Review: Acer Predator XR341CK

by Ryan Martin on 4 September 2015, 08:01

Conclusion

Acer has made smart design decisions to offer a complete gaming monitor experience...

The Acer Predator XR341CK is quite possibly the most impressive gaming monitor on the market at the moment, though with a price of $1,099/£839 any prospective buyer would certainly hope for as much.

Acer has made smart design decisions to offer a complete gaming monitor experience - a smooth 75Hz refresh rate at a stunning resolution on a panel that is surprisingly responsive. Factoring in all the other benefits - IPS viewing angles, a sleek appearance, abundant connectivity and a functional stand - and it's hard to fault the Acer XR341CK in any areas aside from its price and noticeable IPS glow on dark content.

Does Acer offer enough to tempt consumers away from other ultrawide options currently on the market? That question inevitably depends on the prospective buyer's priorities, and if the value-for-money element is important then it should be known that a 3,440x1,440 34in IPS monitor can be had for as low as £550 in the form of the AOC U3477PQU.

Yet evaluating the features the Acer Predator XR341CK offers for PC gamers renders price as almost irrelevant since no other monitor on the market offers such an optimal combination of adaptive-sync, latency, resolution and refresh rate. This is definitely one for the wish list.

The Good		The Bad
Sensible FreeSync range A fluid gaming experience Sleek design and functional stand		Hefty pricing IPS glow

HEXUS.awards

Acer Predator XR341CK

HEXUS.where2buy

TBC.

HEXUS.right2reply

At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.

Login with Forum Account

Don't have an account? Register today!

Hi Ryan, did you actually try the gaming experience on the monitor, if so which games and do you have any impressions/comparisons with other monitors? At the moment the review looks a little like it's a bit theoretical rather than actually trying it :p

Should add “glossy plastic” to ‘The Bad’ list. Glossy plastic needs to die in a fire, and Acer wont catch on until reviewers criticise them for using it.

Very nice. Now change the glossy black plastic frame for white or clear and the monitor will be even better.

It might be a little too big for my desk but I still want one.

Hopefully a Gsync option will be available soon so that I can choose which of AMD/Nvidia I want to upgrade to

Very nice screen, now all we need are a range of colour choices for the bezel/back panel to match the colours of the lights & case colours of our systems ;)

kalniel
Hi Ryan, did you actually try the gaming experience on the monitor, if so which games and do you have any impressions/comparisons with other monitors? At the moment the review looks a little like it's a bit theoretical rather than actually trying it :p

I played a lot of games actually…I do like to break from the real world sometimes :) I'm still a BF3 junkie so that consumed most of my time with this monitor, it also helps that BF3 is fairly easy to run too! I'm not going to say this monitor made me a better gamer (because I'm basically already teh pwnerer :whip: ) but the extra FOV support is really nice in the FPS arena, it does give you something of an advantage…. especially if you're a (lame) medic racking up those revives on Operation Metro :rockon: . In terms of racing I had a go with GTA V, bit more difficult to run at that res with the hardware I've got here (R9 290s) but nonetheless it's a lot smoother than the 34UM67 and 34UC97. The extra FOV really helps, especially when you're trying to keep track of where the police cars behind are. One of the main issues (with all 21:9 monitors really) is a lot of cut-scenes and automated sequences are still displayed at 16:9 so the black bars can be a bit annoying.

My experiences with ultrawides are limited to the BenQ XR3501, LG 34UM67 and LG 34UC97. Versus the LG 34UC97 the visuals are pretty similar, but you'd expect that as they are similar panels, the Acer XR341CK is a lot more fluid as that jump from 60 to 75Hz is REALLY noticeable. Personally that's why I'd pick this over the BenQ XR3501 since even though BenQ are doing something cool with a 144Hz ultrawide, which definitely serves a particular buyer, I'd rather grab the extra resolution at 75Hz than sacrifice the resolution to get 144Hz, the difference between 75Hz and 144Hz is less noticeable than 60 to 75 IMO.

I'll revisit this section ASAP for more clarity/depth, thanks for your comment though.