer Predator X25 has a decently sized screen at 25 inches, but it's limited to a 1080p resolution, resulting in a low pixel density. It's well-suited to competitive gaming, where motion clarity is key, but may not be big or sharp enough for watching movies or for productivity.

The Acer X25 has several additional features, including customizable RGB lighting, built-in speakers, and HDR10 support. It also includes the NVIDIA Reflex Latency Analyzer tool to measure input lag, an FPS counter, crosshairs, and a dynamic contrast setting called Variable Backlight.

The controls are on the back of the right side of the monitor. They include a joystick and four buttons to navigate the on-screen display.

• Power cable
• DisplayPort cable
• HDMI cable
• USB to USB-B upstream cable
• User guide