Acer Nitro XV275K (P3biipruzx) Review

About the Acer Nitro XV275K (P3biipruzx)

Here are the specs of the monitor we tested:

• Price: $800
• Display size: 27 inches
• Resolution: 3,840 x 2,160 pixels
• Refresh rate: 160Hz
• Peak brightness: 1,000 nits (rated HDR); 359.4 nits (SDR, measured), 956 nits (HDR, measured)
• HDR support: VESA DisplayHDR 1000
• Color depth: 10-bit (8-bit + dithering)
• Color saturation:130% sRGB (rated), 99% Adobe RGB (rated); 100% sRGB (tested), 100% Adobe RGB (tested), 97% DCI-P3 (tested)
• Contrast ratio: 200,000:1 (native rated), 100,000,000:1 (dynamic contrast rated); 1,110:1 (tested with local dimming), 430:1 (tested without local dimming)
• Pixel response time (GtG): 1ms
• Ports: 2x HDMI 2.1, 1 x DisplayPort 1.4, 1 x USB-C, 1 x USB-B 3.0 (upstream), 2 x USB-A 3.0 (downstream), 1 x 3.5mm
• VRR Support: AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, G-Sync compatible, DisplayPort VRR
• Other features: VESA mount (75x75), 576 Local dimming zones, rear lighting, KVM switch, tripod mount socket, four-way adjustable stand

What we like

The fairly crisp detail

When you pack over 8 million pixels into a 27-inch screen, you get a high pixel density (163.18 per inch) that lends itself to crisp detail. That’s common of all 4K monitors this size, but there’s no denying that on the Acer Nitro XV275K (P3biipruzx) it makes patterns on fabrics and rich textures in games appear more lifelike. It’s much harder to catch a jagged edge without leaning in extra close to the display. I personally find 1440p at this size to generally be more than enough, but for serious detail hawks, 4K just provides that much more to love (assuming you have a GPU that can power it).

The Acer Nitro XV275K combines that clarity with a fast pixel response time that protects those sharp edges from the softening effects of ghosting. Fast moving objects on the screen don’t have long blur trails lagging behind them. That said, there are some issues involved in fast movements that we’ll get into later.

The brightness and bold colors

Between an SDR brightness level of 359.4 nits, an HDR brightness that can hit 956 nits, and an anti-glare coating on the display, the Acer Nitro XV275K (P3biipruzx) won’t leave you struggling to see what’s on the screen. I hardly notice reflections or glare from the lighting in the room, and that’s with the brightness well below its max settings. That remained true whether I was browsing the web, watching videos, or gaming. If you’re just looking for a display that can hold up in a room full of windows that gets a lot of sun, this one might be it.

The brightness also lends the Acer Nitro XV275K some dazzling color. With a color gamut that stretches to cover almost all over the DCI-P3 gamut, it has a huge palette to work with, and those colors look stunning when the bright backlights are pumping through them. That translates well to HDR video, games with colorful casts like Overwatch 2 or Fortnite, and even to simpler things like spreadsheets (more on this later). It may not be terribly accurate because of uniformity issues, but that doesn’t mean the color pops any less.

Though the mini-LED local dimming has some major faults I’ll get into later, it can occasionally lend itself to striking imagery. When the monitor tries to display a very bright object in an otherwise very dark scene, the local dimming is able to boost the bright object to stunning levels while keeping black areas around it nearly pitch black. Some OLED test videos look remarkably close on this monitor to how they appear on OLED displays proper with only a bit of blooming around the edges of brighter subjects. Photos can also look remarkable. I browsed back through some pictures I took on a recent trip to Japan, and the neon light of Shinsaibashi popped against a dim nightime setting that stayed deep and dark.

Plenty of monitors can compare to the Acer Nitro XV275K in color gamut, even much cheaper models like the Gigabyte M27Q X, but the high brightness levels make the colors stand out all the more vibrantly.

What we don’t like

Local dimming has some truly nasty artifacts

To really make the most of the Acer Nitro XV275K (P3biipruzx), you need to enable full-array local dimming (FALD), which dims or brightens the mini-LEDs to create bright and darker areas. Without it, contrast is pitiful: 430:1 for SDR content and only about 760:1 for HDR content. This makes FALD crucial in creating the punchy highlights HDR is known for and increase in perceived contrast. But it can come with some ugly artifacts.

