1. Why such a product and the decision to buy it?
At the time of purchase in 2020 the criteria was pretty simple – the best money can buy. We needed VESA 1000 HDR, 4k and 144Hz refresh rate. Acer Predator X27 P along with Asus ROG PG27UQ were the only options available on the market that supported these specs, both being 27 inch monitors and technically being the same thing since they share the same AU Optronics IPS panel.
Have we regretted buying such an expensive product? No. Let’s go into more detail why.
2. Specs
Name: Acer Predator X27 bmiphzx
Size: 27″
Native Resolution: 3840 x 2160
Variable Refresh Rate: G-SYNC
Max Refresh Rate: 144 Hz
HDR: 1000
Curved: No
Panel Type: IPS Quantum Dots backlight local dimming (Direct LED) 384 Zones that resembles OLED screens
Height Adjustment: 5.1″ (13.0 cm)
Switch to Portrait: No
Swivel Range: -20° to 20°
Tilt Range: -22.5° to 5°
Wall Mount: VESA 100×100 (custom plate needed for ventilation)
Weight (without stand): 14.3 lbs (6.5 kg)
Weight (with stand): 17.4 lbs (7.9 kg)
3. Tools used for this review
Acer Predator X27 – clickable link
Thermal paste – Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut – clickable link
Liquid metal thermal paste – Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut – clickable link
Earplugs – clickable link
Electric tape – 3M Super 33+ – clickable link
Knife Spyderco Honeybee – clickable link
Extra Strength dual sided tape 3M VHB – clickable link
CPU Cooler – Zalman CNPS2X – clickable link
Replacement fan – Noctua NF-A8 5V PWM – clickable link
Monitor Calibration – clickable link
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4. Delivery from acerrecertified.com
acerrecertified.com sold this product with a huge discount. While the brand new Predator X27 costed $1,699, we bought a recertified (aka refurbished) version for 30% less at $1,199.
You do get what you pay for though:
- The monitor came not in a factory box, but in a random box. It was wobbling inside and could have been easily damaged. Luckily nothing has happened during the transportation;
- There turned out to be 5 dead pixels in total (due to the 163ppi pixel density almost impossible to notice);
- The stand had a rubber pad missing (easy fix).
Apart from these issues everything else was totally fine and the huge discount seemed to be worth it.
5. Build quality
In general the build quality is OK. Nothing above and beyond, most of the elements are plastic, buttons feel mediocre, the joystick works fine but occasionally misfires and it is relatively difficult to use.
The stand on the other hand has a very high quality, being solid metal with substantial weight to it.
RGB lights are poor, the light quality is low and makes it not worth switching them on.
In general the build quality feels good for a medium range product, and feels lacking for a premium price tag product, which this monitor is.
6. First impression
Initial impression after switching on is breathtaking:
- Uniformity resembles OLED screens;
- Extremely high SDR brightness of 500 nits;
- Very high pixel density makes imagery look exceptionally crisp.
7. Loud fan noise and repaste
One thing to understand: this monitor has a g-sync module.
Unlike software-only FreeSync (which we think is a much better option), G-Sync requires some pretty complex hardware to run. This hardware has a chip which runs really hot, hence it needs cooling.
The cooling solution is mediocre consisting of an aluminum heatsink and a 5V fan. The fan itself has decent quality, but due to the inefficient heatsink it runs really fast creating lots of noise.
Things get worse in Summer and especially after a few months use when there is some dust buildup. To make things even worse – this fan is always on cycling the dust and creating noise 24/7, even if the monitor is on standby mode.
We did some basic re-paste with Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut – link, removed the dust, fastened the heatsink and it made a ton of difference. Fan noise stopped during web browsing completely, during the high refresh gaming it did come back but was significantly less audible than before.
8. Disassembly
The disassembly wasn’t easy, you need a prying tool or a guitar plectrum to get the case opened. Using a credit card won’t work – you will destroy the credit card. There are no screws, the plastic case has latches all over the perimeter which you have to pry open.
Most of the construction relies on thermal duct tape with only a few screws. Don’t forget to make pictures before the disassembly otherwise you may forget where all the connectors lead to. We had to use (3M Super 33+ link) a different tape afterwards as the native one was torn to pieces.
Watch the Youtube video to see the complete disassembly.
9. Engineering menu
This menu is hidden, most people have never seen it, but it reflects a lot of very important information. To get to it (as shown on the picture above) you have to click the buttons in the correct order 443322. The actual menu will look like this:
Very conveniently we have a fan control there. ‘Smart Fan’ option automatically sets the fan speed to keep the G-Sync temp levels below 60C. We may also set the speed manually which is very useful for testing.
After playing with the fan we found out that at 49% fan is silent, at 75% pretty audible, and at 100% very loud. Dust buildup makes our fan run constantly on or above 75% regardless what room temperature we have.
