Acer Predator XB271HU Bmiprz Monitor Review

The Acer Predator XB271HU has a simple design overall, with thin bezels on three sides, a solid stand with excellent ergonomics, and decent build quality.

The stand of the Acer XB271HU is quite small and looks good with some red accents. It supports the monitor well and feels stable, despite the small footprint.

There's quite a good range of ergonomic adjustment options available, which makes it easy to find a comfortable setup. The screen also rotates to portrait orientation on either side, so you can choose which direction you want the inputs to face.

The rear of the monitor is quite basic but looks good. There's a hole in the back of the stand for cable management, and a quick-release button to remove the stand for easy transport.

The borders of the Acer XB271HU are quite thin on three sides, making it a great choice for a multi-monitor setup.

The monitor appears a bit thick when viewed from the side, as the area where the components and inputs are located is quite bulky. It can still sit quite close to a wall but does end up taking more desk space than some other designs such as the Dell S2716DG.

The build quality of the Acer Predator XB271HU is quite good. The parts are all plastic but do feel well-constructed.

Like most IPS monitors, the Acer Predator XB271HU Bmiprz monitor has a mediocre native contrast ratio. This results in blacks that look gray, but it's mainly only noticeable in a dark room.

The Acer Predator XB271HU doesn't have a local dimming feature. The video is for reference only.

The Acer Predator XB271HU has good peak brightness, with no fluctuation in brightness with different content. It's bright enough that glare shouldn't be an issue in most rooms.

HDR isn't supported.

Great horizontal viewing angle. This results in no visible deterioration when directly in front, and the screen remains usable to users sharing the screen on either side.

Decent vertical viewing angle. Moving your head up and down causes no visible shift in the image, and the Acer Predator XB271 remains usable when standing above it or while sitting below the screen.

The Acer Predator XB271HU has excellent overall gray uniformity. There's very little dirty screen effect, but the sides of the screen are a bit darker than the center. In near-dark scenes, the uniformity is much better.

The monitor has poor black uniformity. Some clouding and flashlighting is visible near almost every edge of the display, which hurts the black uniformity considerably. This results in blotchy dark scenes, especially when viewed in a dark room.

Out of the box and when set on the most accurate picture mode, the monitor still has poor accuracy. Even non-enthusiasts are likely to notice inaccuracies in shades of gray.

After calibration, the Acer Predator XB271HU is much more precise. The white balance and color accuracy are spot on and most of the issues are corrected, especially the white point, which now is right on target.

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 XB271HU has no issue covering the standard sRGB colorspace, which is great for most uses. Its coverage of the Adobe RGB colorspace, however, is quite limited, making this monitor less useful for professional use.

Good native color volume. The monitor has no issue filling up most of its native sRGB colorspace. It does, however, have some difficulty reproducing very dark tones, mostly due to its limited contrast ratio.

HDR gamuts aren't supported.

HDR color volumes aren't supported.

There are no signs of temporary image retention on the Acer Predator XB271HU.

Great performance for the Acer Predator on our gradient test. Besides the 8-bit banding, there's some little shade imperfection in the grayscale, but most of the rest of the gradient looks good.

Some vertical color bleed is present; however, this won't be noticeable in most situations. It's visible in the vertical photo as different shades of gray above and below each color.

Decent reflection handling, but direct reflections are still bright and distinct, which might be an issue in a bright room.

Decent text clarity. With ClearType enabled (top photo), text is noticeably sharper. This can be especially noticeable with diagonal lines, as seen in the 'N' on the above photos.

The Acer Predator XB271HU has a decent response time when using the 'Off' overdrive setting. The 'Normal' setting has a much faster response time, but there's more noticeable overshoot. We don't recommend using 'OD Extreme', as it introduces significant and easily visible overshoot artifacts behind moving objects.

The 60Hz response time is very similar to the max refresh rate response time. The 'Off' overdrive setting has a decent response time, with no overshoot. Like at the max refresh rate, the 'Normal' response time results in much less blur, but there's noticeable overshoot in many scenes.

The Acer Predator XB271HU is completely flicker-free.

The Acer Predator XB271HU has an optional Black Frame Insertion (BFI) feature, which can be used to add flicker and help reduce persistence blur. This feature is only available with 120Hz, 100Hz, and 85Hz inputs. This is useful for first-person shooters or other fast-paced games.

The monitor has a high native refresh rate of 144Hz, which can be overclocked up to 165Hz. This results in very smooth motion and a responsive feel. NVIDIA's G-SYNC on this monitor can adjust the screen's refresh rate to match the frame rate of a compatible graphics card, which allows playing graphically-intensive games with significant framerate drops without tearing or stuttering.

Excellent low input lag, mostly due to the fast scan time of 144Hz. The 60Hz input lag is much higher, as is the input lag with ULMB (BFI) enabled at 120Hz, but both are still fairly low. The G-SYNC input lag is only slightly higher than the native input lag, which is great.