Acer Predator X27 bmiphzx Monitor Review

The Acer Predator X27 has a simple design. The 'V' shaped stand is thin but wide. The display has thin bezels and comes with blinders to help reduce glare. The stand has a limited range of ergonomics and very little cable management.

The stand has a very sleek design. The legs are very thin, but they support the monitor well.

Mediocre ergonomic options. The swivel range is limited compared to similar monitors, like the ASUS ROG PG279Q, and it can't be rotated to portrait orientation.

The back is clean, but not much thought was given to cable management. The Acer X27 can be VESA mounted, but it requires a special adapter that is included in the box. There's a fan on the back of the monitor to help with heat dissipation. It's always running, but is extremely quiet.

The borders, as measured without the side blinders installed, are thin on three sides. They look nearly identical to the Acer Predator XB273K.

With the stand, the Acer X27 is very thick and can't be easily placed against a wall. Without the stand, it's still thick but won't stick out too much when wall mounted.

Great build quality with no major issues. There's a slight gap between the front and back covers, but this shouldn't cause any issues.

Like most IPS monitors, the native contrast ratio is low, resulting in blacks that look gray in a dark room. The local dimming feature is effective at boosting the contrast ratio, but it still falls short of VA monitor.

The monitor has a Backlight Response setting with three options: 'Gaming', 'Desktop' and 'Hybrid'. 'Gaming' makes the local dimming react almost instantly when the monitor's screen changes; 'Desktop' makes the monitor react to changes with a very slow fade (~5 seconds), and prioritizes maintaining bright parts of the screen rather than making adjacent dark areas darker; this makes the local dimming less distracting for desktop use. 'Hybrid' is a blend of the 'Gaming' and 'Desktop' behaviors. We recommend setting Backlight Response to 'Gaming' to start, then if you find the local dimming distracting you can select 'Hybrid', then 'Desktop' as needed.

Local dimming is available in SDR as well as HDR. In SDR, the SDR Variable Backlight option must be enabled. In SDR the peak brightness is limited to 300 cd/m², so the impact of local dimming is less noticeable.

Update 08/17/2020: We've retested the SDR peak brightness to ensure that it's measured with local dimming enabled, as per our methodology. The results are slightly higher than what we had originally measured, an increase of roughly 25 cd/m². The score has been adjusted accordingly. We also retested 7 other monitors, and some results changed.

Decent peak brightness with SDR content. There's very little fluctuation in brightness with different content. The Acer X27 is bright enough for most rooms but may have difficulty overcoming glare in a brightly lit room.

Update 08/17/2020: We've retested the HDR peak brightness to ensure that it's measured with local dimming enabled, as per our methodology. The results have changed significantly, but not all in the same direction, as it depends on the content. The HDR real scene value increased from 1127 cd/m² to 1312 cd/m². The score has been adjusted accordingly. We also retested 7 other monitors, and some results changed.

Outstanding peak brightness in HDR, better even than most TVs. Small highlights in games stand out, but there's some noticeable haloing around bright objects in dark scenes.

Very good horizontal viewing angles. The sides of the screen remain uniform even when sitting up close.

Like most IPS monitors, this monitor has excellent vertical viewing angles.

Excellent gray uniformity. There's very little dirty screen effect and almost no visible banding. The corners of the screen are slightly darker than the rest, which can be noticeable when browsing the web in a dark room, but this shouldn't be a problem for most people. In near-dark scenes, there are no noticeable issues with the gray uniformity.

The Acer Predator X27 has bad black uniformity. There's severe clouding throughout the screen, and the backlight is bleeding through in a few spots along the bottom edge. With local dimming enabled, the darker areas of the screen are dimmed properly, but there's significant clouding around the test cross due to the size of the dimming zones.

Disappointing accuracy out of the box. The white balance is far from our target, giving whites a yellow tint, and there are some noticeable inaccuracies in certain colors. On the other hand, the gamma follows the sRGB target curve nearly perfectly, so most scenes are displayed at the correct brightness levels.

Calibration was able to effectively eliminate all color inaccuracies. The Acer Predator X27 still tracks our gamma curve nearly perfectly. White and color balance is nearly perfect and most people won't be able to see any errors. The color temperature after calibration is nearly perfect for our target of 6500 K.

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 Predator X27 has an outstanding SDR color gamut. It can essentially display the entire sRGB and Adobe RGB color space, making it a great choice for professional photo and video editing.

Outstanding SDR color volume. It can display almost the entire volume, but can't produce dark, saturated colors very well, due to the low contrast ratio.

Update 08/17/2020: We've retested the HDR color gamut to ensure that it's measured with local dimming enabled, as per our methodology. The DCI P3 coverage has decreased from 85.8% to 77.0%; however, it tracks the color space better. The Rec. 2020 coverage has increased from 78.2% to 82.6%. The score has been adjusted accordingly. We also retested 7 other monitors, and some results changed.

This monitor has a great HDR color gamut. It has excellent coverage of the DCI P3 color space used by most of today's HDR content. It also has very good coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 space, better than most TVs even.

Update 08/17/2020: We've retested the HDR color volume to ensure that it's measured with local dimming enabled, as per our methodology. The P3 color volume has decreased from 80.8% to 73.3%, while the Rec. 2020 color volume has increased from 73% to 80.3%. The score has been adjusted accordingly. We also retested 7 other monitors, and some results changed.

Very good HDR color volume, but it can't produce colors that are as bright as pure white, and due to the low contrast ratio it can't display dark saturated colors very well. The newer Acer Predator XB273K has slightly better volume in DCI P3.

There are no signs of temporary image retention.

Excellent gradient handling on the Acer Predator X27. Gradients are displayed nearly perfectly without banding.

There's no color bleed on the Acer Predator X27.

Decent reflection handling, but it doesn't diffuse reflections across the screen very well. The included blinders can help to reduce glare from side sources.

The Acer Predator X27 has outstanding text clarity out of the box (bottom picture). It's not necessary to run the ClearType settings for clear text on a PC, but if you do, text is incredibly clear (top).

The Acer Predator X27 has an excellent response time at the max refresh rate. The 'Off' overdrive setting delivers the best overall results, with a short blur trail behind fast-moving objects and no overshoot. 'Normal' is quite a bit faster, but there's significant overshoot. If you prefer something with a much quicker response time, then check out the LG 27GN950-B.

When gaming at 60Hz, the response time of this monitor is outstanding with the 'Normal' overdrive setting. There's very little blur behind fast-moving objects, and no noticeable overshoot at all.

The Acer Predator X27 is completely flicker-free.

Unlike many G-SYNC monitors, the Acer Predator X27 doesn't have an optional Black Frame Insertion feature.

This is one of the only 4k, high refresh rate monitors on the market. The maximum refresh rate is only available with chroma subsampling or a lower color depth. If you need a monitor with FreeSync support, check out the ASUS ROG Strix XG27UQ.

The Acer Predator X27 has more input lag than usual for a 144Hz monitor. Although it's great overall, it may disappoint more serious gamers.