If the fan is clean and the room temperature is not high – the fan profile stays manageable and keeps our G-sync module under 60C with the fan being at 49% rpm. But even one month of dust buildup will change this curve and the fan will become audible again. Disassembling and cleaning your monitor every month is a big pain in the ***.
10. Fan replacement with Noctua NF-A8 5V PWM & disassembly part 2
The original Acer cooling solution uses an aluminum heatsink and a 5V fan.
Initial idea was to replace the original aluminum heatsink with Zalman CNPS2X – link, and to replace the fan with Noctua NF-A8 5V PWM – link, since Zalman uses a 12V fan. The first problem we encountered was that the Zalman heatsink was significantly thicker, adding a fan on top made it even more thick.
Grinding down the heat sink and placing an old Acer fan could work. But there turned out to be an even bigger problem. Zalman is a CPU cooler and it uses a completely different mounting system which can’t be reused for this monitor.
The only way to do it would be to create a custom plate, but we don’t own this type of workshop capabilities, so we decided to use the old Acer heatsink with the Noctua fan. The Noctua fan had to be cut out of its casing using a hacksaw.
Acer uses proprietary cable connectors so we had to attach the Acer connector to the Noctua fan. Luckily Noctua knew about this and the package contained Noctua OmniJoin Adaptor NA-JC2 Set for easy cable joints without soldering.
Color coding is also important since both fans use different color profiles.
NA-JC2 adapters are very easy to use, but they take quite a bit of cable length in, so please factor that in. Messing with wrong color will significantly shorten your overall available cable length.
The new setup works amazingly, much quieter than the old fan.
We encountered significant problems with a stand attached. The fan turned out to be too thick, and with the attached stand our fan got blocked by the monitor’s casing. Decision was to grind down the casing. The plastic cross section was easily removed by a metal hacksaw.
We also used some sandpaper to grind down the shell and made it significantly thinner on the sides where it could potentially touch the fan.
In the end it worked and the fan moved flawlessly.
Soon after we had to replace a simple foam double sided scotch that kept the fan stuck to the heatsink. The heat turned out to be a problem and none of the double sided tapes worked. The one that did was 3M VHB – link.
11. Comparison of Noctua NF-A8 5V PWM and Acer stock fan Chiefly CC8015S05H
The new fan turned out to be substantially quieter and well worth the change.
12. Artifacts
Acer X27 has some problems that are typical for this type of screen. Because this is an IPS panel that has dimming zones, there is a halo effect whenever you have white objects on a dark background. You can avoid this artifact by switching off the variable backlight.
To some people this artifact may be annoying, but this is the tradeoff of IPS backlit screens with dimming zones technology. There is no other way to have deep blacks on IPS screens. The more dimming zones a screen has, the less prominent this effect will be. Local dimming can be switched off altogether and the screen will look like a regular IPS without halo artifacts, but it also means that there will be no deep blacks and contrast levels will not be as high, the screen will feel milky.
We found the halo effect not disturbing and pretty easy to get used to.
On the other hand there is a strange reverse halo effect whenever you have black objects on white screen. What is even more interesting, this effect is not constant and appears rarely.
The artifact is quite annoying. But it does not happen very often and the reasons are unknown. It seems to occasionally happen only on high brightness settings.
13. Menu analysis
Quick access panel
After selecting Mode you will see a list of settings presets. G1, G2, G3 are custom presets you may save. User means the current settings which were modified by you, but have not yet been saved. Standard, ECO, Graphics and Movie are factory presets that can’t be modified.
Quick access panel has additional access slots that are user programmable. We have set them to Brightness and Input to be able to quickly change these parameters if needed. Clicking the Menu will open the main settings.
Picture
Max brightness level is 500 nits (HDR can go up to 880 but it happens automatically if HDR is on).
Contrast range from 0 to 100.
Blue Light option makes the screen yellow, supposedly helps with the eye strain, but to tell the truth we did not find that helpful.
Dark Boost – 3 levels – makes blacks not really blacks, adds a milky tint to them. May be useful for competitive players and gives an advantage in dark gaming areas. But aside from gaming, isn’t really useful as it basically reflects the content in a wrong way, it is not supposed to look.
Backlit Response – Desktop, Gaming or Hybrid – Gaming seems to be the most responsive and clean option, while Desktop provides a lot of haloing and trailing. Hybrid switches between two modes automatically and we found it distracting.
SDR Variable Backlight (On, Off) – this option controls variable backlight and dimming zones. Off setting will switch off the dimming zones and the screen will work like a typical IPS panel, good for designers as it gives a uniform artifact free experience, but the blacks become milky. On will switch on the dimming zones and will mimic oled screens with deep blacks and high contrast levels, a prerequisite for high quality HDR. HDR content will have this option as On by default with no option to switch it off.
Auto Brightness – will use a built in light sensor on top of the monitor to dynamically change the brightness levels. We found it not usable and intrusive.
