1440p True HDR for $400? - Acer Nitro XV275U P3 Review

welcome back to monitors unbox today we're checking out a new lower cost HDR monitor from ASA the Nitro XV 275 u3 a couple of weeks back we looked at the higher resolution brother to this display the XV 275 kp3 with a few mixed feelings the U variant swaps out the 4K 160 HZ IPS panel for a 1440p 170 HZ VA panel at the same 27in size shaving several $100 from the price in the process the two monitors end up looking quite similar from a design standpoint but this variant is the cheaper offering in the lineup crucially both XV 275 models pack proper HDR Hardware capabilities in this case through a 384 Zone full array local dimming backlight that's fewer zones than the 4K model which featured a 576 Zone backlight but the higher native contrast ratio of the VA panel used here should compensate for this to some extent hopefully AC's tuning and firmware is up to scratch for a good HDR experience because this is an area they've struggled with in the past the design of the XV 275 up3 is basically identical to the XV 275 kp3 which I guess explains their frustratingly similar names it's pretty easy to confuse these two models as you really need to look for the K or U to see what version you're getting that single letter makes a big difference as you're getting a completely different panel but obviously these two panels are largely interchangeable hence the similar overall design the XV 275 U doesn't have the best build quality or use of materials most of the upper display section is made from a relatively cheap basic black plastic and only the stand legs are metal it's a functional design but lacks any sort of wow factor you might get from a higher tier product I was a little surprised to see on the rear that there's a curved RGB LED lighting element that looks quite nice because the plastic around it is quite plain but hey got to have RGB these days I think this sort of design and build quality fits a lot better with the price range of the 275 U than it does for the 275k it's much more in line with an entry to mid-tier monitor the stand supports height tilt swivel and pivot adjustment with an excellent range of height that will be suited to pretty much any setup the swivel function is a little easy to trigger which could be annoying if you occasionally bump the display the stand legs are also a bit larger than typical for a 27-in monitor so it might occupy more desk space than some other monitors however the legs themselves elevated a bit so you can still fit in stuff underneath ASO has included average connectivity with one display port 1.2 two HDMI 2.0 ports and no USB ports or USB hub the lack of USBC with power delivery is a little disappointing but more concerning is that having no USB ports effectively eliminate support for user upgradeable firmware the HDMI ports also being just 2.0 spec instead of 2.1 limit this display to just 144 HZ over HDMI instead of the full 170 HZ I was very unimpressed with the OSD for two reasons firstly it does not use a directional toggle instead opting for stiff hard to navigate face buttons along the bottom right Edge secondly the OSD interface itself is very slow taking ages to adjust sliders like brightness as one example and difficult to operate and navigate OSD feels quite dated and while the feature set is fine it includes a range of color controls and gamer features like crosshairs anything that you want to activate for a specific usage scenario feels like a chore the XV 275 up3 is another monitor from where if you want to use adaptive sync you will not be able to change overdrive settings as I recommend pretty much anyone game with adaptive sync enabled this means there's only one set of results that are relevant in terms of response time performance so let's take a look at the maximum 170 HZ refresh rate ASA have clearly tuned this monitor to be right on the edge of what this VA panel is capable of by pushing overdrive up to this level large sections of dark smearing have been eliminated so in practice this monitor has less dark smearing than it typical VA but dark smearing is still there it's not at the level of a Samsung Odyssey Neo G7 for example the tradeoff is that some overshoot is introduced for brighter transitions though in practice this isn't overly noticeable I wouldn't describe this tuning as particularly revolutionary for a VA panel though it's not as disastrous as The Cooler Master GP 2711 that we recently looked at that 1440p VA had much more severe dark smearing to the degree it was frequently noticeable while gaming this VA you'll only see dark smearing some of the time and otherwise the speed on offer is similar to previous generation IPS LCDs which is to say not quite as fast as equivalent modern IPS but reasonable enough while the 275 U is capable of gaming at70 HZ the optimal refresh rate appears to be around 144 HZ dark transitions are a little faster than at 170 HZ in fact the monitor overall is faster and overshoot isn't too problematic yet but when we start getting to 12 Herz and especially 100 HZ and lower overshoot artifacts become the dominant issue yes at these lower refresh rates dark transitions are much faster and you don't get nearly as much dark smearing but this