Acer Predator XB3 Hands on review - The best 4K gaming monitor

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enif you have a high-powered gaming PC the last thing you want to do is get bottlenecked by your monitor and this one right here the Acer predator xb3 which is not only 4k but also 144 Hertz is more than probably your decked out desktop will even know what to do with the design of the xp3 has some hits and misses obviously as you can see it's got some pretty chunky bezels which in 2019 is kind of a fashion faux pas especially when significantly cheaper gaming monitors out there actually have a much cleaner and trimmer look to it the stand the base and the back of the Marv all been a redesign on the xb3 although you're still gonna find your typical array of sharp edges and brush metal and just the sort of things you tend to see on a gaming peripheral as is often the case I do wish that it had a simpler cleaner look and I wish that there was more metal used instead of plastic but what you are getting is a very sturdy and well built monitor which will ensure you if you have to move it around or make adjustments often speaking of adjustments what you have here is pretty much everything you need it has height adjustment swivel and tilt the only thing missing here is rotation which some monitors do offer but the xp3 doesn't have a couple of points in this monitors favor though these downward facing LEDs as well as the ones in the back they just brighten up your desk area quite a bit and add a little bit of gaming flair to your desk setup and I think they're really nice touches but let's get down to what makes the predator xb3 truly special which is basically the fact that it has every possible gaming display feature you can imagine 4k HDR g-sync 144 Hertz refresh rate those might just sound like buzzwords and acronyms to you but honestly they make for a really complete gaming experience and man does gaming look awesome on this monitor everything is so responsive and beautiful especially in a system that can actually push this many pixels but the question is does a system like that even exist well it depends on what game you're playing of course if you're running for a night it's not so hard to get over 100 frames per second in 4k but it might be a different story and heavier games or even just fast-paced first-person shooters like battlefield 5 and honestly even if you can't use that high refresh rate just the combination of 4k g-sync and HDR make for a really great gaming experience and all these things fall into cat or is where it's like if you haven't tried them before you probably don't really get what it adds to the gaming experience but I promise you once you do you will not want to go back it's also just a really high-quality panel I mean this thing can compete with some of the best monitors that we've seen from companies like Samsung or BenQ in terms of color accuracy contrast ratio and brightness this thing because of HDR can go all the way up to you 475 nits I mean this can compete with some of those monitors out there and that means it can double as a content creation tool if you're into photo or video editing last thing we have to talk about ports because in this situation they are really important if your basic video input options like HDMI or DisplayPort but it's really important to note that the display Fleur is the only one that's gonna get you that high 144 it's refresh rate whereas with HDMI you're stuck at 60 Hertz and that means that if you're planning on using a gaming laptop with this monitor what you totally could do because they're getting really powerful these days you're probably gonna be stuck at 60 Hertz using that HDMI port so if you want that full high refresh rate experience you're gonna need to plug it into a big gaming town you also get a few USB ports here you're not getting USB see unfortunately that's a trend that we're seeing in a lot of other monitors that enable that single cable experience but here you're just getting three USB 3.0 ports and a USB B port located on the back so the predator xp3 isn't perfect and honestly it's not all that practical right now you're probably better off going out and buying a cheaper 1440p monitor with a high refresh rate that's the better solution for today but if you have a really powerful gaming rig and you're thinking about the future and buying a monitor that's gonna last you a long time the predator xp3 is a really good option and that $1,300 is actually cheaper than a lot of its competitors so if you go out and buy it today this just might be the last game already have to buy in a long time thanks for checking out this review let us know in the comments below what you think of the predator xb3 whether or not you think it's a good investment of your $1,300 or whether or not you spend that on something like a super ultra wide gaming monitor because those are out there and they're pretty cool too while you're here his subscribe and if you want to check out the four of you head over to Digital Trends calmif you have a high-powered gaming PC the last thing you want to do is get bottlenecked by your monitor and this one right here the Acer predator xb3 which is not only 4k but also 144 Hertz is more than probably your decked out desktop will even know what to do with the design of the xp3 has some hits and misses obviously as you can see it's got some pretty chunky bezels which in 2019 is kind of a fashion faux pas especially when significantly cheaper gaming monitors out there actually have a much cleaner and trimmer look to it the stand the base and the back of the Marv all been a redesign on the xb3 although you're still gonna find your typical array of sharp edges and brush metal and just the sort of things you tend to see on a gaming peripheral as is often the case I do wish that it had a simpler cleaner look and I wish that there was more metal used instead of plastic but what you are getting is a very sturdy and well built monitor which will ensure you if you have to move it around or make adjustments often speaking of adjustments what you have here is pretty much everything you need it has height adjustment swivel and tilt the only thing missing here is rotation which some monitors do offer but the xp3 doesn't have a couple of points in this monitors favor though these downward facing LEDs as well as the ones in the back they just brighten up your desk area quite a bit and add a little bit of gaming flair to your desk setup and I think they're really nice touches but let's get down to what makes the predator xb3 truly special which is basically the fact that it has every possible gaming display feature you can imagine 4k HDR g-sync 144 Hertz refresh rate those might just sound like buzzwords and acronyms to you but honestly they make for a really complete gaming experience and man does gaming look awesome on this monitor everything is so responsive and beautiful especially in a system that can actually push this many pixels but the question is does a system like that even exist well it depends on what game you're playing of course if you're running for a night it's not so hard to get over 100 frames per second in 4k but it might be a different story and heavier games or even just fast-paced first-person shooters like battlefield 5 and honestly even if you can't use that high refresh rate just the combination of 4k g-sync and HDR make for a really great gaming experience and all these things fall into cat or is where it's like if you haven't tried them before you probably don't really get what it adds to the gaming experience but I promise you once you do you will not want to go back it's also just a really high-quality panel I mean this thing can compete with some of the best monitors that we've seen from companies like Samsung or BenQ in terms of color accuracy contrast ratio and brightness this thing because of HDR can go all the way up to you 475 nits I mean this can compete with some of those monitors out there and that means it can double as a content creation tool if you're into photo or video editing last thing we have to talk about ports because in this situation they are really important if your basic video input options like HDMI or DisplayPort but it's really important to note that the display Fleur is the only one that's gonna get you that high 144 it's refresh rate whereas with HDMI you're stuck at 60 Hertz and that means that if you're planning on using a gaming laptop with this monitor what you totally could do because they're getting really powerful these days you're probably gonna be stuck at 60 Hertz using that HDMI port so if you want that full high refresh rate experience you're gonna need to plug it into a big gaming town you also get a few USB ports here you're not getting USB see unfortunately that's a trend that we're seeing in a lot of other monitors that enable that single cable experience but here you're just getting three USB 3.0 ports and a USB B port located on the back so the predator xp3 isn't perfect and honestly it's not all that practical right now you're probably better off going out and buying a cheaper 1440p monitor with a high refresh rate that's the better solution for today but if you have a really powerful gaming rig and you're thinking about the future and buying a monitor that's gonna last you a long time the predator xp3 is a really good option and that $1,300 is actually cheaper than a lot of its competitors so if you go out and buy it today this just might be the last game already have to buy in a long time thanks for checking out this review let us know in the comments below what you think of the predator xb3 whether or not you think it's a good investment of your $1,300 or whether or not you spend that on something like a super ultra wide gaming monitor because those are out there and they're pretty cool too while you're here his subscribe and if you want to check out the four of you head over to Digital Trends calm\n"