Auto Black Level – auto brightness and auto black level, courtesy of a tiny sensor mounted at the top of the panel. When turned on, it measures room light and adjusts the picture accordingly. We never found a need for this feature. It pumped out some brightness if conditions changed during gameplay. Ultimately, it created too much distraction.
Color
Relative Gamma Default, +0.3, +0.6, -0.3, -0.6.
SDR Colors sRGB – On will keep the display to the sRGB color space, while Off will switch it to the Adobe RGB.
DP YCbCr sRGB and HDMI YCbCr sRGB – these two can be activated only when the color sampling used is YCbCr. It means whenever you push your display to 144Hz since this refresh rate downgrades the color automatically due to the display cable limitation.
Hard to say what exactly it means but we found out that by keeping it On the color and gamma will be the closest as to the typical full range RGB without the downsampling. Switching this option to Off will make the picture a little bit darker as if the gamma is off. So we recommend having these options as always on.
Color Temp. Normal, Warm, Cool, Blue Light – couple of presets and a manual option to change each RGB color slider.
Audio
Not much in the Audio section. Only one slider that changes the HDMI/DP output volume.
Gaming
Overdrive (Normal, Off, Extreme) – Off option by default, and it makes the screen a little slow, especially in gaming you do see movement trails. Normal seems to work fine, there are no significant artifacts and the screen becomes trail free with faster response. Extreme is unnecessary, the screen becomes not much more responsive, but very prone to artifacts.
Overclock (On/Off) – unnecessary menu option, all it does it let’s you to select the 144Hz option as the refresh rate. But considering this setting is applied by Windows anyway, OC in the menu does not really do any OC, it just enables you to have a selection of 144. If off it just hides that 144Hz menu option and the maximum is 120Hz.
Apply & Reboot is needed whenever any settings on this screen are changed.
Aim point – amazing hack, an option to have a hardcoded aim pointer for FPS games which does help with some titles. Back in the day we used chewing gum on the screen whenever playing Counter Strike and using AWP as a weapon which had no pointer.
OSD
Language – options vary by region.
OSD Timeout – amount of time your on screen settings display will remain active before it disappears.
Transparency – of the OSD display.
Refresh rate num (On/Off) – amazing option which gives you a hardware supported frame rate counter in the corner of your screen. Similar to Fraps or Afterburner, but without any additional software. Particularly useful in games.
OSD Lock – parental control feature that blocks all the physical buttons on the monitor. Can be disarmed by holding the joystick button down for 5 seconds.
System
Input (DP, HDMI) – input signal source.
Ambient Light – ability to control two RGB strips of lighting on the monitor, one behind and one under the screen. We found the lights really basic and sorta cheap looking so decided not to switch them on.
Hot Key Assignment – ability to modify two slots of quick access menu. Quite useful. Changeable to Brightness, Contrast, Blue Light, Volume, Overdrive, Relative Gamma, Modes.
Wide Mode (Aspect, 1:1) – innate ability of this monitor to handle scaling. Very useful for low res content in case you don’t want your screen to stretch and want to see the native resolution of apps.
Deep Sleep (On, Off) – a power saving mode that makes the monitor turn off when idle. Better to keep off since in some instances this mode makes the monitor skip bios and switch off in various potential instances when it may think there is no signal.
Quick Start Mode (On, Off) – skips the predator logo at the beginning and makes the monitor switch on considerably faster.
Save Settings to – gives an option of creating three user defined presets of monitor settings. Very useful feature which saves a lot of time and lets you have custom profiles on the go. Presets names (Action, Racing, Sports) can’t be changed.
14. Final Words
Pros
- High pixel density of 163 PPI;
- 144Hz;
- High brightness (500 nit SDR, 800 nit sustained HDR, 1300 nit peak HDR brightness);
- High color accuracy (Adobe RGB 98.1%, DCI P3 77.0%, sRGB 95.5%)
- Built in speakers;
- High IPS contrast levels that resemble OLED.
Cons
- Abnormally high release price (can be found cheaper on Ebay);
- Loud fan;
- Mediocre build quality;
- Artifacts (halo + trailing);
- YCbCr color subsampling (DP 1.4 limitation). HDMI 2.0 and DP 1.4 can’t support 144Hz + HDR with native 10 bit color space. You’ll need either HDMI 2.1 or DP 2.0 for the full support of HDR with frame rates of more than 98 Hz. Full color without subsampling with this monitor will work on 120Hz SDR or 98Hz HDR;
- Regular wall mount is not possible due to the fan. Custom made plate is needed.
Extra notes
- 500 nit sustained SDR is scorching bright, need much less for office work. We keep it on 80 nits (pretty dim) for 95% of the time;
- Really enjoyed playing 144Hz with around 400 nits for most mainstream games, color subsampling was not an issue;
- Rarely play in HDR due to the fact that HDR streaming is not supported, not many games support HDR either, and also it’s quite strenuous for your eyes. However when we do play in HDR that is really breathtaking.
