Acer Nitro XV282K KVbmiipruzx Monitor Review

The Acer Nitro XV282K looks like other Acer Nitro monitors, like the Acer Nitro XV272U KVbmiiprzx. Although it's for gaming, it has a pretty simple design that won't stand out in an office environment. It's mainly black and made with a mix of matte and glossy plastic.

The Acer Nitro XV282K's build quality is decent. It's all plastic except for the metal column on the stand. The screen feels stable on the stand, even during ergonomic adjustments. However, the plastic on the back feels cheap and flexes easily. Also, the bottom bezel is thick and feels flimsy too. Overall, it's well-built, and there aren't too many glaring issues, but there's nothing premium about it either.

The Acer Nitro XV282K has fantastic ergonomics. You can rotate it a full 360 degrees on its round stand, and you can even switch it into portrait mode in either direction. The back of the Acer Nitro XV282K has a mix of matte and glossy plastic on top. There isn't much for cable management, but you can pass wires through the red clip on the base of the stand.

The Acer Nitro XV282K features the same round-based stand as some other Acer monitors. The column is metal and supports the monitor fairly well.

There are three buttons and a joystick on the back of the Acer XV282K KV to control the on-screen display. The top button is to power the monitor On/Off.

• DisplayPort cable
• HDMI cable
• USB-C cable
• USB-B to USB-A cable
• Power cable and brick
• User guides

The contrast ratio of the Acer Nitro XV282K is mediocre, which we expect from an IPS panel. Blacks look gray when viewed in the dark. It has a local dimming feature that automatically turns on in HDR, and there's no setting for it. It worsens the contrast with our checkerboard pattern because all the zones turn on, but when we measured squares on opposite sides of the screen, we got a contrast of 1846:1, which still isn't that good. Keep in mind that the contrast can vary a bit between units.

Even though the Acer Nitro XV282K has no local dimming setting and it isn't advertised, it automatically turns on when displaying an HDR image, and there's no way to turn it off. As expected from an edge-lit IPS panel, it performs terribly. There are about ten zones, which results in noticeable uniformity issues and blooming when a zone is turned on. Zone transitions are visible and distracting, and any time the zones are turned on, the black level raises, causing blacks to look more gray than black. Overall, the local dimming feature looks distracting and worsens the picture quality.

The Acer Nitro XV282K has good SDR peak brightness. There's very little variation in peak brightness with different scenes, which is great. The minimum brightness is very low, which is great if you're planning on using it in a dark room and are sensitive to light.

These measurements are after calibration, in the 'User' Picture Mode, with the Backlight set to '100' and Max Brightness enabled.

The HDR brightness is okay. It meets the brightness requirement of its VESA DisplayHDR 400 certification, but it's still not enough to truly bring out highlights. Local dimming is automatically enabled with HDR on, and there's no way to turn it off. This causes some variation in brightness, but it's not too noticeable. The brightness of the display tracks the EOTF well, but dark scenes are a bit too bright, and there's a very sharp cut-off at the display's peak brightness, causing a loss of fine details in bright scenes.

These measurements are in the 'HDR' Picture Mode with the HDR Setting on 'HDR 400' and Color Space set to 'HDR'. You can't adjust the brightness settings in HDR.

The Acer XV282K has good horizontal viewing angles, which we expect from an IPS panel. It's good for sharing your screen with others, and even though there's some color washout at wide angles, it's not too noticeable.

Once again, the vertical viewing angles are good. An accurate image is attainable whether you're viewing the screen from above or below.

The Acer Nitro XV282K KV has good gray uniformity. The edges of the screen are a bit darker than the center. There's some dirty screen effect in the center, which is noticeable when browsing the web or doing anything that has large areas of uniform color.

The black uniformity is bad, but this can vary between units. There's significant backlight bleed and clouding throughout, and the screen looks closer to gray due to the low contrast. Even with local dimming enabled, our test pattern doesn't trigger any dimming zones, so it looks the same. The bottom picture (with local dimming) looks a bit brighter because it's in HDR, and you can't adjust the brightness settings in HDR.

The Acer XV282K has excellent accuracy out-of-the-box. Colors are only slightly off, with no noticeable issues. The white balance is a bit more off, which affects shades of gray, and gamma is a bit below the sRGB target curve, so all scenes are slightly brighter than they should be. The color temperature is on the warm side, giving the image a slightly red tint. The most accurate sRGB mode does a great job locking the color gamut to the sRGB limits, ensuring that colors don't look oversaturated. Unfortunately, like most monitors, this mode also locks down almost all settings.

After calibration, the accuracy is remarkable. Any remaining inaccuracies to the white balance and colors are nearly impossible to spot by the human eye and the color temperature is extremely close to our 6500K target.

The Acer Nitro XV282K's SDR color gamut is fantastic. It has perfect coverage of the commonly-used sRGB color space, and for photo editors, it has great coverage of the Adobe RGB color space.

The Acer Nitro XV282K KV's SDR color volume is fantastic. Helped by its wide SDR color gamut and high peak brightness, it displays colors at a wide range of luminance levels. However, it struggles with darker colors due to its low contrast ratio.