is replaced with a higher inverse ghosting rate so across a variety of gaming scenarios you'll just see slower dark transitions replaced with inverse ghosting Trails although these Trails occur more with lighter transitions this leads to a pretty mediocre gaming experience from a response time perspective again it's not awful it's not the worst I've seen from a VA panel but it's not that fast and I wouldn't describe what we're getting as a single overdrive mode experience this panel would have benefited significantly from variable overdrive to tune up those lower refresh rates as well as unlocking more overdrive settings when adaptive sync is enabled but it goes beyond that because even the available overdrive settings in the fixed refresh rate mode are pretty underwhelming there's just three settings and really it doesn't offer an experience any better than the vrr mode for example turning the overdrive setting down from normal the mode used when adapting syn is enabled to off makes the monitor much slower and with nothing between these modes we get no fine-tuning ability compared to other monitors at their maximum refresh rates the XP 275 u3 isn't anything special it offers a similar average response to some IPS monitors but with a higher level of overshoot some of the better 1440p LCDs of today offer either better response times at a similar level of overshoot like the gigabyte M27 QP or offer both better responses and lower overshoot like the LG 27 GP 83b it's not as slow as some other vas I've tested over the last couple of years looking at average performance across the refresh range the 275 U is a bit of an outlier in that it offers A 5.6 millisecond response time average which is similar to other displays but it does so at a higher level of overshoot the ips-based K model is better tuned as a result but again it's not as slow as we have seen from some of the worst V8 offenders The Odyssey Neo G7 from Samsung remains a really great example of a well tuned VA as for dark performance what we're seeing is a bit better than your average VA monitor but not as good as the Neo G7 results are in the range of some of the slower IPS monitors I've tested recently but these monitors have a slower overall average whereas the 275 U is typically a bit faster on average with weaker dark performance this creates more of a discrepancy between a typical transition and a dark transition for the 275 U they can make those slower dark transitions stand out more even if the actual speed is s SAR to some IPS monitors cumulative deviation really shows where the 275 U stands overall when it comes to the bounce between speed and overshoot it's not as fast as a modern IPS something like an MSI g274 qpf dqd which itself isn't a leading IPS is 23% better in this metric and this lead extends to 42% if we compare it to say The Cooler Master gp27 Q at the same time it's not GP 2711 levels of poor optimization I think this panel is right on the edge of what it can do without further tuning through variable overdrive or moving to the high-end Samsung model of va tuning I was hoping to see better results for fixed refresh performance once the overdrive setting lock was removed but this isn't the case at 120 HZ the response average is pretty decent but the level of overshoot does lead to a small amount of noticeable inverse ghosting at 60 HZ this level of overshoot becomes much more obvious and distracting despite a relatively fast response time the only option is overdrive disabled which pushes the average response time to like 20 milliseconds which is a really bad result so this is pretty much the best option while the 275 U doesn't support backlight strobing I thought it might be interesting to have a look at UFO test results anyway and compare them to other VA monitors so you can visually see the difference in response times and dark smearing this display does indeed look a bit better than other vas at its Max refresh but it isn't at the level of a typical budget 1440p IPS LCD in input lag in the SDR mode is perfectly acceptable with a 1 millisecond processing delay when adaptive dimming is disabled this isn't a monitor that's overly designed for Speed and low latency as it has just a 170 HZ refresh rate so competitive multiplayer Gamers may prefer a 240 HZ display or higher but it's good to confirm it's possible to run this monitor in a configuration that provides low latency as for power consumption the results here are pretty decent despite the use of a multizone mini LED backlight the 275 U doesn't cons assume more power than non FAL monitors like the g274 qpf dqd the fact it uses notably less power than the 275k model is a good thing for this VA panel and its backlight implementation when it comes to color performance this monitor has a very wide gamut encompassing 96% coverage of DCI P3 as well as 97% coverage of adobe RGB this is pretty decent for use in either of those color spaces and leads to Total Rec 2020 coverage of 83% a great outcome for HDR gaming and one of the highest results I've seen from a 1440p monitor outof the boox calibration though is very bad this is because the monitor has the Adaptive dimming mode enabled by default and it's clear the display has not been calibrated with this setting