Acer XR382CQK Curved FreeSync Monitor Review

[WyomingKnott]

It's Christian Eberle's fault that I, as of two days ago, own this monitor.

And how do you like it? Anything in particular grab your attention?

 

[shrapnel_indie]

It's Christian Eberle's fault that I, as of two days ago, own this monitor.

And how do you like it? Anything in particular grab your attention?

This is probably why he did it:

...just because a bigger monitor would be more comfortable to view for extended periods. I've recently upgraded my monitor, partially for work purposes (widescreen at home is definitely better than the dual-22-inch-1080p setup at work), and partly because bigger works better for my not-as-good-as-they-once-were eyes.

The resolution's a bit much for my aging graphics card, but I can turn down settings, or have the resolution even turned down some, should the need arise. I play somewhat older games, though.

Anything more specific, we have to wait for him to speak again

 

[King_V]

Well, that does cover part of it. The motivation to go with a bigger screen with better horizontal resolution was for ease-of-use for work.


Then, when I was reading about the 21:9 monitors, and how they allow for games to automatically give you the wider FOV as opposed to simply stretching things.... well, I'm not a hard-core gamer, but that had appeal. Even some simple, non-FPS games such as Don't Starve give you a wider view of the play area, rather than just stretching the screen out.

My existing monitor is a 27 inch Planar 1080p. I went from a 19" CRT to that 27 inch LCD at the time. Some say 27 is too big for 1080p, but my eyesight's not spectacular, so for me, it was very comfortable. But, I've been using that for about 5-6 years now.

So far, I love it, but it's a huge jump up from what I previously had. I will say this: my old LCD, sitting up straight vs slouching vs relaxed, etc., made a rather noticeable difference when viewing the screen, and there was no height adjustment. The old one's vertical viewing angle was pretty narrow. The Acer's adjustable height helps a lot, but even without it, the IPS viewing angle is like night and day compared to the old beast.

There's some wobble if the desk shakes a little, which might be disconcerting to some, but the monitor is (relatively) heavy. The stand is solid aluminum and quite sturdy though. I think it's the height adjustment mechanism, which, while ridiculously easy to use, allows for some of that wiggling. Still, vigorous mouse usage in gaming might possibly be an issue here.

I'm a little confused on how to set up the calibration the way they did in this review, because I don't see anything corresponding to the "Brightness Xcd/m2" settings in the OSD menus. Even the color level settings, when I go to the menu, rather than just a red, green and blue setting, there's a Gain and a Bias for each color.

I'm not clear how to switch off FreeSync and thus enable OverDrive.. but it could be that FreeSync is automatic if you have an AMD card, perhaps? I'm not sure. This is still a bit new to me.


I can try to address any specific questions, but I would say, overall, given the huge leap forward I've taken, I've got nothing realistic to complain about.

My minor nitpick is that I sabotaged myself. My old monitor had one HDMI, one DVI, and one VGA input on it. This has two HDMIs and a DP. I have two older PCs that I had hooked up to my old monitor that use DVI and VGA. So, I'm getting some DVI to HDMI adapters, and, as for the ancient PC that's using VGA, I guess I'll just have to get a cheap video card that has at least a DVI port (so I can use an adapter), or an HDMI port on it. My primary has HDMI and DP, so I'm using DP on that one.