Hey, everybody it's Lon Seidman.
And we're taking a look today at a gaming monitor from Acer that isn't all that expensive.
This is their KG251Q bmiix, costs about $169. It's a 24.5 inch gaming display.
We're going to be putting this thing through its paces here in just a second.
I do want to mention though in the interest of full disclosure
this came in free of charge through the Amazon Vine program.
However all the opinions you're about to hear are my own, nobody is paying for this review,
and no one is reviewing this content before it is posted.
So, take a closer look at the hardware now, this is a TN based display,
which is something that I recommend to gamers more than I do for creative professionals,
and the reason is that TN displays are very particular about the viewing angle,
you really have to get into the sweet spot to get the right color balance.
And you'll see on these TN displays, this one included, that if you have a solid color up on the screen,
you'll see that that color is lighter and darker in different parts because of how this display technology works.
That said, the viewing angles on this are a lot better than I've seen on other TN displays,
especially at the price point here, and the image is not washed out even when you're off center.
It does look pretty nice at most angles, and I was very impressed with what they were able to do here,
but it still does not get you away from some of those issues that I mentioned there with the solid color,
so I think you'll definitely want to look at an IPS based display if you are looking to do artwork on it.
But other than that it seems to be doing pretty nicely here.
One millisecond response rate, really nice deep blacks on this, a nice contrast ratio,
I'm very pleased with the image quality on this, more than I expected to be for the price point here,
so that's a good thing.
And the maximum refresh rate on this one is 75 Hertz,
which is a little better than many of the 60 Hertz displays we see around this price point.
It also supports Amd Freesync, which is a technology that works with Amd GPUs
to dynamically adjust the frame rate of refresh rate of the monitor on the fly,
so you get less screen tearing and other little graphical glitches.
The Freesync range on this one is 40 to 75 Hertz, there are some people on some of the forums that
I've been following who've been able to install software to get a little higher on the top-end range.
They're around 80 Hertz or so, but built in, 40 to 75 Hertz on the Freesync.
Now for connectivity you have two HDMI inputs along with a VGA input.
I found, though, that if your computer has a USB type-C output, the Freesync doesn't work,
and I think it's because USB type-C outputs Displayport,
which then gets converted to HDMI in the adapter that you're using with your computer,
and for whatever reason, Freesync doesn't seem to be detected in that particular hardware configuration.
So I have it right now plugged into a laptop with an Amd GPU with HDMI out
and the Freesync is working and being detected automatically here, so just bear that in mind.
It was a little flaky with my USB type-C connectors and it does not have Displayport built in.
I am very pleased with the quality of the stand, it really is quite sturdy here on my desk.
I got a cheap Ikea desk here, as I shake the desk you can see how quickly it stabilizes itself.
It really is very rock-solid, probably the nicest - at least most stable stand that I've seen
on a relatively inexpensive display. The one thing it doesn't do, though, is move up and down.
So, you just have this tilt angle to it and that is it.
But overall the stand, once in place, is pretty sturdy here.
It's not a small unit, but they did integrate the power adapter inside of the entire display unit here.
So, the nice thing about that is you don't have an additional power brick.
It uses pretty much the same connector that your desktop PC might be using to get power.
So that was nice to see here as well.
And along the bottom of the front bezel here there are a number of buttons.
If you push any one of them you can pull up the OSD to make some adjustments to the display quality here.
What's nice about this, is that there are some things that allow you to do some finer tune calibration here.
So you can actually go in and adjust the RGB gain and bias,
there's some calibration to this that you may not be able to do on other monitors around this price point,
so that was interesting to see. They also have a preset here. There's three different ones actually,
so if you do make some color adjustments you can lock them into one of these three presets and
jump back and forth depending on what you're looking to do.
So you can make a whole bunch of changes lock it into preset one, it'll remember those,
but then you can go back to a default configuration,
without having to go back in and set all those up again manually, so that was good to see.
The one thing I was not pleased about though, was controller Lag back to the display.
I was measuring 84 milliseconds and my method here is to shoot the screen with my Xbox One controller,
plugged in via USB, with my iPhone 7 Plus.
It records a video in its slo-mo mode mode at 240 frames per second and I'm able to measure
how long it takes for a button press to get registered on screen.
And the best scoring monitor that I have right now is my Samsung curved gaming monitor,
I looked at a couple of weeks ago,
that one came in around 44 milliseconds for that button press to get registered on screen.
So, this one definitely is a little slower in its response rate,
at least for the button presses getting registered on screen.
So, if you are looking for a super quick response to your button presses,
that Samsung monitor I looked at earlier might be the better choice.
But that one also cost a lot more than this one does.
So, for most gamers I think you'll be okay but just know that there is definitely some lag here.
Due to the image processing that the monitor is doing and that goes for not only the Amd Freesync mode,
but also just plugged in as a regular monitor to an Nvidia based gaming PC.
Now, there are speakers built into the monitor, but they don't sound all that great.
2Wx2W, so pretty low powered speakers, very tinny, but they're there.
What's nice though is that there is an analogue audio output on the back of the monitor,
so you can plug in your own speakers or headphones into it,
and you can basically run a single cable up from your tower on the floor,
the HDMI cable and then have the monitor convert that HDMI audio to analog.
So, that might be something to pursue.
Overall, I'm just very pleased with the monitor,
it's got a very nice image quality especially given that it is a TN display.
Better viewing angles than I expected for gaming.
I still would not recommend this for Photoshop and other types of creative endeavors.
But I think gamers will be pleased with it.
Very nice and sturdy stand, there's also VESA mounting capability,
so you can put a different stand on it, if you wish, and all those things are good.
My only knock against it is the controller latency that I'm seeing in my testing.
So I would have liked to have seen a shorter latency there.
So there are some issues perhaps with the image processing going on here,
that are slowing down the updates from the computer, but that is my really only big knock against it,
and the 83 or 84 millisecond latency that I'm seeing is on par with other low-end monitors.
That'll do it for our review here of the Acer KG251Q and this is Lon Seidman and thanks for watching.
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