Acer B326HK - 4k 32" monitor sub 1k euro

I'm really looking forward to see the difference between my Seiki 39" and this new Acer. I mean I already run 4k but only 30Hz and image quality is not that great. Also the "appearance" is just like a bigger 27" 2560, it doesnt look sharper or anything, just bigger :)
 
I'm running Dell 30" 2560x1600 now and have been really pleased with that resolution--just wanted a bit more screen real estate. Hoping the Acer 32" 4K will fill the bill. Curious to know what difference you find between the Seiki 39" and the Acer 32". Running at 60 Hz should make a difference.
 
I think its a different beast. The color accuracy - especially the blue - on the Seiki is not great. I have calibrated it with my SpiderElite but it's still far from perfect. And yes 30 or 60hz does change a lot. I had a 30" Dell WFP that I loved for exactly 2 years. It died 2 weeks after warranty was over. So I bought the U2713HM as a replacement. It was ok but not as good as my beloved 30". The Seiki is my secondary display. I couldn't have it as main display but it was cheap ;) Even tough I paid a lot for shipping...
 
tordogs said:
Do you think it is an IPS screen as described? How are the viewing angles? Hoping the money saved on the monitor can go toward better graphics cards later. Looks like the prices are back up again on Newegg and not sure if still in stock.
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It's definitely IPS alright. The viewing angles are good. It's not the best I've seen, but you'd have to go pretty sideways in order to see color shift.
 
@AKd: Yeah the Dell WFP was supposed to be a beast of a monitor. I have the U3011--last of the CCFL panels. The Acer will be my first LED backlight and am curious what that is like. Have heard good and bad about LED lighting. Probably will run cooler. This 30" Dell can warm up my room in the winter--along with my old 40" Sony CCFL TV and an older HP 24" CCFL monitor. Heard good things about the U2713HM, too. So is your Acer on the way? Glad the folks have said the color accuracy on the Acer is pretty decent--also that the calibration was pretty good out of the box. I have nothing to calibrate with so am hoping it is. Guess cheap was a good deal on the Seiki when you needed it.
 
dukenuke88 said:
It's definitely IPS alright. The viewing angles are good. It's not the best I've seen, but you'd have to go pretty sideways in order to see color shift.
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Thanks for that observation. I've grown accustomed to IPS and was holding out for a 4K version. No one seemed for sure if this would be it even though the specs listed it as such. Now quit gaming and go to bed! :D
 
I've had my Acer for 2 days now. It's a gorgeous monitor, fits nicely between my two 24" monitors (one on HDMI, one on DVI). :)

Observations so far:
- I already had a decent DP cable, so I'm using that. I didn't bother with any of the cables it came with, and it came with plenty.
- I'm surprised it has a DVI port. I didn't think DVI could run this high? Or is it like HDMI w/o sound, and can do it at 30hz?
- It does have a HDMI with MHL port. I don't know if it's a HDMI 2.0 port or not. I'm surprised that HDMI is plastered across the bezel. I read somewhere if they display HDMI on the front somewhere, they get a discount on the royalty fees. MHL thing maybe?
- Text is really crisp. I thought it was crisp before, I was wrong!
- I agree about the unboxing. It was a challenge to pull it out.
- Putting the base on was a piece of cake. Nice and sturdy, unlike some other monitors I have or have seen.
- I have had the "goes to sleep and doesn't return" problem once when the screen goes into power saving mode. The other monitors woke up just fine, this one has the blue light on, but nothing on the screen. Power cycling the monitor with the front button fixed it.
- It has a power switch in the back as well? Not sure what that's for ... but I haven't looked at the manual either.
- I'm using an Asus 280x. It defaulted to the proper resolution and frequency, PNP.
- Like most new monitors, brightness is WAY too high for me. I turned it down to 0 and contrast to 13. The menu is easy to use though..

M

EDIT: I work remotely with somewhat lower bandwidth, so I have RDP set to 24bit instead of 32bit. And wow, it's grainy! Lower quality stuff really shows at this resolution.
 
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Hey dragon can you elaborate on what you mean by the windows scaling breaks the ingame resolution?

Are you saying that if I have the windows 8.1 scaling in the middle and play a game, it won't have true 4K resolution even though games let me chose 4096x2160 on my LG 31MU97? Will it be 1440p upscaled or something?

I thought I was playing 4K even though some games displayed the black bars on the side.
 
Also, I just learned remote desktop (RDP) has a max resolution of 4096x2048 per screen. That means if I try using all my screens with one set to 3840x2160, only one screen works remotely. However I run my work stuff in an oracle virtual box, so I resize the main window to something under 2048, and now it works. Phew..

M
 
shadow85 said:
Hey dragon can you elaborate on what you mean by the windows scaling breaks the ingame resolution?

