Acer X27U 1440p 240Hz OLED Gaming Monitor Review

This is the Acer X27U, of course not to be confused with the Acer X27U. THIS is a 240Hz W-OLED 1440p 27 inch panel, and the OTHER X27U is a 480Hz W-OLED 1440p 27 inch panel. I know, they don’t make it easy. In fact, at least at the time of filming even Acer got them confused, as there isn’t a product page for the newer F3 model – the 480Hz one – they just updated the standard X27U’s product page, leaving people like me – and some buyers – confused. To set the record straight though, the currently available version of the X27U – this one here – only supports a 240 hertz refresh rate. The newer F3 model which isn’t currently available will support a 480 hertz refresh rate, and you should be able to tell them apart by the much more techno/cyberpunk looking stand on the new F3 model. Got it? Great, now let’s take a look at this one.

Being an OLED, naturally it’s lightning fast. Acer claims 0.03 millisecond response times, and while my equipment says more like 0.3 milliseconds, frankly who cares, it’s effectively instant either way. Sadly, being a W-OLED, meaning this is an LG panel with a white sub-pixel in an R-W-B-G subpixel layout, you get a couple of issues. Text clarity for one, and a pretty aggressive adaptive brightness limiter for another. Text clarity becomes an issue because Windows is blind to the actual subpixel layout, meaning when it renders text with a bit of anti-aliasing using the sub-pixels, it picks the wrong colours and you end up with a fuzzy, and occasionally off putting edge to text. QD-OLEDs are generally better in that regard, although they still aren’t perfect. The other issue, the adaptive brightness limiter or ABL is a bit more of a problem, at least for me. This one is actually a bit of a step back compared to the likes of the AOC AG276QZD which is also a W-OLED panel, but is a bit faster to cull the brightness down to the maximum sustainable level, compared to the X27U which takes upwards of 100 milliseconds, if not more, to peak and then trickle back down. You can see that in the data from my open source response time tool – available at OSRTT.com by the way – where it peaks (in fact it clips quite considerably), and then takes over 100 milliseconds to come back to its steady-state level. This was actually noticeable to the eye – not quite as bad as the old AORUS FO48U, but certainly not as good as the AG276QZD.

For gaming it is still pretty fantastic. The instant response times, coupled with the 240 hertz refresh rate makes it buttery smooth. Even competitive gaming is on the cards with this thing, especially as the input lag is spot on too. This has the right mix of vibrant colours, fast refresh rates and instant response times to make any genre of game pop and play really well. You’ll have a great time gaming on this for sure. You do also have adaptive sync support, meaning both FreeSync and G-Sync work well, making for a smooth gaming experience.

One thing OLEDs often struggle with though is brightness. While Acer claims this can hit 1000 nits, and I’m sure it can on a single pixel or two for a few milliseconds, for even a ninth of the screen on the best you’ll get is a little over 300 nits, and with 50 percent of the screen lit the best you can get is 200 nits. That’s a far cry from the 1000 nits claimed, but it’s a really common trait especially of W-OLED panels like this. That means in brighter environments you might struggle – although in a dark man-cave this’d be perfect. Colours wise, I should make it clear that the SpyderX2 I use isn’t great for OLEDs, although the colour gamut coverage looks about right at 97% coverage of the DCI P3 spectrum, although the accuracy figures are completely wrong. Acer is claiming a DeltaE of under 1, which would be phenomenal, and to eye I’d say I believe it. It’s genuinely vibrant, rich, and despite being a little dim, definitely stunning to look at.

Physically you’ll find a pretty nice design. From the back it’s pretty plain, although the panel itself is encased in a thin metal body that screams quality. The control electronics are in a fairly basic looking plastic housing, where you’ll find the two HDMI 2.0 ports, on DisplayPort 1.4 port, a USB C port for both display in and USB in, a USB B port and a two port USB 3 hub, along with audio out and DC in from the included power brick. You’ll find the joystick to control the on-screen menu at the bottom in the centre, and the menu itself is fine. Has all the settings you’d expect – actually really pretty in depth colour adjustments with dedicated colour space profiles for sRGB, Rec 709, HDR, EBU, DCI, SMPTE-C and General, plus 6 axis hue and saturation control on top of colour temperature and gamma curves. As for the stand, it has a pretty large foot that takes up a fair bit of space – including behind the panel meaning it can’t sit flush against a wall – but is nice and stable, and features height, tilt, swivel and rotation adjustment. If you’d rather not use the stand you do get a VESA mount under the toolless stand mount. 

For those concerned with burn-in, while W-OLEDs do tend to suffer from that more, this does have pixel orbiting and auto-dimming permanently enabled, plus the option to refresh the panel through the menu. That is a destructive process though, so you’ll only want to run that when you have noticeable burn-in. As a point of comparison, the Philips EVNIA 8600 I’ve been using as my daily driver for months now – which is a QD-OLED panel – has never needed to do a full refresh and has no evidence of burn-in. QD is definitely the way to go in my opinion.

For me the biggest problem with this iteration of the X27U is that other monitors – even ones with the same panel no less – are considerably cheaper. That AOC AG276QZD I mentioned earlier which has the same panel but a better ABL is just £500, whereas this X27U is £900. That’s extortionate by comparison. For £500 I could see this being a great choice, but for £900? No way.