Acer XV275U P3 Review: 1440p 170Hz Mini LED HDR Gaming Monitor

The Acer Nitro XV275U P3biipx (XV275U P3 for short) is an affordable 27″ 1440p 170Hz flat-screen VA gaming monitor with a 384-zone mini LED FALD backlight, offering proper HDR support on a budget. Here’s what you need to know about it.

Image Quality

First of all, note that there’s another popular mini LED monitor by Acer with a similar name, the Acer XV275K P3, which has a 4K IPS panel. It has a 160Hz refresh rate and a 576-zone mini LED FALD backlight.

The Acer XV275U P3, on the other hand, has a 1440p 170Hz VA panel with 384-zone mini LED FALD. So, the main difference comes down to panel type, resolution and the number of dimming zones. The XV275U model is also usually up to $250 cheaper. Let’s see how these differences affect the image quality and performance.

On a 27″ sized screen, the 2560×1440 resolution provides you with a decent pixel density of 108.79 PPI (pixels per inch), resulting in plenty of screen space, sharp details and no scaling necessary.

In comparison, the 4K UHD resolution has 163.18 PPI on 27″ screens. The details are noticeably sharper, but you will need to use scaling to make small text readable. So, the amount of the available screen real estate ends up being similar.

We find that the difference in image quality between these two resolutions on a 27″ monitor is not that noticeable in games and videos. Especially after considering how taxing 4K UHD is on your GPU.

However, if you have a high-end GPU and want the sharpest details or plan on using the screen for photo/video editing as well, 4K can be worth the extra money and processing power.

Next, the Acer XV275UP3 has a VA panel, so it will have some minor gamma and saturation shifts at certain viewing angles. This isn’t an issue for gaming and everyday use, but if you plan on doing professional color-critical work, IPS is the way to go due to its wider viewing angles and more consistent image. For just basic content creation, the XV275U P3 will do fine.

Further, thanks to its high 4,000:1 native contrast ratio, the Acer XV275U P3 monitor provides you with deep and inky blacks. So, even though it has fewer (384) dimming zones than the XV275K P3 variant, you will get an overall higher contrast ratio with less blooming artifacts.

These 384 zones will dim areas of the image that are supposed to be dark without greatly affecting the parts of the screen that should remain bright, thus greatly increasing the contrast ratio. As a result, you simultaneously get deep blacks and bright highlights!

In some demanding scenes (fireworks, stars in a night sky, etc.), the light from the small illuminated object will bleed into the surrounding dimmed zones and create blooming (also referred to as the halo effect).

This is an expected drawback of this technology and most users find it tolerable considering the image quality you get in return.

If you don’t want to deal with blooming but still get a proper HDR image, you will need to get an OLED display, which has its own disadvantages, such as risk of burn-in and lower brightness.

Using the Adaptive Dimming option in the OSD menu, you can adjust the intensity of local dimming from Off, Low, Average and Fast. When using the Fast mode, you might notice some backlight pulsing/flickering in certain scenes, in which case, you should use the Average option.

For regular PC desktop use, you should disable local dimming (Adaptive Dimming).

The Acer XV275U P3 can reach up to 1200-nits brightness in HDR mode for punchy highlights, and it can maintain a high 600-nits in SDR mode. Make sure that the ‘Max. Brightness’ option in the OSD (On-Screen Display) menu is enabled.

Additionally, the monitor has a wide 97% Adobe RGB and 96% DCI-P3 gamut coverage, which results in incredibly vibrant colors. In the OSD menu, you can also clamp the display’s native color gamut to sRGB, Rec.709, EBU, SMPTE-C and DCI-P3 color space.

Overall, the Acer XV275U P3 delivers amazing HDR image quality for the price with deep blacks, bright highlights and rich colors.

