9/10/16 - This is one awesome monitor! I buy a lot of things on Amazon and very rarely leave a review, but I feel this monitor deserves my praise.
** TL;DR **
Pros:
- G-Sync
- 1440p
- IPS
- 144hz refresh rate
- NO dead pixels or BLB!!!
- Awesome monitor stand
- Matte finish on screen is great against glare
Cons:
- Fingerprints and smudges on matte finish don't just wipe away
- OSD menu controls aren't immediately intuitive
- Price?
** Full Review **
I waited for a long time to finally take the plunge and purchase the Predator. My previous XStar monitor was one of those Korean made eBay specials: 1440p, IPS, overclockable, and cheap ($350 back when I bought it). It overclocked to 96hz and served me well for years, however through no fault of the XStar's design, I still suffered from screen tearing in games. Screen tearing to me is one of those things that if nobody had ever told me there was a solution for, I wouldn't have given it much thought.
Knowing that G-Sync (and AMD's Freesync) was the solution, it was the first priority for my next monitor upgrade, but I had a few other requirements to meet as well. The new monitor would also have to be 1440p, IPS, and capable of 90 fps or more. These are things that once you experience, you can never really be satisfied with going back to the blocky pixels of 1080p, the poor color and viewing angles of TN panels, or the less perfect 60 fps limit* (more on this in my "Other Thoughts"). Hopefully I could have it all and not destroy my bank account too.
There are a few popular monitors out there that meet the requirements but this one was the cheapest, LOL! It also helped that I like the aesthetic too. You might wonder, since the Predator and others have been around from 2014, why have I taken this long to buy? The price, while reasonable was still not easy to swallow, and then there were the reviews... When these monitors first showed up, a lot of people were having issues with dead pixels, or backlight bleed, or their monitor was dead on arrival or maybe shortly after. It looked like I was flipping a coin and I wouldn't be able to handle losing that kind of money if I wasn't completely satisfied.
So why now? Because I do believe that new products have kinks in their design and/or production that can't always be foreseen when they first go to market, but over time a good company will smooth out those kinks if they want to keep selling the product. The reviews have also gotten better, somewhat justifying that belief. Also, the computer I'm running (see "Computer Specs") is beginning to struggle to maintain a high fps in some of my games. I could upgrade all of the components, or just the GPUs, but the prices I'm looking at for new components very quickly shoot over the cost of this new monitor, and I'd still be dealing with screen tearing. G-Sync is a good technology to get me by a while longer before completely upgrading my rig. I very occasionally get framerate drops down to 45 fps and it smooths them out to make them a lot less noticeable, which is something I'm happy with.
So ya, here is the part where I gush over this monitor. The one I got has no backlight bleed worth mentioning, and no dead pixels! Although I have had a few specs of dust land on the monitor that freaked me out for a second when I thought they were dead pixels :)
The stand is also A-MEI-ZING (sorry I couldn't help myself). It pivots, swivels, turns, and adjusts in whatever way I would ever desire, and the base of the stand is metal and the "legs" actually function well as something to grab when I want to push my monitor back or pull it closer. I really do feel like this one of the better purchases I've made in a while. Games run much smoother with no tearing and less jitter at low fps. This monitor just ticks all the boxes for me!
There are a few minor nitpicks though. The matte finish on the screen is terrific for reducing glare, but when the screen goes black it very easily shows fingerprints and smudges from touching it. It wasn't good enough to try to wipe them away with a dry towel. I had to get out the rubbing alcohol and gently rub the smudges for a bit to get them to disappear. I still would rather have the matte finish instead of higher glare though. The OSD menu controls are a bit cumbersome to use, but the user manual does provide some explanations for the functions in the menu and you can save three monitor presets for use in different circumstances. Switching between presets becomes a lot quicker and easier than changing individual settings every time. I also feel like a handle on the stand for lifting and carrying the monitor would have been icing on the cake. I probably won't need to transport my monitor anywhere for a long time but if I were someone who went to LAN parties often then a handle would make carrying this monitor easier a less likely to get more fingerprints and smudges on the screen...
The nitpicks aren't enough to elicit any regret from me. Now that the monitor is in it's place on the desk, positioned how I like it, and the screen is clean I don't have to touch it and I can enjoy it even as I write this review. I suppose Acer deserves some praise and gratitude as well so,
THANKS!! Your monitor is awesome!
** Other Thoughts **
I'm no expert or any kind of extremist when it comes to color reproduction of monitors, but it seems great to me out of the box. I'm sure there are some color profiles for this monitor out there somewhere on the internet that would make it "perfect" but right now I don't care enough to look for them.
There is an overclocking feature of this monitor dubbed, "OverDrive" to get the monitor to run at refresh rates even higher than 144hz. In my experience, going from 60hz to 96hz on my old XStar monitor was a noticeable and appreciable difference. Going from 96hz to 120hz on the Predator monitor is... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ better but also kinda whatever. Going from 120hz to 144hz is less of a difference and not noticeable to me and I don't really think anyone could tell the difference 100% of the time. The math backs this up:
- 60hz to 96hz = 36 extra frames for 60% more frames per second than 60hz
- 96hz to 120hz = 24 extra frames for 25% more frames per second than 96hz
- 120hz to 144hz = again, 24 extra frames but that's only 20% more frames per second than 120hz
You get diminishing returns and eventually the human eye and mind can't tell the difference anyways. Trying to overclock beyond 144hz at the risk of stressing and damaging the monitor is not worth it and I would tell anyone, just don't do it. I am actually just running at 120hz because ULMB (Ultra Low Motion Blur, which is good for games that don't dip down in fps) can't be used at anything higher than 120hz and I think ULMB is a more noticeable improvement than 20% more frames at that point. Don't be fooled by marketing's most powerful logical fallacy, "Bigger is always better!" If you can't tell the difference then it doesn't matter.
I should mention that it is a trade off between G-Sync and ULMB. They can't both be used at the same time, so set up my monitor presets to change between them easily (G-Sync has to be turned on or off in the Nvidia Control Panel but the monitor reacts accordingly), so I use G-Sync for games the dip the framerate below 90 fps and I use ULMB for games that never go below 90 fps.
Folks... If you read this far then my review must have been helpful and I'm glad it was. So many times I've been helped by others' reviews of other products which have guided my purchasing decisions well. I'm happy to give back to the community and I'll try to review more positive experiences with products in the future. Thanks for reading!
** Computer Specs **
- i7 3770K @ 4.4Ghz
- 2x Asus DirectCU II Geforce 780ti's in SLI
- 32 GB of DDR3 RAM
- Gigabyte Z77 motherboard
- 2x Intel SSD's in RAID 0
| Standing screen display size | 27 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 2560 x 1440 |
| Max Screen Resolution | 2560 x 1440 WQHD |