Are you saying that if I have the windows 8.1 scaling in the middle and play a game, it won't have true 4K resolution even though games let me chose 4096x2160 on my LG 31MU97? Will it be 1440p upscaled or something?

I thought I was playing 4K even though some games displayed the black bars on the side.
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I'm interested in knowing this as well.

I actually had it in the "middle" of the scaling bar in 8.1. And fired up a few games, and they definitely felt like 4k. You can tell because of the framerate you get. 1440p would have easily destroyed the game's frame rate...lol
 
dukenuke88 said:
I'm interested in knowing this as well.

I actually had it in the "middle" of the scaling bar in 8.1. And fired up a few games, and they definitely felt like 4k. You can tell because of the framerate you get. 1440p would have easily destroyed the game's frame rate...lol
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Well the only reason I can't tell is being I'm running SLI GTX 980 gamings, so I don't know if my res is being upscaled or it is really 4K.

Hopefully dragon can elaborate more on this.
 
shadow85 said:
Well the only reason I can't tell is being I'm running SLI GTX 980 gamings, so I don't know if my res is being upscaled or it is really 4K.

Hopefully dragon can elaborate more on this.
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The only game I saw this issue with was DA:I. Even after eliminating windows PPI scaling (I was using Win7 and I don't know that it's as pervasive in its technique as 8.1), eliminating GPU/Display scaling in Nvidia control panel, and selecting the correct res in DA:I (and confirming that the monitor is receiving that res via the monitor OSD), mine was still scaling for some reason. Seems to be a bug in the game. It did the scaling every time I ran in fullscreen, but would run properly in native UHD when I switched to Borderless Windowed mode.

I would start by confirming that you have scaling turned off in all the places I've described, and set your monitor to 1:1 mode to make sure it's not doing the work by itself.

Even a 980 SLI setup isn't going to run DA:I @60fps with maxed settings and full 4xMSAA, so if you use those settings and its running very smooth, then you should know.

Also, it just looks soft, of course.
 
Changing the scaling looks unnatural. If your afterburner OSD is tiny in the upper corner, you're playing @ 4K ;)
 
Received the Acer and set it up tonight. I am well pleased! Built like a battleship and that bezel is ever so thin! Makes my old Dell look like a picture frame by comparison. My first LED monitor and first 16:9 other than laptop. Confess I'm not a fan of 16:9 but seems the world has gone that way. Colors really pop and still fiddling with settings and so forth. Think I'm going back to factory specs as my settings aren't as good.

Easy to set up and laid the box on its side to pull everything out. Using the included USB hub and aftermarket cable (Accell)--shoulda bought the 2m--1m just barely reaches. Booted right up with all the proper settings--didn't even have to change anything in Nvidia panel or Windows. Will try hooking the Dell up beside it and compare.

Great anti-glare coating and great viewing angles. Bumped browser to 105% but left everything else the same. Bottleneck now isn't GPU or CPU but my slow-assed ATT DSL--downloads 4K content too slow and buffers too much. Exactly zero buyer's remorse. Thanks all for the tips and tricks.
 
AKd said:
Yeah thats right, the 3008WFP was my winter heater :)
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Lol - I've got triple Dell u3011's and I fall asleep at my desk cause of the heat the monitors put out.

So looking forward to trading these out for some 4k goodness. This Acer, the Benq and the Philips 40" look very good.
 
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These Acers put out 44w according to the Acer USA website. Pretty crazy for such a huge monitor with 4k resolution.

I used to have a Dell u3011 and also a Yamakasi Sparta 301, which is basically a U3011 knockoff....same panel, and same CCFL tech, etc....Man I remember in the winter those monitors generated so much heat, my face/head would stay warm, even though it was like 50F outside...lol
 
Man, I'm so close to pulling the trigger on this after waiting for a good 4K 32+ monitor to come out.

Anybody foresee it dropping below $900 before Christmas?

Also, I'm not using it for gaming but work - what's the cheapest confirmed 4K SST supporting GPU I could buy? Looking like a GTX750 at around $110 might be my safest bet?
 
It should. In looking at the prices for this display in other countries and converting those currencies to US dollars, 700 is about the price it should be. Of course supply and demand could kick in and keep prices high for a while. Ben Q is also slated to put their version out fairly soon. Since BenQ owns AUO who makes the panels it will be interesting to see their price.
 
Neon01 said:
The only game I saw this issue with was DA:I. Even after eliminating windows PPI scaling (I was using Win7 and I don't know that it's as pervasive in its technique as 8.1), eliminating GPU/Display scaling in Nvidia control panel, and selecting the correct res in DA:I (and confirming that the monitor is receiving that res via the monitor OSD), mine was still scaling for some reason. Seems to be a bug in the game. It did the scaling every time I ran in fullscreen, but would run properly in native UHD when I switched to Borderless Windowed mode.