The main issue with the monitor is that its HDR option has three modes: Off, On and Auto – yet ‘Auto’ has the same effect as On. In short, you will have to manually disable HDR in the monitor’s OSD settings when watching regular SDR content, and then enable it with HDR content. Moreover, you will need to manually change Adaptive Dimming to Off for SDR and to Average/Fast for HDR.

Performance

The Acer XV275U P3 has a 2ms GtG rated pixel response time speed.

While it’s faster than typical high refresh rate VA gaming monitors, there is still some dark-level smearing noticeable behind fast-moving objects in dark scenes.

However, considering that the monitor is not intended for fast-paced competitive FPS titles, most users won’t find the amount of ghosting to be bothersome.

There are three response time overdrive modes: Off, Normal and Extreme. When variable refresh rate (VRR) is enabled, the overdrive is locked to the Normal mode.

While Normal is the optimal mode across the entire refresh rate range, there is still some minor overshoot noticeable at low frame rates, though it’s tolerable.

VRR is supported up to 170Hz for tear-free gameplay and while the monitor doesn’t have official G-SYNC Compatible certification by NVIDIA, it works with supported GeForce GPUs (10-series or newer) over DisplayPort without issues.

Input lag is low at around 4ms of delay, which makes for imperceptible delay. With local dimming enabled, it is ~10ms higher, which is a bit high for competitive gaming, but good enough for casual games.

Features

Beneath the bottom bezel of the screen, there are four hotkeys for navigation through the OSD (On-Screen Display) menu and a dedicated power button.

Apart from the standard image adjustment tools (brightness, contrast, color temperature, etc.), you’ll also find some advanced settings, such as 6-axis hue and saturation, gamma, grayscale, display scaling (full or aspect) and automatic input detection.

Useful gaming features include Black Boost (improves visibility in dark scenes by altering the gamma curvature), crosshair overlays, a refresh rate tracker and on-screen timers. There’s also a Super Sharpness option, which we recommend disabling (on by default in the sRGB mode).

Design & Connectivity

The stand of the monitor is sturdy and offers full ergonomic support with up to 150mm height adjustment, +/- 25° swivel, 90° pivot, -5°/25° tilt and 75x75mm VESA mount compatibility.

The screen has a light matte anti-glare coating that prevents reflections without making the image too grainy. At the rear of the monitor, there’s a curved RGB LED strip with four different lighting patterns.

Connectivity options include DisplayPort 1.4, two HDMI 2.0 ports (limited to 144Hz) and a headphone jack.

Price & Similar Monitors

The Acer XV275U P3 price ranges from $300 to $400. We recommend getting the AOC Q27G3XMN instead, which can be found for as low as $250. While it has fewer dimming zones (336), it has better HDR and overdrive implementation.

If you don’t want to deal with slower response times of VA panels and/or want an IPS model with wider viewing angles, you should definitely consider the Acer XV275K P3 and the Innocn 27M2V.

Note that you can also find 27″ 1440p 240Hz OLED gaming monitors on sale for as low as $600.

For more mini LED and OLED options and information, check out our dedicated best HDR monitor buyer’s guide.

Conclusion

While the Acer XV275U P3 offers excellent HDR image quality for the price, the AOC Q27G3XMN is an overall better HDR gaming monitor for a lower price.

Specifications

Screen Size	27-inch
Resolution	2560×1440 (WQHD)
Panel Type	VA
Aspect Ratio	16:9 (Widescreen)
Refresh Rate	170Hz
Response Time	2ms (GtG)
Adaptive-Sync	FreeSync (48-170Hz)
Ports	DisplayPort 1.4, 2x HDMI 2.0
Other Ports	Headphone Jack
Brightness	600 cd/m²
Brightness (HDR)	1000 cd/m²
Contrast Ratio	4000:1 (static)
Colors	1.07 billion (8-bit + FRC), 99% Adobe RGB
HDR	VESA DisplayHDR 1000
Local Dimming	384-zone mini LED FALD
VESA	Yes (75x75mm)