Review on Acer XV273K Pbmiipphzx: Ultra HD 4K Gaming Monitor with DisplayHDR400, 144Hz & Built-In Speakers by Blake Bryant

I wanted this monitor to please me. The frequency of 120Hz is very smooth in games and even improves the mouse response on the desktop. Unfortunately, this monitor has too many flaws to justify its price. 1) As with the others, there is terrible backlighting in each of the 4 corners of the panel. Decreasing the brightness is not a solution. The solution is to use opaque materials in these areas to prevent light leakage in the first place. I love keeping my screens bright and vibrant. This monitor is not suitable for naturally dark games like Resident Evil 2: Biohazard as the backlight becomes very noticeable. The same goes for any video content based on dark scenes. Find a higher quality screen. 2) Freesync's refresh rate management is very poor and the panel sometimes freezes at a fixed refresh rate with a different value when paired with an AMD Vega GPU. I encountered two issues: a) At 120fps/120Hz, the frame rate remains stable until FreeSync is activated once the frame rate drops below 120Hz. The area of the game that consistently runs at 120 fps is 104-105 fps instead, as the panel quickly switches between the two refresh rates (tested using the monitor's built-in display along with an RTSS overlay). This results in a chaotic frame time that looks a bit like the square wave pattern from that switch. This needs to be solved in the firmware. - b) But seriously, after Freesync is enabled and a more demanding area of the game is encountered where the frame rate drops below 100 fps, the panel freezes at a fixed refresh rate (tested again on the monitor's built-in display) as soon as you return to the area that should be running at 120 fps. Instead, I ran into stuck 74fps, 87fps, and 98fps fixes and many more where the variable update just stopped working. Alt-tabbing on the desktop might fix this for a while, but it's back. This also requires a solution in the firmware. 3) Freesync + HDR requires a software workaround and is annoying. Why was the monitor firmware shipped in this state? 4) I have stuck red pixels on the right side of my display. Not acceptable in this price range. 5) The color of the screen was different in certain places on the screen, closer to the center of the left and right edges. The gray dot was conspicuously reddish compared to the corners. It couldn't be fixed. See picture with different gray points. This is how it looked in real life. 6) 144hz mode is useless if you need freesync and HDR support. The display controller splits the signal horizontally at 1920+1920 (3840) on 2 DisplayPort cables and vertically at 2160. You can record up to 12 bits per channel (SDR)/10 bits per channel (HDR), 144 Hz, 3840 x 2160, RGB 4 :4:4 use this mode on AMD GPUs, but it's useless for gaming. As soon as the frame rate drops significantly below the original 144 Hz, there is jerking in the image, which is supposed to correct the variable refresh. Useless. 7) 3840 x 2160, 120Hz with HDR is limited to 8 bits per channel with no chroma subsampling (RGB 4:4:4), but the color is washed out. SDR is limited to 8 bits per channel but no color dithering. Runs at the limit of a single DP 1.4 cable with no DSC (8.1 Gbps x 4 channels or 32.4 Gbps). Tested on AMD Vega64.tl;dr - the monitor has too many flaws and is not worth the price.