Acer Predator XB273U GXbmiipruzx Monitor Review

The monitor has a gamer-oriented design but can also fit into an office environment. It has a brushed plastic appearance from the back and slight red accents at the front.

The Acer Predator XB273U GXbmiipruzx has great build quality. Its plastic body doesn't flex very much at the back, and the stand has metal feet, which are quite stable.

The ergonomics are fantastic. The height adjustment and swivel range allow you to adjust it for yourself or share your screen with someone else. Additionally, you can route your cables through the stand for cable management.

The stand is slightly raised and has a wide footprint, but there's still plenty of space in front. It supports the monitor well with no wobble.

There's a joystick and four buttons on the back to navigate the on-screen display and control the power.

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

The monitor's contrast is mediocre. Deep blacks appear gray in darker rooms, and there's no local dimming feature to improve the contrast further.

Though this monitor doesn't have local dimming, we still film these videos so you can compare the backlight performance with a monitor that has local dimming.

Settings

• Mode: 'User' (After Calibration)
• Brightness: Maximum

The SDR brightness is great. It's bright enough to overcome glare in bright rooms, and there's very little variation in brightness with different content, which is great.

Settings

• HDR: On
• Brightness: Maximum

The HDR brightness is decent, though small highlights don't pop against the rest of the image. However, it has good PQ EOTF tracking, so it displays most content at the correct brightness, and because of its sharp cut-off at the peak brightness, highlights get as bright as possible.

The Acer Predator XB273U GXbmiipruzx has an impressive horizontal viewing angle. The image remains consistent from the sides, making it easy to share your screen with others.

The vertical viewing angle is okay. While it washes out from wide angles, it's still fine if you're standing up and looking down on the monitor.

This monitor has great gray uniformity. The sides of the screen are a bit darker than the center, but there's very little dirty screen effect in the center.

The black uniformity is okay. There's backlight bleed along the edges of the screen and some cloudiness throughout. Unfortunately, there's no local dimming feature to improve black uniformity.

The accuracy before calibration in the sRGB mode is remarkable. It locks colors well to the sRGB color space, and colors are very accurate. The white balance is amazing, and the color temperature is close to the 6500K target. Gamma follows the sRGB curve very closely, and most parts of scenes have the brightness level they should.

The following settings are locked out in the 'Standard' sRGB mode:

Locked-out Settings

• Contrast
• Black Boost
• Blue Light
• ACM
• Grayscale Mode
• 6-axis Hue
• 6-axis Saturate
• Gamma
• Colour Temp.

If you want to access these settings, then you need to use another mode with worse color accuracy, like User.

The accuracy after calibration is fantastic, and you won't notice any inaccuracies.

The SDR color gamut is fantastic, and the monitor has incredible coverage of the sRGB and Adobe RGB color spaces. However, several colors are slightly inaccurate in Adobe RGB.

The HDR color gamut is fantastic. It has nearly complete coverage in the common DCI-P3 color space and covers a wide range in the Rec. 2020 color space. Though white is slightly inaccurate, there are minimal tone mapping issues with each color space.

The HDR color volume is good. Its wide color gamut helps it display a large range of colors, but it struggles to display bright and dark colors well.

The text clarity is good. Enabling Windows ClearType (top photo) helps improve the clarity of letters. These photos are in Windows 10.

The reflection handling is decent. The matte coating helps reduce the intensity of direct reflections but also adds a slightly hazy look.

This monitor has remarkable gradient handling, with almost no noticeable banding in areas of similar color.

Due to bandwidth limitations over HDMI, you can only reach the maximum refresh rate over DisplayPort. Your graphics card needs to use Display Stream Compression (DSC) to achieve this.

Some users have indicated that newer models of this monitor allow you to enable VRR and overclock the monitor at the same time. However, we have an older version of this monitor and can't enable VRR and the overclock simultaneously.

This monitor has okay motion handling across its VRR range. The recommended AdaptiveSync overdrive provides crisp motion at high frame rates. However, at lower frame rates, fast-moving objects are much blurrier. If you enable VRR, you can't adjust the overdrive setting.

The refresh rate compliance is okay. However, it isn't fast enough to make full color transitions before the monitor draws the next frame.

The CAD at the max refresh rate is great. Motion looks sharp with the recommended overdrive setting of 'Normal,' as it has less blur than 'Off' and 'Extreme' and less inverse ghosting than 'Extreme.'

The CAD at 120hz is decent. Motion looks somewhat sharp with the recommended overdrive setting of 'Off,' which has less blur and inverse ghosting than the other modes.

The CAD at the 60Hz is decent. Motion looks somewhat sharp with the recommended overdrive setting of 'Off,' which has less blur and inverse ghosting than the other modes.

The monitor has an optional backlight strobing feature called Visual Response Boost that flickers the backlight to help reduce motion blur. It only works above 120Hz and can't be used at the same time as VRR.

This monitor has no noticeable VRR flicker with changing frame rates, which is fantastic for gaming.

This monitor's backlight is completely flicker-free at all brightness levels, which is great because it can help reduce eye strain if you're sensitive to it.

The input lag is very low for a responsive feel, though it increases considerably at 60Hz. The refresh rate for backlight strobing is 270Hz.

You have to manually switch to HDR mode on the monitor to view content in HDR with the PS5.

You have to manually switch to HDR mode on the monitor to view content in HDR with the Xbox Series X|S. The Xbox doesn't support HDR with 1440p or 1080p signals, so this isn't a limitation of the monitor.

This monitor provides up to 65W of power over USB-C and functions as a USB hub.

The monitor works well with macOS, with a few exceptions. The USB hub works well and provides up to 65W of power. However, VRR doesn't work properly at lower refresh rates, like around 48Hz, as the backlight starts flickering and a bar flashes at the top of the screen. Additionally, the overclock doesn't work, as the refresh rate becomes locked at 60Hz instead.

The monitor has built-in speakers and several extra features, including crosshairs and a low blue light mode to reduce eye strain.