in mind the gamma is far too high as a result indicating a presentation that's typically too dark and on top of this we get significant amounts of oversaturation for SDR srgb content like regular desktop applications as an example watching a YouTube video will show skin tones to be much redder than they should be a byproduct of having such a high color gamut with no srgb color space emulation enabled by default this is a pretty significant outlier in grayscale performance and shows how you can't just enable local dimming without actually tuning it color cheer results are also bad though it's less of an outlier compared to some other monitors while the factory experience is very inaccurate you can obtain a much better level of calibration by changing just two settings disabling a adaptive dimming and enabling the srgb mode with these setting changes we go from a Delta e ITP and Grays scale of 47 to just 10.1 which still isn't amazing but is a much better result saturation and color Checker performance improved significantly as well with OK srgb gamut clamping on show here reducing oversaturation and largely fixing skin tones with that said this Mode still isn't amazing compared to other gaming monitors and doesn't do enough to qualify as being Factory calibrated in my opinion it's also disappointing to see many settings locked in the srgb mode such as white balance controls which would have allowed for further fine-tuning without having to resort to a software calibration the srgb mode also enables super sharpness by default which looks horrendous and should be immediately disabled if you're using it in this configuration luckily performance can be improved further with a full calibration and I used portrait displays calan for this results ended up pretty good though not quite as tightly calibrated as some of the best monitors out there still pretty usable for SDR content and even some wide gamut work in P3 or adobe RGB maximum SDR brightness is very strong at 630 nits more than enough for most indoor use cases and likely too bright for most people but there is a great range of brightness on offer as the display can push all the way down to 49 nits which is very suitable for use in dark rooms while the XV 275 up3 does come with a mini LED local dimming backlight that can enhance the contrast ratio further I was very impressed with the native VA panel contrast of nearly 5,000 to1 this is a great result even for a VA LCD and much higher than IPS LCDs so if you do choose to disable local dimming for accurate SDI use you'll still be getting decent black levels and this also sets up the panel nicely for HDR unfortunately viewing angles are not especially amazing and you'll see some gamma shift at off angles in both the vertical and horizontal directions it's not TN level bad but this VA is not capable of full IPS or old Leed level viewing angles and you should try to view it as dead on as possible with that said I prefer having weaker viewing angles than having to put up with an annoying curve which isn't a great experience at this panel size uniformity is okay nothing special here either and as a VA you typically won't see glow or backlight bleed but again that is provided you a viewing the panel as close to dead-on as possible when it comes to HDR performance the XV 275 up3 is decently well equipped with a 384 Zone full array local diing back light in a 24x 16 grid configuration this is a lower backlight Zone count than other LCDs I've recently been testing which typically start at 576 zones and can exceed 1,000 zones for highend models however with the right dimming algorithm and in this case a high native VA contrast ratio 384 zones can actually be sufficient for a good HDR experience this amount of zones is a significant upgrade over edgelit dimming as the zones are much smaller and more effective I've shown in previous videos how crappy EDG lit panels are but basically if there's a bright object in the center of the display an EDG liit panel will illuminate an entire section of the display from top to bottom just to show that Central object at the correct brightness this causes notably raised blacks in conditions where they shouldn't be raised with 384 full array local dimming zones the panel can more tightly dim around the object in the center and you won't see elevated brightness extending all the way to the edges of the screen this results in a far superior HDR experience that really can deliver the high contrast ratio that's required bright and dark objects can be reasonably close together with a bright object shining in over a thousand hit of brightness while the nearby dark area is rich in Shadow detail and blacks a VA LCD with just 384 zones doesn't have the same level of control as an OLED with per pixel local dimming but 384 zones with a VA panel is sufficient for a lot of HDR scenes and ends up delivering a good entry to mid-level HDR experience the main limitations of when bright and dark areas need to be relatively close together the dimming system here can't always get tied enough as each Zone deals with roughly 10,000 pixels this can lead to Blooming around some small objects and it's especially noticeable in scenes with large uniform areas and high contrast edges a