Acer XB280HK 4K G-SYNC Monitor Review
by Chris Heinonen & Jarred Walton on January 28, 2015 10:00 AM ESTAcer XB280HK: sRGB Calibration and Bench Tests
Pre-calibration the Acer has a blue tint to the grayscale and a very strange bump past 95%. This kind of bump typically means that the contrast is set too high, causing the panel to run out of a particular color before others. In this case it seems to be running out of red and green, causing the blue levels to spike. The gamma keeps rising as well, causing the dE2000 values for the grayscale to reach 3.0 at points.
Colors are fairly well behaved, with the dE2000 values for the color checker staying below 3.0 for most of the range. They are very close to 3.0, so on static images you can tell the difference from accurate colors, but for non-professionals the display performs reasonably well.
For calibration, we use SpectraCal CalMAN 5.3.5 with our own custom workflow. We target 200 cd/m2 of light output with a gamma of 2.2 and the sRGB color gamut, which corresponds to a general real-world use case. The meters used are an i1Pro2 provided by X-Rite and a SpectraCal C6. All measurements use APL 50% patterns except for uniformity testing, which uses full field.
| Pre-Calibration | Post-Calibration, 200 cd/m2 |
Post-Calibration, 80 cd/m2 |
|
| White Level ( cd/m2) | 200.0 | 200.4 | 78.8 |
| Black Level ( cd/m2) | 0.2602 | 0.2723 | 0.1157 |
| Contrast Ratio | 769:1 | 736:1 | 681:1 |
| Gamma (Average) | 2.31 | 2.18 | 2.60 |
| Color Temperature | 7065K | 6629K | 6493K |
| Grayscale dE2000 | 2.18 | 0.44 | 0.59 |
| Color Checker dE2000 | 2.42 | 1.60 | 1.55 |
| Saturations dE2000 | 2.35 | 1.36 | 1.48 |
Post-calibration the RGB Balance and Gamma is almost perfect. The contrast ratio is only 736:1 but that isn’t much of a drop from the pre-calibration level of 769:1. Color errors are reduced, but as I’ll show here, that is only because the luminance levels are fixed. Unless a monitor has a 3D LUT, you cannot correct for over-saturation or tint errors in a display. Using an ICC profile and an ICC aware application you can fix some of those, but most applications are not ICC aware. Below you’ll see the color checker charts broken out into three different errors: Luminance, Color, and Hue. Color are Hue are what we cannot fix, while Luminance we can.
As we can see the DeltaL values are almost perfect now, but the DeltaC and DeltaH values are basically identical to before. Unless you have either ICC aware applications, or a monitor with a 3D LUT, this is all you’ll ever be able to do to correct a display. Grayscale and gamma improve, but a display needs to have accurate colors to be correct.
Targeting 80 cd/m2 now and the sRGB gamma curve we see similar results. The contrast ratio drops even more but that almost always happens. Colors have the same issues we’ve seen the whole time, with the DeltaL improving but not the Hue or Saturation.
Color accuracy on the Acer is okay but not fantastic. Since the pre-calibration numbers for colors are almost all below dE2000 levels of 3.0 most people will be fine with it. Many 4K displays to this point have had a focus on designers and photo editors, but the Acer is very much a gaming display, and in practice few gamers will really notice anything with the colors unless a display is really off, and that’s certainly not the case here.
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JarredWalton - Wednesday, January 28, 2015 - link
I suppose the question on 4K gaming is this: would you rather have 4K medium or QHD high settings (possibly even QHD ultra)? There are certainly games where 4K high or ultra is possible with a more moderate GPU, but most of the big holiday releases come close to using 3GB RAM for textures at ultra settings, and dropping to high in many cases still isn't enough. I think people really after 4K gaming in the first place will want to do it at high or ultra settings, rather than to juggle quality against resolution, but to each his own.DigitalFreak - Wednesday, January 28, 2015 - link
I had the Dell P2715Q for a bit and swapped it for the U3415W. I really didn't like the trade-offs you have to make with 4k (performance, etc.), and didn't really notice that much of a difference in graphics quality.Mustalainen - Thursday, January 29, 2015 - link
I also looked at that monitor(the U3415W). It is beautiful but it came down to the fact that it was priced at 990 euro. In hindsight I think I'm happier with 4k as text is so sharp. I also like having 2 or more monitors as I can run one application in full screen on one monitor while being able to see whats happening in the other applications on the other monitors. I don't know if I would want to put yet another monitor beside that 34", maybe works great, maybe not, I do not dare to comment on that. The important thing is that everyone has the hardware that fits them the best.I'm mostly happy that companies seems to be releasing a variety of monitors at reasonable price points. It felt like monitors 20"-22" were stuck at 1080p forever while mobile phone screens were improved every month. Lets hope that improvements will continue on both markets.
Mustalainen - Thursday, January 29, 2015 - link
Oh, I cant edit, It was supposed to say 20"-27" were stuck...Mustalainen - Thursday, January 29, 2015 - link
Jarred, you are probably correct. I just wanted to give an alternative opinion to those who are looking at 4k and are leaning towards working(involving a lot of text) and being happy with not maxing out the graphics. I feel happy with 4k. It feels like "something new", have a lot of area to work with, scaling is almost a non-issue in win8.1 (with most of the applications I use).Taristin - Wednesday, January 28, 2015 - link
Acers always have that blue tint problem. I have 3 acer monitors on my desktop and each of them leans too far into the blue spectrum, even after playing with calibrations. Leads to some rapid eyestrain.B3an - Thursday, January 29, 2015 - link
TN panel? Nope.FreeSync or fuck off.
Pork@III - Thursday, January 29, 2015 - link
Yes! Indeed!Write TN and we now know that the only use is to fence in my pigsty.
Pork@III - Thursday, January 29, 2015 - link
WoW I read this article now: http://gamenab.net/2015/01/26/truth-about-the-g-sy...Cheers for those who paid lot of money for display with G-Synk module!
JarredWalton - Thursday, January 29, 2015 - link
Interesting, though a bit too laced with conspiracy theory stuff to convince me he's not off his rocker. I'd like to see a game with clear videos of VSYNC Off, On, and G-SYNC modes on that laptop. Part of the issue of course is that a cell phone video of a display is going to be difficult to tell if the refresh rate is really 50Hz, 60Hz, or more importantly variable. The pendulum demo is a bit too staged for "proof".