Acer Nitro XV275U P3biipx Monitor Review

The Acer Nitro XV275U P3 has a simple design with an all-black plastic body and a tripod stand. While its RGB lighting on the back gives it a bit of a gaming look, it won't look out of place even in an office environment.

The build quality is great. The monitor and the pillar of the stand are both plastic, while the base of the stand is metal. Although the monitor doesn't feel premium, there aren't any obvious construction issues, and the plastic doesn't easily flex either.

The ergonomics are outstanding as you can easily adjust it in many different ways to find a comfortable position. The adjustments feel smooth, and the monitor stays in place properly once you're done adjusting it. One downside is that the VESA mounting slot is too small to accommodate even a 100x100 VESA plate with 75x75 hole options, so it can be difficult to find a proper mounting adapter. Lastly, the stand has a clip for cable management.

There are four controls and a power button to native the on-screen display. However, like the Acer Nitro XV275K P3biipruzx, the buttons feel stiff, are hard to press, and even cause the monitor to wobble when you press them. On top of that, they can even leave imprints on your fingers, so changing settings in the OSD really isn't user-friendly.

• DisplayPort cable
• HDMI cable
• Power cable and supply
• User guides, including calibration report

This monitor has an excellent contrast ratio. It displays deep blacks next to bright highlights, ideal for using it in a dark room. Although the local dimming feature doesn't significantly improve the contrast ratio, it still helps the monitor display deep blacks.

The local dimming feature isn't bad. It uses Mini LED backlighting with 384 dimming zones. Setting Adaptive Dimming to 'Fast' helps improve the contrast ratio so that it displays deep blacks, but it also results in black crush and a loss of details with small, bright objects like in star fields. There's also a bit of blooming around bright objects and subtitles, but it isn't the worst case of it either. Lastly, the algorithm reacts quickly to rapid objects moving across the screen, but you can still notice when an object moves between dimming zones. Overall, the local dimming feature looks better in HDR than in SDR, so it could be better to keep it off in SDR altogether as there's a loss of details and some blooming.

The SDR brightness is excellent. It easily gets bright enough to fight glare, and it maintains its brightness very consistently across different content. Besides the Minimum Brightness, these results are from after calibration in the 'User' Picture Mode with Max Brightness on, the Brightness at its max, and Adaptive Dimming off. Setting Adaptive Dimming actually results in a dimmer screen, as you can see here:

• Real Scene 558 cd/m²
• Peak 2% Window 471 cd/m²
• Peak 10% Window 525 cd/m²
• Peak 25% Window 552 cd/m²
• Peak 50% Window 570 cd/m²
• Peak 100% Window 575 cd/m²
• Sustained 2% Window 471 cd/m²
• Sustained 10% Window 524 cd/m²
• Sustained 25% Window 551 cd/m²
• Sustained 50% Window 568 cd/m²
• Sustained 100% Window 574 cd/m²
• Minimum Brightness 46 cd/m²

As for the Minimum Brightness, the result in the review is with Max Brightness off and Adaptive Dimming on 'Low'. This results in the lowest brightness out of any combination of these two settings. Disabling local dimming with Max Brightness on results in a minimum brightness of 53 cd/m². If you're sensitive to bright screens in a dark room, it's best to disable Max Brightness regardless of which Adaptive Dimming setting you choose.

The HDR brightness is incredible. Even if small highlights aren't brighter than larger highlights, they still look bright enough for a vivid HDR image. The PQ EOTF tracking is also decent, but there's a slow roll-off at the peak brightness, so it doesn't let highlights get the brightness they could. These results are in the HDR Mode with Max Brightness on, the Brightness at its max, and Adaptive Dimming on 'Fast.' Although the Real Scene brightness is brighter with Adaptive Dimming off, reaching a brightness of 1,298 cd/m², it doesn't display the same deep blacks as on 'Fast.' The PQ EOTF tracking is similar with Adaptive Dimming on off, 'Low,' or 'Fast.'

The Acer Nitro XV275U has a mediocre horizontal viewing angle. The image quickly washes out from the sides, which is disappointing if you want to share your screen with someone next to you.

The vertical viewing angle is disappointing. The image washes out if you're standing up and looking down on the screen.

The gray uniformity is good. While there's a bit of dirty screen effect in the center, and the edges are darker, it isn't overly distracting either.

The black uniformity is good. Enabling local dimming improves the contrast, but while you don't see it with the test image, it causes some blooming around bright objects.