bright white mouse icon on a dark gray background for example you'll see blooming and an elevated backlight around that icon that moves as you shift the mouse icon into different backlight zones sharp edges in a UI can cause some vignetting and almost a gradient like effect as the backlight tries to manage its illumination level because it can't dim exactly along the edge starfields Christmas lights and subtitles can all lead to Blooming artifacts that you wouldn't see on either a higher Zone count LCD or an OLED nevertheless this type of panel can still enhance both brightness and contrast over a typical SDR experience and you will much more often get a higher than SDR contrast compared to an edget panel it's a good experience in most games and a fantastic entry point to HDR if you haven't owned an HDR display before while all of these panel characteristics are impressive Asel lets the experienced down with several firmware side annoyances the biggest issue is that this monitor will not automatically switch between an HDR and SDR configuration even if you set HJ in the OSD to Auto the same issue as the XV 275 kp3 this is because Auto HDR is effectively just hdr on which hurts the SDR experience and so you can't just leave it on Auto in that mode it also switches from the user profile to HDR profile when this setting is on auto locking many features in the OS D for the best SDR experience this setting needs to be off this then means that whenever you turn on HDR in a game or in Windows you'll need to manually enable hgr in the OSD by setting the HJ setting to Auto and if you don't do this the monitor is very washed out and looks like crap anytime you switch between HDR and SDR these settings need to be adjusted in an OSD that is slow and clunky to navigate due to the lack of directional toggle although this would be frustrating on any display no matter the the quality of the OSD to make matters worse the local dimming setting called adaptive dimming is also decoupled from the HDR and SDR modes if you want to disable dimming for the most accurate SDR experience with the least blooming but then enable dimming for HDR gaming you have to manually change that setting as you switch between SDR and hdr2 so now for the best HDR configuration you need to change two settings every single time you enable HDR this ends up being very annoying and quite a frustrating user experience configuring the monitor to work in this way also shows a lack of understanding about HDR and what constitutes a good experience it's essential that the HDR mode is automatically enabled when an HDR signal is detected and this mode should be separate from the SDR mode with its own set of user adjustable settings that are saved to this specific mode switching back to the SDR mode should be graceful painless and preserve the users's SDR configuration and this ASA monitor does none of that the U model specifically has a few additional issues I noted noticed backlight pulsing in some games when setting the Adaptive dimming mode to average or fast bright objects in an otherwise dim environment would cause pulsing in motion as each Zone quickly turns on or off which I found pretty distracting this can be partially solved by setting adaptive dimming to low at the cost of much slower Zone transitions that can cause Zone ghosting at times where the backlight remains elevated briefly even after a bright object is moved out of that zone I think this is partly a side effect of the lower Zone count than other HG monitors the Zone transitions are just more noticeable unfortunately I also saw scan lines at the highest refresh rate which are faint in the SDR mode but unusually a bit more visible in the HDR mode while these scan lines are less noticeable at lower refresh rates this sort of defect is not acceptable as it's visible even throughout just the regular Windows 11 UI whenever scan lines are present in basic content like the OS it can really trip up those Edge case games that often get reported by monitor owners on Reddit with with all of these issues using the HJ mode it does make it hard to recommend even if the HJ experience is okay HJ EF tracking is okay though lower luminance levels are a bit too dark which can make it harder to view dark shadowed content there's also a strong blue tint in the hgr mode leading to a high grayscale Delta e average color performance is not amazing or overly accurate either saturation is generally too high in the HDR mode when it really should be up to the content to utilize The increased color gamut that's on offer while HR accuracy is mediocre brightness is excellent offering 1300 nits full screen sustained the monitor is also capable of around 1,300 nits for a 10% window size which is fantastic though at a 2% window This falls back to 790 nits still good but not as outstanding as the other results being in LCD there's no risk of burning when viewing bright HDR content and overall brightness is very high as for contrast results best case for HJ in a single frame with a bright and dark object far apart are recorded a 400,000 to1 contrast ratio this is a really strong result that allows for True HDR visuals though the level of dimming on offer is not as good as the Samsung Neo G7 it does however