I would start by confirming that you have scaling turned off in all the places I've described, and set your monitor to 1:1 mode to make sure it's not doing the work by itself.

Even a 980 SLI setup isn't going to run DA:I @60fps with maxed settings and full 4xMSAA, so if you use those settings and its running very smooth, then you should know.

Also, it just looks soft, of course.
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I have turned 'off' scaling in nvidia control panel, and set 'size of all items' to smallest under windows display settings, and also set monitor to 1:1 but I still don't notice if I have 4k image or upscaled 1440p or something.
 
shadow85 said:
I have turned 'off' scaling in nvidia control panel, and set 'size of all items' to smallest under windows display settings, and also set monitor to 1:1 but I still don't notice if I have 4k image or upscaled 1440p or something.
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What game is this in? Run a benchmark program like Heaven 4.0. That program never gave me any issues with scaling. Use it as a reference for approximately what your frames should be in the correct res. Obviously this only really applies if the game in question is pretty tough on your GPUs, older games like Portal or something aren't comparable. Then when you're running the game you're unsure about (DA:I?), see if the frames roughly match up with the Heaven average. If they're way faster when you're running DA:I, you know it's not rendering at the correct res.

Personally, I thought it was pretty obvious just because it was noticeably blurry when it was running at 1440p. If you don't notice the blurriness, it's likely that yours isn't having issues.
 
The OSD font from a program like MSI afterburner scales with the resolution. It even scales with low res monitors using DSR. If the font is really small, you're in UHD.. if it's really big, you're not.
 
jvrobert said:
Man, I'm so close to pulling the trigger on this after waiting for a good 4K 32+ monitor to come out.

Anybody foresee it dropping below $900 before Christmas?

Also, I'm not using it for gaming but work - what's the cheapest confirmed 4K SST supporting GPU I could buy? Looking like a GTX750 at around $110 might be my safest bet?
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I can probably see it dropping to $900, but not much further than that. IMHO, I thought the $699 newegg price was a price mistake. I mean the monitor JUST came out like a week before newegg had that thanksgiving sale. I mean seriously, MSRP is $1100 and they drop it close to 40% for a brand new product. I just don't see that happening with new tech.

I could be all wrong though....but that's just my honest opinion
 
Anyone who bought this monitor during the sale and decided to return it and if your display doesn't have any dead/stuck pixels, let me know! You can avoid any restocking fees and return shipping to newegg :D. Willing to pay up to $800 shipped for a display. I've gone through 4 of these already with mutliple stuck/dead pixels from various vendors so if anyone has a perfect display I'd be interested in buying. PM me please!

dukenuke88 said:
I can probably see it dropping to $900, but not much further than that. IMHO, I thought the $699 newegg price was a price mistake. I mean the monitor JUST came out like a week before newegg had that thanksgiving sale. I mean seriously, MSRP is $1100 and they drop it close to 40% for a brand new product. I just don't see that happening with new tech.

I could be all wrong though....but that's just my honest opinion
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There's an article that the monitor is going to debut in Russia this month at $735.00 so who knows. I suspect it's going to be the clearout price soon with all the Freesync 4K monitors hitting the market in March 2015.
 
dragonageinquisition said:
Anyone who bought this monitor during the sale and decided to return it and if your display doesn't have any dead/stuck pixels, let me know! You can avoid any restocking fees and return shipping to newegg :D. Willing to pay up to $800 shipped for a display. I've gone through 4 of these already with mutliple stuck/dead pixels from various vendors so if anyone has a perfect display I'd be interested in buying. PM me please!



There's an article that the monitor is going to debut in Russia this month at $735.00 so who knows. I suspect it's going to be the clearout price soon with all the Freesync 4K monitors hitting the market in March 2015.
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Yikes, sorry to hear your bad luck on pixels there! I got lucky and mine seems to be perfect.

I don't think free sync is going to affect anything much on the panel prices in this range, but I guess we'll see in another several months. It's a complete unknown as to how well that implementation works, and even if it's good I am not so sure it will be a drastic change to pricing on existing displays. All I know is that I got my dream monitor minus G-sync (a nonessential feature to me) for a price I was shocked at on how low it was. I call that a win in my book :D.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Yikes, sorry to hear your bad luck on pixels there! I got lucky and mine seems to be perfect.

