Hardware

Review: Acer XB273 LCD Is Designed for Dedicated Performance Gaming

With an incredibly high refresh rate and a large viewing area, the XB273 is a great standard monitor for any serious esports team.

John Breeden II

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John Breeden II is an award-winning reviewer with more than 20 years of experience covering technology. Follow him on Twitter @TheLabGuys.

Collegiate esports is a big deal on many campuses these days, with many schools offering programs ranging from competitive teams to full degrees in fields such as game design and broadcasting. And unlike most traditional sports, there is no barrier to entry for players based on their physical size or natural athleticism. Plus, both men and women can compete together on the same teams and within the same leagues.

Still, like all athletes, the best esports players practice for at least several hours every day, and some matches are won or lost by the tiniest of margins. Having good equipment in your college esports lab is a must.

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Rapid Response Times Enhance Gameplay

The Acer Predator XB273 GZbmiiprx LCD is designed to provide an optimized esports and gaming display without breaking the bank. It’s built from the ground up with features that are good for competitive gaming, while leaving out expensive or advanced features that gamers don’t need.

For example, the monitor has a native resolution of 1920x1080 (1080p) instead of the higher-resolution 1440p format. This slightly lower resolution still looks great and enables the monitor, with overclocking, to achieve an incredible 240 hertz refresh rate using an HDMI input and 280 hertz using a DisplayPort cable.

That means almost instantaneous response times of as low as 0.5 milliseconds, just about as fast as a human brain.

Nobody playing with the XB273 is going to get killed in competition because his or her display lagged.

Display Offers More Contrast and Universal Light Levels

The display also has been optimized so that gamers can see all the details of their playing field. The XB273 supports high dynamic range, and games with HDR compatibility — which includes almost all new titles designed for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and other modern PC gaming consoles — will display brighter highlights with more contrast on this monitor. That not only makes images more striking, but also allows players to gaze deeper into shadowy or darkened areas to quickly identify threats hiding there.

Light levels are also universal across the entire panel. The XB273 is rated at 400 candelas per meter, and in my tests, that dipped only slightly in the corners of the screen. I had to record the dim areas using a light meter as the difference was too small for the human eye to detect.

As a bonus, the monitor’s stand has good tilt and height adjustment capabilities, making it accessible for any size player and great for shared environments.

Specifications

Display type: TFT active-matrix LCD
Size: 27 inches
Video resolution: 1080p
Inputs: Two HDMI ports, one DisplayPort
Aspect ratio: 16:9

UP NEXT: Lessons learned from collegiate esports investments.

Taking the XB273 to Task

The Acer Predator XB273 GZbmiiprx LCD monitor is optimized for gaming and competitive performance. I paired it with a dedicated gaming rig and some of the hottest esports titles to see how it performed on the battlefield.

My normal gaming setup consists of a monitor with a 2560x1440 (1440p) resolution. Its response time is good, about 10 milliseconds. But I am not a competitive gamer anymore, so I mostly just play single-player adventures and role-playing games like Elden Ring. Moving to a more optimized competitive gaming monitor like the XB273 was an interesting experience.

The first game I chose for the test was Activision’s new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, which had just been released but which already had a huge multiplayer following and a big esports community behind it. When I switched to the Predator display, my gameplay improved threefold over my performance using my normal gaming monitor.

Improving my game with the XB273 can easily be attributed to two factors. First, the 1080p resolution, while less detailed that my normal monitor, also made my opponents appear slightly larger on my screen, so I had a bigger hit box to aim for.

Second, the 0.5-millisecond response time meant that I saw enemies more quickly. If I ran directly into another player, I could react just a little bit more quickly than they could because of the display. If you have two players of equal skill going head to head, giving one player the ability to react a split-second faster could easily turn the match in his or her favor.

I had similar results with other games, including the venerable Counter-Strike: Global Offensive game which, after 19 years, is still a top esports title with worldwide competitions. When playing CS:GO on the XB273, I found that the HDR and high-contrast settings helped me spot enemy players at long range, even if they were hiding in dark or shadowy areas. I eliminated quite a few players on maps that allowed for long-range engagements, and they had no idea where I was. They probably would have had trouble spotting me even if they looked in my general direction.

There were less obvious advantages when playing other games such as Dota 2, Rocket League and World of Warships, but the games always played as smooth as butter when displayed on the XB273. It would be a great monitor for any competitive gamer or esports team that needs a solid and highly optimized display to provide every possible advantage on their path to victory.