Review Acer Predator X38 175Hz Gaming Monitor Review: Bigger Really Is Better

[Admin]

The Acer Predator X38 is a 38-inch ultrawide IPS gaming monitor with 3840 x 1600 resolution and G-Sync, running up to 175 Hz with overclock. With a 2300R curvature, it promises immersive high-performance gaming for the well-healed.

Acer Predator X38 175Hz Gaming Monitor Review: Bigger Really Is Better : Read more

 

[coloradoblah]

Maybe when its under 1000, 1700 is way too high, 1,000:1 contrast sucks

 

[cknobman]

LMAO Acer is smoking crack if they think this monitor is worth $1700!!

Monitor pricing is just stupid these days. Maybe when crap does not sell prices will come back down to sane levels.

 

[coloradoblah]

LMAO Acer is smoking crack if they think this monitor is worth $1700!!

Monitor pricing is just stupid these days. Maybe when crap does not sell prices will come back down to sane levels.

Yeah you can get a few 34” ultrawides for around 300-400 now , obviously VA panels but is it really 4 times the cost ? The Gigabyte 34 ultrawide is actually pretty damn good for the cost, as long as you get one that has good QC.

 

[tharkis842]

Meh. For the price, might as well buy a nice gaming TV and run a custom res.

 

[brandxbeer]

Meh. For the price, might as well buy a nice gaming TV and run a custom res.

I agree. Some die hards will disagree but tvs are the best option for casual pc gaming. A descent 4k tvs colour and hrd will blow a monitor away

 

[coloradoblah]

Yeah i think you can get a 120hz 4k oled for 1299, for this cost Asus should have a no light bleed, dead pixel guarantee

 

[waltc3]

Should have tested with a more mainstream GPU--because a 3090 & this monitor = well over $3,000. Also, I'm not sold on curved monitors at all. It's interesting that quite a few of these widescreen, < 4k monitor reviews of 34" and up do not list dot pitch (sometimes called pixel pitch)-- the number provides the distance between screen pixels, & the lower the better--under .20 is required for 32" 4K monitors, if you don't want to be able to see individual pixels from any distance. My 32" 4K BenQ EW-3270U has pixel pitch/dot pitch of .18 and no individual pixels are observable even 1" away from the screen.) One can only think it is because the dot pitch is less than ideal in these monitors which, given their larger size and lower resolutions (lower than 3840x2160), is understandable from a marketing standpoint, I suppose.

Interesting that I see that Win10 supports a resolution of 3840X1620 on my BenQ--which I would think would also affect aspect ratios, were I to use it (tried it, knocks the 16:9 aspect way off.) Additionally, my BenQ supports something like 360 nits, max, but I can run HDR games set to 1000nits (No Man's Sky supports HDR 400, 600, 1000--you choose) and the HDR 1000 setting for the game looks by far the best. (I was pretty surprised by this, actually.) BG3 has the best HDR implementation in a game I've ever seen. (Game developers are finally beginning to get up to speed with HDR, finally--no more "washed out" fairly ugly appearances.)

Best of all, the 32" 4K HDR 1000 BenQ sells for ~$440. It's a VA panel but as I don't need to view the monitor from anything except a straight-on position, broader viewing angles aren't required. BenQ also offers a newer version, the EW-3280U, which uses IPS instead of VA, for the exact same support--it's ~$700 (Which is close to what the 3270 cost before the 3280 was introduced.)

*It's 60Hz, but that can be easily overcome by turning off vsync so that you can get hundreds of frames per second--without page tearing--which was another surprise with this monitor. All I can figure is that the anti-flicker tech in the monitor also controls page tearing, which I rarely if ever see even though my default driver setting (5700XT) is Vsync off.

Highly recommended if you want a great HDR gaming monitor with plenty of size that won't break the bank:

https://www.amazon.com/BenQ-EW3270U...1&keywords=benq+ew3270u&qid=1616432901&sr=8-1

--Looks like they've sold out--getting more 3270's on April 13, the page says.

(I seem to be pimping this monitor... All I can do is say that if I didn't really like it I'd not have two words to say about it...)

 

[coloradoblah]

I dont mind the curve, makes it a bit easier to see especially on 21:9, HDR is a mess on windows currently and don’t even bother using it anymore.

 

[VinceV]

Any particular reason there aren't comparisons to the very similar LG and Alienware monitors? And no mention of the fact that neither port has the bandwidth to push these monitors to their limits.

 

[Blacksad999]

Any particular reason there aren't comparisons to the very similar LG and Alienware monitors? And no mention of the fact that neither port has the bandwidth to push these monitors to their limits.

I was just coming here to ask the same question myself. lol It seems really odd to leave out the monitors which are direct competitors to this model from the comparison. IIRC, both Alienware and Acer get their panels from LG for the 38" models. Would have been nice to see a side by side breakdown of the strengths of each.

 

[Gigahertz20]

That price is insane, I'd rather just buy the $1500 LG OLED CX 48" 4K that has HDMI 2.1/gsync/freeysnc and all the others bells and whistles and amazing contrast instead of the horrible LCD screen drawbacks.

 

[waltc3]

I dont mind the curve, makes it a bit easier to see especially on 21:9, HDR is a mess on windows currently and don’t even bother using it anymore.