outperform the GP 2711 despite having a lower Zone count I suspect a byproduct of its higher native contrast ratio as for worst case results I was somewhat surprised by the results the XV 275 U delivered a 70% higher contrast ratio than the GP 2711 even though the GP 2711 has a 576 Zone backlight compared to 384 zones for this display the Asa has a 30% higher native contrast ratio but I suspect there's also a backlight composition difference that produces less bleeding between zones this also allows the 275 U to get remarkably close to Samsung's 1196 Zone VA monitors although in the case of the Neo G7 the XV 275 U goes from having a 12% higher native contrast to a 25% weaker dimmed contrast these VA panels absolutely smash their their IPs counterparts with 576 zones the combination of dimming and a high native contrast ratio overwhelms IPS LCDs and means that an IPS needs a much higher Zone count to compete the results for checkerboard contrast continue what we saw in the worst case scenario input latency in the HDR mode with adaptive dimming enabled is also as expected there is an increase to lag as the monitor has to process the frame to determine what the backlight should do final section of this review is the Hub Essentials checklist ACA receives an immediate deduction for their slow OSD and lack of directional toggle which really hurts the user experience the color specifications are largely advertised accurately and it was nice to see the contrast ratio exceed even AC's High claims however Motion Performance needs work even the 2 millisecond greater grade claim isn't reflective of what this monitor can do and there are issues with the lack of adjustable overdrive controls the HJ section is very good only receiving a borderline result for Zone count however the issues in defect section isn't looking great the backlight pulsing in the HDR mode can be partially addressed through a setting change but the pixel inversion issues not so much it's also very unlikely that any of the mentioned issues could be resolved through a firmer update as the monitor doesn't have any USB ports I come away from testing the ASA Nitro XV 275 up3 with a feeling of disappointment there's a lot of Promise here with the hardware this display is packing we've just seen how a 384 zone mini LED backlight can be effective for lower cost HDR when combined with the high native contrast ratio of a VA LCD but the just too many other issues for this product to get a recommendation some of the problems are more minor Motion Performance for example isn't terrible for a VA panel and while there can be some dark smearing it's not as pronounced as the typical VA experience but it's also not an overly fast monitor the lack of overdrive settings and lack of variable overdrive Hurts The Experience particularly at lower refreshes where overshoot becomes an issue still if everything else was dialed in and working nicely this alone wouldn't be a total deal breaker for some types of gamer then there's the HDR side of things sure the backlight isn't capable of the tightest dimming HDR accuracy isn't great and there can be backlight pulsing but it is capable of excellent brightness a much higher than SDR contrast ratio and a genuinely decent HDR experience at times especially when you consider this display is offering proper full array local dimming not Edge lit crap for just $400 us but unfortunately there are some genuine deal breakers here like the 4K variant of this monitor the 275 has a terrible annoying slow OSD that requires setting changes every time you want to switch between the HDR and SDR modes some buyers might be able to tolerate this annoyance but I'd find it difficult to recommend a product that could be frustrating to use daily on top of this we get scan lines that are visible in the hgr mode and no obvious way to upgrade the firmware as the display doesn't have any USB ports this is a massive oversight because most of the problems I've been talking about should be addressable through a firmer update without the ability to upgrade the firmware though buyers are stuck with this experience unless ASA offer firmware updates through an annoying RMA type process I'm sure USB was one area that was cut back to meet budget targets but on products like this it can hurt more than you first realize so ultimately this is one of those monitors that looks ideal on paper but doesn't live up to it in practice it's disappointing but it's just the start of a new wave of lower cost HDR LCD so stay tuned for more testing throughout 2024 anyway that's it for this review of the ASA Nitro XV 275 up3 if you do appreciate independent testing and reviews of monitors like this then please do consider supporting us through our patreon and float plan accounts links are in the description below you'll get access to some cool benefits in the process like our Discord Community to chat about monitors and get recommendations we also offer our ICC profiles as a benefit for hard runbox members so thanks for watching and we'll catch you in the next one [Music] [Music]

Channel: Monitors Unboxed

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Id: W9669HalZoM

Length: 25min 14sec (1514 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 04 2024