AW2720HF 240hz IPS Monitor Thoughts

[Nector]

I'm a long time lurker to blur busters and just got the AW2720HF monitor a few days ago. I saw a few people ask about the AW2720HF so I thought I'd post my thoughts. I'm a gamer (Overwatch competitive, GM peak) and play lots of RPG/FPS games around that. Game/VR developer in my past work life, so my thoughts reflect that experience:

- There's a decent review in Japanese here with some good info (bing translation here) but it's no rtings / tftcentral review unfortunately. The UFO motion test videos in the review are very good tho and very representative.

- TFT central's review of the Acer Nitro XV273 X is good, and AFAIK it has the "same" panel as the AW2720HF. I say "same" because I think the backlight might be different. Which normally means a different panel number, but I digress. Acer technically supports HDR 400 (as useless as that is) and BFI which the AW does not.

- For me, coming from the Acer XB270HU (the first 144Hz IPS monitor in 2015, 1440p) it's a huge improvement in response times. The response time improvement is way more important than the Hz increase for me, although the Hz increase is great too. Seriously, it's a crazy difference.

- The AW2720HF has two usable overdrive settings (fast, the default rated at 4 ms G2G) and super fast (rated 2 ms G2G). The third "extreme" is useless due to the absurd overshoot levels. Acer does the same thing with their top overdrive level. No one would use it in practice and they know it.

- On "super fast" the response times are similar to the ASUS PG258Q. Probably with less overshoot artifacts as crazy as that sounds. I don't have them side-by-side to compare but that's what I would compare it too. I know ChiefBlurBuster also had a similar experience tuning the ViewSonic model. AUO did a hell of a job with this panel, it's very competitive with the first generation of "1 ms" TN panels.

- The Alienware firmware is OK, but it lacks some manual settings like a straight up gamma setting. The brightness/contrast settings also act bizarre with contrast having a huge impact on overall brightness.

- It's a great gaming monitor. I actually like the 1080p for gaming (coming from 1440p) because it's much easier to maintain FPS. I still use my XB270HU for everything but gaming tho. I thought I would still want 1440p for non-competitive games, but the motion clarity is way more important to me.

- Gsync "free-sync" works out of the box, no issues. It's certified with Nvidia now with the latest drivers.

Overall I'm very impressed. It's been as low as $350 USD / $500 CAD at dell/bestbuy making it a much better value compared to the $500 USD I've seen the Acer listed at. I think it's a no brainier for anyone who wants a 240hz monitor.

[whiteweazel21]

I bought one of the 240hz 24.5 inch Alienware monitors about a year ago.

I couldn't stand it, and returned it. You might be used to it already, because the Asus seems to have a similar slim border-less design. Currently on an old BenQ, but man...the difference is night and day.

On the Alienware monitor, I felt like I had tunnel vision. I'm not exactly sure what was causing it, I think part of the reason is there is a floating black border on the edges of the monitor that case a shadow on the lcd edges. It could be weaker backlights, or something else, but basically all the edges were dim and sort of created a bright circle for 80% of the screen, and then the negative of the circle was just dark and made me feel like I was going blind or something.

I'm pretty sure that monitor you bought has the effect too, since I'm 100% sure it's connected to the border-less design. Once you see it, you can't unsee it!

Thicker bezeled monitors, for the most part, are bright edge to edge. I have a bright square in front of me, vs a bright circle. Sorry for the rant! Just I hate those monitors so badly. But...they really do look super sexy.

[Chief Blur Buster]

Thanks for posting.

I believe 240Hz IPS is going to trigger a really good upgrade wave in 2020 regardless of manufacturer.

[TwentyFoe]

Wait, what? yet another 27" 240Hz IPS monitor? What's up with all of these companies releasing 27" models before 24"-25" ones? I'm really confused at this point.

Any clue Chief?

My intuition says that they'd obviously rather maximize profits as much as possible, so they release 'new gen' monitors in bigger size, thus higher price, rather than release both variants and potentially lose money with people opting to go for the smaller sized ones.

.

[Kyrie05]

https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/s ... 1575039530


Well, here's another 27 inch IPS Monitor, but this time it's 1440p. I've been wondering if I should wait for these monitors too, a native G-Sync IPS model would be nice, but if this one releases soon, perhaps it's worth waiting a bit more.