it has been trumped by others simply by merit of "newer gen panels"schmitty727 wrote: ↑06 Jul 2023, 01:24I've been a lurker for years now and I've finally made an account to talk about how great I think this monitor is, but it's not for everyone out of the box. My account is new, but for context my old monitors have been the BenQ Xl2411Z (1080p 144hz), Acer XB271HU (1440p 165hz), and Acer XF252Q (1080p 240hz). I recently acquired a factory recertified version of this monitor for $175 total and it has been wonderfully a game changer. Jumping from 144hz to 240hz was alright, but 390hz feels really close like experiencing 144 for the first time again.
I understand there are some concerns with this monitor's input lag versus some 240hz monitors and TN panels and I want to clear up some confusion. As a semi-pro rhythm game player, I can say with certainty that this is the smoothest and fastest feeling monitor on the market with the right settings. In order to achieve the lowest input lag on this monitor, the settings I found are:
Overdrive: Extreme
Everything else: Off
Contrast: 10-30
The contrast setting is important because this monitor's fastest speeds are achieved from GtG, so by lowering the contrast, you're effectively lowering the pixel response times because the next pixel it has to display isn't as super bright or drastic of a change. I find that lowering the contrast helps that extra 1-2% but in all honesty, I think you could have it up to 40-50 if you like things a bit brighter without compromising lag. Set the contrast to 100 and you will definitely find that there is a bit more input lag. The brightness can then be set to whatever you want.
Black frame insertion (TVR/VRB) does yield a tiny bit more input lag, but the motion clarity is so crisp that for games like CS:GO, you don't really notice that extra maybe 2ms of delay; especially if you're already pushing past 400fps. It also does not make the screen that much darker. In fact, I think it's the brightest strobing I've seen in a monitor yet. With my current settings, Extreme is slightly brighter and Normal is almost way too bright for at night. I also like enabling VRR when I can't push up to 390fps because the input lag remains more or less the same, but I get no screen tearing. For games where I am super serious like osu! and consistently push 1000+ frames, I use the settings above to get the lowest latency.
As for color settings, accuracy out of the box is really nice and I personally have my settings as R-44, G-47, B-50, but keep in mind each monitor is slightly different. I only have these settings because it matches best with my other monitors next to it. I also really like the ACM option. It's a bit of a gimmicky feature (Acer advertises it as a perceived 100,000,000:1 contrast ratio) that I don't really use for competitive games, but for some content it makes the monitor feel more vibrant and makes blacks look darker by making everything else brighter. That being said, the overall black levels of this monitor are really poor, especially with Max Brightness set to On, dark scenes look gray. I only turn it on for games that are too dark or during the day when there's a lot of light in my room, but otherwise I set my brightness slider to 1 and then boost the contrast beyond 50 for deeper looking black levels. Yes this increases input lag ever so slightly, but content looks better. This is best for more casual games or watching videos.
In conclusion though, I enjoy using all of the features of this monitor except for the half-assed HDR; you can only enable 10-bit [well 8-bit + frc] at 300hz and there's no local dimming. You can get better results by tuning the SDR to your own liking imo. It took me a bit to figure out the different settings I like for different content I'm consuming, but the monitor allows me to have saved presets and hotkeys so it's not really a hassle to switch between settings. In summary, with this monitor I can have a low contrast and low latency mode for competitive gaming and a high contrast and high brightness mode for entertainment.
VRB lag is less of an issue than flicker strain. more important to find the right game that pushes into 2x the fps than hz tbo. games used to easily run at 200+ fps 10+ years ago with old hardware. there were only 120hz.