Since each backlight is responsible for a not-so-small area of the screen (576 zones across a 27-inch panel equates to 0.54-square-inch zones, each containing over 14,000 pixels), a single zone can be tasked with displaying extremely bright and dark content at the same time. If that content changes, it can result in painfully noticeable shifts in brightness and color.

A test video with a splash of milk slowly flying across a dark black background saw the milk shift from white to orange hues, flickering to different brightness levels as it passed through other dimming zones. Slower moving, complex scenes don’t have as noticeable issues but the type of content that the monitor works best for shouldn’t be so limited; especially when it’s targeted towards fast-moving gameplay.

Watching the movie Prey in 4K with HDR enabled was truly unpleasant. Dark scenes caused the backlighting to pop in constantly, making shadowy areas cloudy as if the monitor had glare. The backlighting would react with a delay, making for a truly distracting experience any time the brightness shifted (like when the horizon and bright sky break). There’s a similar effect when just browsing the web, as jumping from page to page can trigger the backlighting lurches just the same as movie cuts.

It’s even worse while gaming. Wandering around the neon streets of Japan in Ghostwire: Tokyo, I watched as the backlighting jumped all over the place with each camera movement. Considering the camera swings rapidly while gaming, this is a huge issue.

FALD also has an impact on color evenness. Even something as simple as a white box on a black screen can make the edges of that white box appear dimmer and off-color. Essentially, the space between each mini-LED produces an inconsistent picture. So, for all the credit the monitor may get for having a wide color gamut and high color accuracy (for single colors displayed across the entire screen), it would prove unreliable for creative work.

Dialing the Adaptive Dimming setting up to “Fast” (confusingly inside of the “Gaming” menu rather than “Picture” settings) helps reduce the worst effects in video content but not while gaming, and it pulls it off better when an area needs to quickly brighten up and struggles more when an area darkens. Changing the settings doesn’t do anything to solve the color evenness issue.

It can struggle with contrast for fine details

Local dimming allows the Acer Nitro XV275K (P3biipruzx) to achieve some impressive contrast results on paper, but that’s largely when the display is showing a big enough black space to turn off all surrounding backlights, or the inverse. When it comes to fine details like small black text on a white background or small icons, the contrast can come up lacking.

Though the sharpness of small details is undeniable at 4K, text in particular has an unusual lack of clarity. Black letters show up as more of a grey. The monitor performs much better when showing the fine details of bright and colorful things, like bird feathers, where it doesn’t need to rely on small black lines.

The controls don’t belong on an $800 monitor

Some monitors come with remote controls. Others come with joysticks for quickly navigating the menus. Many cheaper monitors just opt for a few buttons in a row, often placed somewhere that’s somewhat hard to see. Which did the Acer Nitro XV275K (P3biipruzx) get? That third option.

This is just about the worst way to navigate a monitor’s settings menus. It’s difficult to make sure the button I’m pressing actually lines up with the menu item I intend to select. It’s too easy to accidentally press the power button that caps the row of buttons. Repeated clicks are often undetected, and holding the buttons sees the adjustment sliders move about one increment a second. So, when you want to go from minimum brightness to maximum brightness, get ready to wait 100 seconds.

Acer included rainbow-colored bias lighting on the rear of this monitor, but still chose these bargain barrel buttons. It’d fly on a $300 monitor, but at $800, the Acer Nitro XV275K (P3biipruzx) is competing with the big dogs.

Should you buy the Acer Nitro XV275K (P3biipruzx)?

No, it’s too much of an eyesore

The Acer Nitro XV275K (P3biipruzx) has a few admirable qualities but they are so thoroughly washed over in visual grime that I recommend an immediate pass on this monitor. Even if it were half the price, I’d still recommend the Gigabyte M27Q X or 4K Gigabyte M27U for their more consistent visual performance.

While mini-LED tech has shown up in some of the best TVs, all they manage to do on this monitor is inflate its max brightness levels without actually making a great picture. And no amount of color is going to save it from that. Surprisingly, the equally priced Cooler Master Tempest GP27U (the 4K sibling to the GP27Q we praised in our review) uses the exact same panel with mini-LED FALD and offers a much better experience all around.

Mini-LED might sound like a compelling alternative to an OLED monitor, but I’d recommend the LG UltraGear OLED 27GR95QE-B or Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM instead, hands down. OLED has its brightness issues, but they’re foibles in comparison to the mortal sins the Acer Nitro XV275K (P3biipruzx) makes. Since both of these monitors often go on sale, it’s also not breaking the bank to grab one of them instead, or another option from our list of best gaming monitors. Just whatever you do, don’t get this one.