 Acer has finally woken up and is paying attention to the gaming monitor market again. They've dabbled in the past. They had an at-the-time excellent 3D vision monitor, the GD235HZ, but since then they appear to have been sitting on their collective thumbs, until now. Welcome to my video about one of the, in my mind, only two G-Sync monitors that really matters for high-end gaming. The Acer XB280HK. Corsair Gaming RGB keyboards feature precision Cherry MX RGB keyswitches for 16.8 million color per key backlighting for virtually unlimited customization. Click now to learn more. We'll start with a physical overview. Around this massive 28 inch 16x9 panel with the OSD controls embedded in the bottom right is an unfortunately thick and glossy bezel. Something I find particularly disappointing given how ahead of the Curve Acer was on the super thin bezel thing when they released the H.236HL about a year and a half ago. The stand is a circular base affair with an orange accent. It assembles toollessly in about 30 seconds and gives the XB280HK tilt, swivel, height adjust, and pivot. The quad-fecta of ergonomic display adjustment options. It serves its purpose very well, but I didn't find its build quality particularly confidence inspiring, especially at this kind of a price point. Although given that we know a G-Sync module adds about $200 to the cost of a monitor and Acer's offering is priced about $200 higher than otherwise similar 4K displays that also don't feature beautifully overbuilt stands, I don't think Acer is cutting this corner any tighter than anyone else's. On the top, bottom and right of the monitor is a whole lot of nothing, but on the left we're treated to two of the four USB 3 ports that run off the monitor's internal hub. Then on the bottom, we find the telltale signs of a G-Sync monitor. Aside from the USB 3 uplink, the other two ports that go with it, and an AC power input, we've got a whole lot of not much going on down here. Just a DisplayPort 1.2 input. This is because NVIDIA's first generation G-Sync module only supports a single DisplayPort input. So then why would you want a G-Sync module on your monitor Linus? Great question. G-Sync delivers smoother on-screen animations by eliminating screen tearing. You know, those ugly horizontal lines through the image where it seems like the top half of the screen has the last frame and the bottom half has a new one. And leg, which is caused by your GPU waiting for the monitor to be ready for a refresh when running with V-Sync on, the way that we traditionally get rid of tearing. But you can learn more about it in this video here. Just trust me, it works and it's a pretty big deal. But better perceived smoothness in gaming animation won't do us any good if it's not presented on a good quality panel. So let's have a look, shall we? The XB280HK uses the same type of panel that we've already seen before in the other low-ish cost 4K monitors that we've covered here and here. So there weren't really any surprises. Contrast is pretty good. Color reproduction is surprisingly good for a TN panel. And pixel response times were good without excess ghosting. And overdrive artifacts even on fast moving scenes. As long as you leave the overdrive setting at default within the on-screen display. In fact, I found most of the settings in the OSD were best left alone. I adjusted color temp to normal and everything else, especially the image profiles, just made the screen look much, much worse. So I didn't find myself using them. In front of the flicker-free DC controlled backlight, we find a matte finished panel, which is good if you hate glare and reflections. With horizontal viewing angles that are good enough as long as you're sitting mostly centered in front of the screen, the way most people use a computer. The subtle green and thin pink color shift is unlikely to bother you much on the desktop. And is pretty much impossible to pick up with a full screen game or movie running. Vertical viewing angles, just like the other low-cost 4Ks, are less impressive though. With a noticeable gradient from warmer to cooler. Looking from bottom to top, even with your head in a stationary position. Again, this is something that's nearly impossible to pick up in games, and many people won't notice it at all anyway. But I look at a lot of monitors, so particularly on uniform backgrounds like when reading emails or message boards, I find it a little bit distracting. But let's change gears a bit here and talk about the gaming experience. I suspect if Acer could have timed the release of their XP280HK 28-inch 4K G-Sync gaming monitor, any more perfectly the entire world would have imploded. Two weeks ago, the GTX 980 and 970 wouldn't have existed yet, and graphics cards with enough horsepower to run modern games at 4K would have started at $500 plus rather than $330. And they would have been equipped with a mere 3GB of VRAM, probably fine for now, but not exactly future-proof. Had Acer waited, oh, I don't know, another year to release this monitor, we'd probably have better cards capable of running AAA titles pinned at 60fps. So the need for variable refresh rate technology that masks stuttering when the frame rate drops would be reduced. But as it is, the timing is great, and this monitor and those graphics cards are a match made in heaven. The way I benchmarked the XP280HK was a little bit different than normal because it's mostly about the subjective experience. Instead of firing up games and staring at my FRAPS counter, then dialing in graphics settings until the number looks good, I went the other way around. I cranked everything to max, started turning things down until the game felt 60fps smooth, then fired up FRAPS to see what frame rate I was actually running at. Even though I've evaluated G-Sync monitors before, I've never done it this way, and I think the results may shock you. I found that because of the pixel density of the display, anti-aliasing was superfluous beyond 2x MSAA, which gave me more headroom to play with eye candy options like tessellation and higher quality shadows. And to my surprise, I discovered that as long as my game wasn't falling below around 40fps during demanding sequences, it was running to my eyes about as smoothly as if I was running at 60fps constantly. And this is coming from someone who has gamed for years on high-end hardware and considers himself a bit of a frame rate diva. So while I feel that lower-cost 1080p G-Sync monitors have a hard time justifying that $200 or so premium compared to their non-G-Sync cousins, especially when that money could be spent on a better graphics card to keep frame rates up, or a higher resolution monitor to improve immersion and image quality, when you've already got a high-res monitor, the addition of G-Sync enables a smoother gaming experience with more details turned up than would have conventionally been possible, potentially saving you some additional investment in more graphics cards. This makes the XB280HK a very attractive option for high-end GeForce gamers. But that doesn't mean that Acer's new beauty is the only horse on the track. There are two high-res G-Sync monitors that each bring their own unique value proposition to the table. This baby is the resolution king and the only option for someone who wants a 4K display with G-Sync today. While the ROG Swift from ASUS is an inch smaller diagonally and runs at a near 2560x1440 resolution, but delivers thinner bezels, slightly better colors, and up to 144Hz refresh rates. So I guess this is what it boils down to. If you're a sightseer and most of your gaming is done in third-person or in casually competitive scenarios where lightning fast response times are not critical, the XB280HK gets the nod. If you're looking for the best monitor on the block for competitive play, the ROG Swift gets my vote for sure. Guys, thanks for watching. Like this video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it, leave a comment letting me know if your feelings are more complicated than this. Also check out the link in the video description where you can give us a monthly contribution, buy a cool t-shirt like this one, or change your Amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate code so we get a small kickback whenever you buy stuff on Amazon. All that stuff helps us out a lot. 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