Sort of odd to come to the hardware forum section and see that “Monitors” don’t rate their own forum, so here I am in “other hardware” discussing the video I just saw on the “monitor” review…
It’s a decent brief look, really, at the product–not much of “review,” imo. Couple of facts that interest me in monitors are dot pitch (or pixel pitch, as it is called these days) and whether the monitor has support for HDR. I cannot assume it does since it wasn’t mentioned. At that price, it surely should be supported. BTW, running my 5700XT (I cannot buy a 6800XT as so far I have not found one available for purchase anywhere–I’ve been looking since day 1 of the official “availability” cough) I can recommend two games that I know of that support really good HDR through my monitor (get to that in a moment) if you are lacking something to test for HDR in a monitor (not a TV) that really looks good–better than either game looks with HDR off–I can recommend Baldur’s Gate 3 (HDR is only supported in the D3d11 version of the game so far) which has the best-looking HDR I’ve seen yet in a game, and even No Man’s Sky, which in recent patches/additions has fixed its HDR output to work very well, creating output that is superior to turning off HDR in my system! Most games claiming to support HDR to date just don’t do a very good job of it, I’ve found. Prior to seeing the HDR support in BG3 & NMS, I had wrongly assumed that my 5700XT just didn’t do HDR all that well. Now I know better… Anyway, thought I’d mention it. I run both these games, especially BG3, in HDR now because it is demonstrably superior visually to running either game with HDR off! A very pleasant surprise.
OK, I bring up my monitor, a BenQ EW-3270U 4k HDR monitor, and a DP1.4 monitor–5700XT also being DP1.4, because I find the dot pitch of .18xx to be excellent–no single pixels are visible @ 4k. It’s beautiful, imo–and as I use my computer as the Good Lord intended, sitting in a nice chair in front of a nice desk, hands in front of me, the BenQ is 12’-18" away from my exquisite countenance (if I may say so myself), and as such it fills ~80%+ of my visual field at that distance. It’s very comfortable. Best of all is the price–about $440 last time I checked on Amazon. More than worth it, imo. It’s a 60 Hz VA panel and response time is somewhere between 2ms GTG to 4ms GTG from what I’ve seen. [BenQ has since shipped the EW-3280 HDR, but it’s IPS and response is slightly slower according to Ben Q–and they are asking ~$800 for it now. Curiously, the first reviews for it were not as positive as the reviews I read for the EW-3270 HDR–and the price is exactly what BenQ charged for my monitor when it first shipped. Essentially, the newer monitor is identical to mine, but has an IPS panel as opposed to a VA panel.]
Because the 32" is smaller than the 43" 4k, the pixels in the Acer will be larger than mine and the dot-pitch possibly higher. So…I use 175% scaling for my Win10 desktop… On top of that, in Settings/Ease of Access I set font size to 127%…! But it’s really gorgeous. Win10 scaling is far and away better than it used to be. Just thought I’d mention that…
Also, my DP 1.4 cable is a Vesa-certified 8k cable that reeks of quality–much better than the first DP 1.4 cable I bought when I bought my 5700XT 18 months ago. I bought the very first DP 1.4 cable available on AMZN…and I paid for it in more ways than one. Without going into it let me just say that advising people not to scrimp on their DP cables is excellent advice! (Recall the Vesa warning about improperly wired DP cables of a couple of years back! It’s all true! Booting problems and all–I know… Saving $10-$15 on a DP cable is simply not worth it.)
I think this covers everything that I wanted to mention–oh, one other thing that comes to mind–with this BenQ VA I don’t see the edge problem you pointed out with the Acer–being able to “see” the shadow of the screen mounting at the left-right horizontal edges of the screen. It did make me think of possibly one cause for that–sitting with your peepers 12"-18" away from this 43" is likely sitting too close… At that distance the monitor will exceed your visual field simply because it’s too large. That’s not really ideal, imo–so maybe if you push the 43" monitor further back–say another 12"-18"–and you might see less of that edge shadowing. I don’t know, though. I can get 1"-2" from this screen, however, and I don’t see that shadowing.
I enjoy your product reviews, Wendell… Keep up the good work…