I don't think free sync is going to affect anything much on the panel prices in this range, but I guess we'll see in another several months. It's a complete unknown as to how well that implementation works, and even if it's good I am not so sure it will be a drastic change to pricing on existing displays. All I know is that I got my dream monitor minus G-sync (a nonessential feature to me) for a price I was shocked at on how low it was. I call that a win in my book :D.
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Exactly! This is my dream monitor minus G sync as well. The damn monitor came out like one week before newegg's thanksgiving price mistake, or whatever it was. I highly doubt Newegg wanted to sell these at $699, when the damn thing just came out! I'm sure the 32 inch class IPS 4k monitors will hang around $1000 give or take $100. I don't see them crashing to $700 or below any time soon.
 
dukenuke88 said:
Exactly! This is my dream monitor minus G sync as well. The damn monitor came out like one week before newegg's thanksgiving price mistake, or whatever it was. I highly doubt Newegg wanted to sell these at $699, when the damn thing just came out! I'm sure the 32 inch class IPS 4k monitors will hang around $1000 give or take $100. I don't see them crashing to $700 or below any time soon.
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Yeah, I agree. Just look at the price history of 32 inch and 30 inch 2560 monitors, and I think it's pretty apparent that the normal pricing on these won't be $700 anytime soon. I think it may well have been a price mistake, all things considered (as you said, it literally just came out, even!). Just glad I got it, honestly.
 
NCX said:
So no obvious overshoot ghosting forms around the UFO when looking at this blur busters test? I find it really surprising since Acer almost always overdoes the overdrive. The 32" 4K Samsung suffers from obvious overshoot unless the Response Time (Overdrive) setting is set to Normal.
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Nope, I was very happily surprised! It's between normal and faster in that second link's comparison when I tried the ufo test. As I commented earlier in the thread it's minor.
 
dukenuke88 said:
Is this the one you're talking about?

http://i.imgur.com/YjhyiPN.jpg
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Yep, it's very similar to that pic of rebel44's, for example :). I can't even spot it when trying to while gaming, and it's 100 percent invisible to me during normal use. The only time I am able to tell it is when using the ufo test, and even then it's tough to see on most and 960px and lower being the most visible while higher than that I can't really distinctly discern.
 
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Yeah, italian distributor got some, my order will be shipped early next week. Too bad monday is a national holiday so I guess will only be shipped on wednesday at earliest...
 
hodgempls said:
BenQ has there version up for $999.99

http://shop.benq.us/monitors/32-monitors/bl3201ph-32-4k2k-monitor-for-designers.html
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The BenQ version looks like its geared more towards "professionals" than the Acer. The Acer seems like its more towards "standard" or "gamer" users. Basically people who can forego color precision. It would be interesting to see if the BenQ version actually has much better color

I'm TOTALLY happy with my Acer....but I still like to see competition and watching the market grow. I can't wait till 4k fully matures with a wide selection to choose from :)

BTW, I have this feeling that mid 2015 they will be pushing more 5k displays using MST (multi stream transport). Then in 2016, 5k with SST (single stream transport) with display port 1.3 and lower prices :)
 
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dukenuke88 said:
The BenQ version looks like its geared more towards "professionals" than the Acer. The Acer seems like its more towards "standard" or "gamer" users. Basically people who can forego color precision. It would be interesting to see if the BenQ version actually has much better color
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I'd wager that the BenQ has better build quality/better overdrive (no overshoot, even if you don't notice it on your Acer) and a superior stand. The Acer B326HUL actually had much better color presets than the BenQ BL3200PT (both use an AMVA panel); however, the BenQ had far superior overdrive options and the most intuitive OSD I've ever used.
 
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AKd said:
The Acer is aimed at professionals too. The B6 series is their range for professionals with anti-glare displays. They just messed up the webpage and are not able to put a decent blabla-sales-pitch site online as BenQ did ;)
You can't find the B6 here on the Acer site: http://us.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/group/monitors
Only on the "professional" site they are listed: http://us.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/professional-series/monitor-professional
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Nice, I didn't know that...thanks!
 
I was completely wrong about the scaling. 3d mark firestrike scales the fullscreen 1080p image without affecting my afterburner OSD. Also, I get 18,100 in firestrike on 4K monitor and over 19,000 firestrike on my 27" 144hz monitor with the same settings. Even windowed @ 1080p it's the same. Anyone notice that? I guess I should have expected that?
 
The_Controller said:
I was completely wrong about the scaling. 3d mark firestrike scales the fullscreen 1080p image without affecting my afterburner OSD. Also, I get 18,100 in firestrike on 4K monitor and over 19,000 firestrike on my 27" 144hz monitor with the same settings. Even windowed @ 1080p it's the same. Anyone notice that? I guess I should have expected that?
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Scaling introduces a performance penalty if not done by the display itself. You'd have to set "No scaling" or potentially "display scaling" in the control panel before benching. In game 4k performance won't be affected by this either way.
 
AKd said:
The Acer is aimed at professionals too. The B6 series is their range for professionals with anti-glare displays. They just messed up the webpage and are not able to put a decent blabla-sales-pitch site online as BenQ did ;)
You can't find the B6 here on the Acer site: http://us.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/group/monitors
Only on the "professional" site they are listed: http://us.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/professional-series/monitor-professional
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Yeah, I had seen that too before even ordering originally. Could have sworn the Newegg page referred to it as a professional series monitor.
 
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