I have three games in which Windows HDR is better than normal mode: 1) BG3/Larian, D3d12 version...best, so far. I won't play the game without HDR, amazingly enough; 2) No Man's Sky, has three HDR modes, 400,600, and 1000. The 1000 mode looks fantastic in HDR--second best HDR title I own, 3) RDR2, looks slightly better in HDR than in normal mode, though it's close. At one time, NMS didn't support HDR at all--but in the last couple of upgrades, HDR has come to the fore--better than without. RDR2 I've seen go through several upgrades--it's still being upgraded--but the current HDR support is very good. And BG3--still in beta form--has been excellent since day1 in HDR--really surprised me. It's only available in the D3d12 version so far--but what a difference building the game engine to support HDR early on makes! These games have turned me from an HDR skeptic to a believer. I play exclusively at 4k, btw.

But all the other games that supposedly support HDR do a terrible job of it, as you mentioned... Interesting thing is it has little to do with Windows10 HDR support and everything to do with game engine HDR support. At first--last year--I thought something was wrong with my GPU, my monitor, or both, in relation to HDR. Those three games have taught me better. I'm actually glad to see that it's the game engine that makes the difference, as that means many more games will be built with HDR engines from the start.

I'm running an advanced beta build of Win10 not available to the public (which you can obtain by simply signing on as an Insider's beta tester), and Microsoft is building in a new HDR feature they call "AutoHDR" and the first version is in v2004 b21337.1000, my current build. What it's supposed to do is to take D3d11/12 games that have no HDR support but only support SDR and automatically on the fly convert the SDR values to the appropriate HDR values. You can turn AutoHDR off while keeping Windows10 HDR support turned on if you want, which is certainly the right thing to do. I've sampled several games so far and while the result is still way ahead of the native HDR support in many games today (not my top 3, however), it still needs some work as the SDR-only games still look better with AutoHDR turned off. But it's early, yet, and they intend to get it right.

Auto HDR Preview for PC Available Today - DirectX Developer Blog

Today we’re excited to bring you a preview of Auto HDR for your PC gaming experience and we’re looking for your help to test it out. When enabled on your HDR capable gaming PC, you will automatically get awesome HDR visuals on an additional 1000+ DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 games!

devblogs.microsoft.com

 

[godofsmoke1992]

Why would anyone want this joke? It doesn't even have proper HDR for 1700$? Waste of money when you can get screens which offer more for less

 

[freedizzle]

(first post here, but long time lurker on the forum, thanks for all the discussion folks)

I actually picked up one of these monitors a couple of weeks ago and am liking it so far. I like to play PvP FPS games and the moar Hz and FPS the better (speed over pretty graphics). IMO these 38 inch ultrawides are the best current compromise for me. While idea of gaming on a 24 inch 360 Hz display is quite intriguing, due to the very low input latency and feel, I would rather lean toward the larger side of the equation. For FPS games, the immersion from the large ultrawide is pretty excellent.

I'd say the Predator x38 is only for certain types of gamers though... So I'm coming from a Predator X27, which is a fantastic 27" 4k display @ 144Hz, 1000 nits HDR, and g-sync - for a lot of general purpose gaming the X27 might be the winner to some folks. To contrast: the x38 has something like 20% fewer pixels, so frame rates are higher there. The pixels are large enough that you can easily see them, which has taken me some getting used to. For the same FOV that I was playing at previously, targets in the center of my display are much larger than they were with the X27, so aiming is a little easier. So yes, the image quality is lower with the x38, but for my use case, the overall experience is better (higher frame rate, larger display).

Other than FPS's, the larger display is excellent for strategy games... for example I love the roguelike T.O.M.E and the pixel density of the X38 is actually a better fit for this game than the X27, as with the X27 and TOME I had to run at 130% scaled up size to be able to see everything large enough anyway. With the X38 I'm running at %100 scale, so everything is bigger and I can see more of the game world.

My ideal display would have similar dimensions to the x38, but would have higher pixel density and refresh rate. But that's the display of the future and I'm gaming today (with a GPU of today also). The G9 (at 200 Hz) does look attractive, but those 49 inches don't fit into my gaming area setup.

BTW it might seem wasteful to upgrade from the X27 to the X38, as they are both terribly expensive monitors. But I have a good home for the X27 and eh this hobby is a lot cheaper than many other hobbies (such as cars).

 

[Feim80]

Well I could really use some help since you say this is such a great monitor. No matter what I do I can’t get hdr to NOT crush the black details. It does not come out of black correctly and you loose a ton of detail right above black. I just use sdr because of this. Any game I try you loose so much shadow detail in hdr mode.

 

[freedizzle]

If you're asking me then I'm sorry but I'm not using it in HDR mode so I can't offer any advice there. My previous monitor (an X27) supported HDR and I had enough glitches with it that I never bothered trying with my current monitor (the X38).

This is offtopic, but if you're interested, the issue I was having was that it would randomly drop from HDR to SDR mode and the colors in-game would be all messed up, requiring a restart. I might give HDR another go with the X38 at some point, but with it only being 400 nits I don't expect it to be nearly as awesome as some other HDR implementations (such as on the X27 @ 1000 nits, where the additional color range looks glorious).