A couple of weeks ago yous might have spotted our review of the Asus ROG Swift PG27UQ, the first 4K 144 Hz monitor on the market with a DisplayHDR 1000 certification and, of course, Thousand-Sync HDR. It's a very impressive monitor, certainly one of the all-time you tin become, though we didn't exactly give it a total recommendation due to its $2,000 price tag and a few early adopter issues.

Well, the Asus isn't the only such monitor on the marketplace. The new Acer Predator X27 uses the same AU Optronics panel, and so they're both equipped with the aforementioned specifications, but that doesn't mean they perform the same as I'll discuss a scrap later.

In terms of design, it's an piece of cake win to Acer here. The Predator X27 is just a far more attractive and well congenital product compared to the PG27UQ, certainly more plumbing equipment of its monstrous toll tag.

The forepart of the brandish itself isn't all that different to the Asus model, with a similar bezel size and like simple blueprint. But it's the stand where the X27 starts to differentiate itself with a much more elegant and less overtly gamer design.

Up until the pillar, the stand uses a unique and entirely metal construction conforming of a premium brandish, with ridiculous light projection features or colored highlights. The chunky pillar on the rear, which provides superlative and swivel accommodate along with the usual tilt support, does ruin the elegant design a picayune bit, however y'all can't run across it from the forepart which is great.

The balance of the rear looks reasonable though information technology does autumn a bit into the gamer category, however information technology's not nearly as bad equally Asus' ridiculous 'tech' pattern on the PG27UQ, so in comparison the X27 is basically the most beautiful monitor e'er created.

The X27 does employ plastic everywhere simply the legs, featuring two different finishes on the rear, and information technology does feel a little cheap. The monitor is all the same a fleck of a chunky brute too, though I suspect that'south mostly due to the FALD backlight

In that location are also two RGB LED strips integrated into the design, i in the V-shaped vent towards the top, and the other along the bottom border. Certainly a cleaner fashion to integrate RGB than only chucking it into a massive logo on the rear, though personally I'd still disable it.

The inputs you're getting are no dissimilar to other 1000-Sync monitors: a single DisplayPort and single HDMI port, plus an sound jack and USB 3.0 hub with a couple of handy quick-access ports on the left side.

The OSD is controlled through a directional toggle which is bang-up to see, and navigating Acer's feature-packed carte du jour is easy and fast. Most of the settings y'all'll find here relate to color and backlight controls but there are still favorites like cheat crosshairs and nighttime boost options, though no ultra low motion mistiness.

The other matter you'll be interested in I'grand certain is the active cooling fan. I criticized the Asus PG27UQ for having an aural cooling fan for the One thousand-Sync HDR monitor, and I'm sorry to say, the Acer Predator X27 also requires a fan to cool the internals. However, Acer uses a noticeably different controller for this fan which allows information technology to vary the fan's speed.

The Asus version of this monitor runs the fan at the same speed all the time, while the Acer model ramps up the fan slowly from idle, which is a more pleasant and gentle way to innovate the noise the monitor creates. The X27 also appears quieter in its SDR style, while running HDR content fires up the fan to around the same level of dissonance as the PG27UQ.

That said, the fan is still audible during SDR operation, which can be a fleck annoying depending on the ambient noise in your room. Ideally this sort of monitor wouldn't crave a fan, and if it did, the fan would be larger, slower and near silent. Simply equally I mentioned in the PG27UQ review, this is ane of those bug that comes about with early adopter products.