The Acer Nitro XV282K has a good HDR color gamut. It has excellent coverage of the DCI P3 color space used in most HDR content. However, it has more limited coverage of the wider Rec. 2020.

The HDR color volume is decent. It performs similarly to the SDR color gamut because it displays brighter colors well but struggles with darker ones.

The reflection handling of this monitor is good. This is one area where the Acer XV282K beats the LG 27GN950-B and the LG 27GP950-B because the Acer has a matte finish instead of semi-gloss. It handles a moderate amount of light well but struggles a bit with strong light sources directly on it.

Thanks to the 4k resolution, the text clarity of the Acer Nitro XV282K KV is fantastic. Text looks extremely sharp, and enabling Windows ClearType (top photo) makes text look bolder, but it's not necessary.

The gradient handling is fantastic on the Acer Nitro XV282K. There are virtually no signs of banding between shades of similar color.

The Acer Nitro XV282K is an HDMI 2.1 monitor, allowing you to reach its max refresh rate over both HDMI and DisplayPort connections. You can read more about the supported resolutions here. That page is for the Gigabyte M28U, but the supported resolutions are the same for this monitor, as both displays have the same limitations.

The Acer Nitro XV282K natively supports AMD's FreeSync variable refresh rate technology. Although not officially certified, it also works properly with NVIDIA's G-SYNC Compatible mode, over both HDMI and DisplayPort from 30-Series graphics cards.

The Acer XV282K KV has an excellent response time at its max refresh rate of 144Hz. Motion looks smooth with almost no blur trail behind fast-moving objects. There's a bit of overshoot in dark transitions which could lead to some artifacts in dark scenes. It's recommended to leave VRR enabled, as it performs the same as the 'Normal' Over Drive setting. This setting delivers the best overall experience, as it's quicker and has less overshoot than 'Extreme'. 'Normal' and 'Off' perform about the same but since the Over Drive setting is locked to 'Normal' with VRR enabled we suggest this setting instead for a more consistent experience if you decide to disable VRR.

The Acer Nitro XV282K has an excellent response time at 120Hz. There's slightly more overshoot when gaming at 120Hz, but there's almost no noticeable difference between this and the max refresh rate. Again, we recommend leaving FreeSync enabled, as it performs the same as the 'Normal' Over Drive, which delivers the best overall experience. There's terrible overshoot with the 'Extreme' setting, and 'Off' is nearly identical to 'Normal'.

The Acer XV282K has great response times at 60Hz. There's more overshoot than at its max refresh rate so you might notice a bit more ghosting with fast-moving objects if you game at 60Hz. Once again, the 'Off' and 'Normal' Over Drive settings are so similar and they're better than 'Extreme', so we still suggest using 'Normal'. If you're looking for a similar monitor with a better response time at 60Hz, check out the Gigabyte AORUS FI32U.

The Acer XV282K KV has a Black Frame Insertion feature to reduce persistence blur, but it only works within a narrow flicker range. You can't use it at the same time as VRR, but most monitors are like that anyways.

The Acer Nitro XV282K has a flicker-free backlight, which helps reduce eye strain.

The input lag of the Acer Nitro XV282K is very low. It's a bit worse than the LG 27GP950-B when gaming at 60Hz, but it isn't noticeable. We measured the BFI input lag with the setting on 'Extreme', and by setting it to 'Normal' we got a lower measurement of 4.4ms.

The Acer Nitro XV282K has a large 28 inch screen with a 4k resolution. These help deliver an immersive viewing experience with clear and crisp images. If you're looking for something with a larger screen, check out the Gigabyte AORUS FI32U instead.

The Acer Nitro XV282K supports most currently supported resolutions and features from the PS5. Since its HDMI ports require DSC to achieve the maximum bandwidth possible, which the PS5 doesn't fully support, the image is limited to chroma 4:2:0. This isn't really noticeable in most games.

The Acer Nitro XV282K supports common formats supported by the Xbox Series S and X. HDR and VRR both work properly, even at the maximum supported refresh rate and resolution, thanks to the inclusion of HDMI 2.1 bandwidth on this monitor. 1440p @ 60Hz only works by using the console's HDMI override settings, but that disables VRR.

Although the Acer Nitro XV282K KVbmiipruzx supports HDMI 2.1, it's limited to 24Gbps, and relies on Display Stream Compression (DSC) 1.2a for anything that requires higher bandwidth. This introduces some limits on the supported resolutions, depending on the source device. Like the Gigabyte M28U, this monitor has two HDMI 2.1 inputs, which is great as you can connect your PC and next-gen console at once.

The USB-C input supports 65W of power delivery and DisplayPort Alt Mode, allowing you to charge a compatible device and display an image from it at the same time.

There are no issues using the Acer Nitro XV282K with a recent Mac. Older Intel Macs don't support DSC, though, so you're limited to 4k @ 60Hz.

The Acer XV282K KV has a few extra features, including:

• Acer Display Widget: Program to adjust the picture settings.
• Crosshair: Adds a virtual crosshair on the screen for FPS games.
• Frame Rate Counter: Displays the current frame rate of your game.
• Low Blue Light: Removes blue light, which helps reduce eye strain.
• Light Sensor: Sensor on the bottom bezel automatically changes the brightness and gamma settings based on lighting conditions; it was disabled for our testing.