The accuracy before calibration is decent. Setting Color Space to 'sRGB' locks colors to the sRGB color space well, but there are still issues with the white balance and gamma tracking, as most content is either too dark or too bright. On the plus side, the color temperature is very close to the 6500K target. Using the sRGB color space locks some color settings, but colors are oversaturated without it, as you can see here.

The accuracy after calibration is fantastic, and you won't notice any issues.

The SDR color gamut is fantastic. It displays nearly all colors in both the sRGB and Adobe RGB color spaces, but it oversaturates reds in Adobe RGB, which is disappointing if you're a photo editor who works with this color space.

The HDR color gamut is excellent. It displays a wide range of colors in the common DCI-P3 color space and the wider Rec. 2020 color space, but some colors are off in each space. These results are with Adaptive Dimming on 'Fast,' and they're similar with it off as well.

The HDR color volume is excellent. It displays most bright and dark colors well, so they look vivid. These results are with Adaptive Dimming on 'Fast,' but it can't display the same dark colors with it off. You can see the results with Adaptive Dimming off in DCI-P3 and Rec. 2020.

The Acer Nitro XV275U P3 has good text clarity. Enabling Windows ClearType (top photo) improves the boldness of letters. These photos are in Windows 10, and you can also see them in Windows 11 with ClearType on and with ClearType off.

The reflection handling is good. While it struggles to minimize glare from strong light sources, it gets bright enough to fight such glare.

The gradient handling is incredible, and you won't notice banding with shades of similar colors.

Although the DisplayPort 1.2 port doesn't have enough bandwidth for uncompressed 10-bit signals at the max refresh rate, it's using Display Stream Compression (DSC) in order to reach 170Hz. Most modern graphics cards support DSC to reach this max refresh rate.

The Acer Nitro XV275U P3 has okay motion handling across its VRR range. While it's good at high refresh rates, there's more inverse ghosting as the refresh rate drops, which is distracting. Although you can't change the Over Drive setting with VRR enabled, it just uses the previously selected overdrive. The 'Extreme' overdrive has such high CAD that it passes the limits of the chart, and you can see an alternative chart here.

The refresh rate compliance is good. While its response time isn't fast enough to make full color transitions before the monitor draws the next frame at the max refresh rate, it's better as the refresh rate drops. The data has a lot of noise due to the monitor's backlight flicker, but you can see the compliance with charts that smooth out the flicker below.

• 169 fps
• 165 fps
• 144 fps
• 120 fps
• 100 fps
• 80 fps
• 60 fps

The CAD at the max refresh rate of 170Hz is good. There isn't much blur behind fast-moving objects, but there's noticeable smearing and inverse ghosting with the 'Normal' Over Drive setting, and there's still inverse ghosting even with the overdrive setting off.

The CAD at 120Hz is decent. The overdrive settings perform similarly to its max refresh rate, and they all have noticeable inverse ghosting and smearing.

The response time at 60Hz is bad. There's noticeable blur and inverse ghosting with any of the overdrive settings.

The Acer Nitro XV275U doesn't have an optional backlight strobing feature to reduce persistence blur.

There's noticeable VRR flicker with changing frame rates. It looks worse in person than in the video, and it's most distracting in dark scenes or dark areas of bright scenes.

This monitor uses pulse width modulation (PWM) to dim its backlight at all brightness levels, but it's at such a high frequency that you won't notice it.

The Acer Nitro XV275U P3 has low input lag that remains consistently low, no matter the refresh rate.

Besides not supporting HDMI 2.1 bandwidth to take full advantage of the PS5, there aren't any compatibility issues.

As the Xbox Series X|S only supports HDR with 4k signals, you need to use a downscaled 4k signal to get HDR.

The Acer Nitro XV275U works well and as expected with macOS. HDR looks decent in games, and VRR works well, but there's a noticeable VRR flicker on desktop, so it's better to disable it while working or browsing the web. If you're using a MacBook with either a DisplayPort and HDMI connection, windows return to their original position when reopening the lid or waking it up from sleep.

The Acer Nitro XV275K has a few extra features, including:

• ACM: Adjusts the contrast based on the content on the screen.
• Aim Point: Displays a virtual crosshair that your game's anti-cheating tool won't detect, giving you a competitive advantage.
• Black Boost: Adjusts gamma so that it's easier to see opponents better in games.
• Low Blue Light: Reduces the blue light to help reduce eye strain.
• Max Brightness: Makes the screen the brightest possible.
• Refresh Rate Number: Displays the current refresh rate of the display.