Acer ships the XB273U F5 in molded pulp that is fully recyclable. It comes in four parts: base, upright, panel, and fulcrum. It all snaps together, so you won’t need tools for assembly. If you want to use an arm, a 100mm VESA mount is provided with fasteners. There’s a calibration data sheet in the box along with cables for HDMI and DisplayPort . A small brick serves as the external power supply.
(Image credit: Acer) (Image credit: Tom's Hardware) (Image credit: Acer) (Image credit: Acer) (Image credit: Tom's Hardware) The XB273U F5 is styled like all recent Predator displays, with an all-screen front and a smooth back panel featuring a Predator logo up top. The stand has a chiseled look with a small hole to pass your cables through. The base is cast aluminum, and where it attaches, you can see the unmistakable face looking back at you. It’s Beaker from the Muppets meets Optimus Prime, and I love it.
The stand is reasonably solid, but my sample had a slight wiggle at the fulcrum where it snaps onto the upright. It’s unusual to have a display come in four parts. Adjustments include a generous 5.9-inch height range plus 5/25 degr,ilt, 20 degreeof s swivel and a 90of -degre,e portrait mode. Movements are firm and smooth, and aside from the play I already mentioned, the XB273U F5 is a solid package.
In the front, you can see a small protrusion in the center that houses ambient sensors as part of the G-Sync Pulsar tech. When activated, they modulate brightness and color to best fit with your room lighting. The feature is called Ambient Adaptive, and you can control it from the OSD.
The input panel is up and under and includes two HDMI 2.1 ports and a DisplayPort 1.4. There is one upstream and three downstream USB 3.2 ports. There’s a mini-USB there, too, for service. And you get a 3.5mm headphone jack with a pair of two-watt internal speakers.
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware) (Image credit: Tom's Hardware) (Image credit: Tom's Hardware) (Image credit: Tom's Hardware) (Image credit: Tom's Hardware) In the first photo above, you can see a little icon group on the right side of the screen. It lines up with the three control keys so you can quickly access signal info, picture modes or exit. One click of the joystick labels the keys with brightness, contrast and input selector.
First up, I’ll go over the system requirements for G-Sync Pulsar. You’ll need a GeForce RTX 40 or 50-series GPU connected via DisplayPort 1.4 or better. You’ll also need a specific monitor like the XB273U F5, or AOC’s AG276QSG2, MSI’s MPG272QRF X36, or the Asus XG27AQNGV.
In my case, it worked right away once I changed the refresh rate to 360 Hz in the Nvidia control panel. No other settings changes were required. I used Nvidia’s LDAT Display Test to show moving patterns and the clarity improvement was visible and significant. Visually, there is no difference in motion resolution between the XB273U F5 and a premium OLED. There is no change in brightness either when toggling Pulsar on and off. I saw no artifacts of any kind, no ghosting, no ringing, no phasing, no flickering, no nuttin’, just perfect clarity. I also varied the framerate using the provided slider and Pulsar kept the pattern clear right down to the 90fps limit. Any other LCD monitor would be a blurry mess below 150fps. There is no doubt that this thing works as advertised.
Turning to games, I continued to see no difference between the XB273U F5 and a premium OLED monitor. It has extremely low input lag, which gives it cat-like reflexes and instant response to control inputs. I noted that the frame rate remained below 320 fps. According to the information I received, Pulsar does this to keep low latency and V-Sync active. In practice, there was never a hesitation or stutter during frame rate transitions. My GeForce RTX 4090 card kept the action between 300 and 320 fps, and the video processing was flawless.
The image quality is excellent despite the XB273U F5’s lack of zone dimming. Contrast is solid for IPS at around 1,100:1, which showed me finely detailed shadows and bright highlights. The light cap is over 500 nits, but I played SDR games at around 200 nits, which was plenty. In HDR mode, I left the limit at 500 nits, and it produced an impactful image that was neither overly bright nor fatiguing. With the lights off, I preferred to set the peak at 400 nits. It was nice to have this ability. Most monitors have just one HDR brightness setting, maximum.
The XB273U F5 is useful for productivity as well, with smooth pixel density, 109 ppi, and enough contrast to render small fonts and icons clearly. I appreciated its accurate sRGB mode, which was handy in Photoshop for graphics work. I noted that calibration remained possible in this mode, which most monitors don’t offer.
The build quality here is solid, but I noted a slight wobble at the point where the stand and fulcrum are attached. The XB273U F5 is rare in that it comes in four pieces instead of three. If one were to use an arm, this bit of play would be eliminated. The stand is solid, though with a very generous height range. I also appreciated the inclusion of USB ports and internal speakers. About the only thing missing here is LED lighting, but the wonders of G-Sync Pulsar will make you forget that.
Takeaway: The XB273U F5 is easily the smoothest and quickest LCD gaming monitor I’ve yet experienced. Its smoothness is on par with a premium OLED and it easily goes toe-to-toe with LCDs running at 500 Hz or faster. Achieving this level of clarity at 360 Hz is a definite breakthrough in gaming monitor technology.
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/monitors/gaming-monitors/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/monitors/gaming-monitors/acer-predator-xb273u-f5-27-inch-qhd-360-hz-gaming-monitor-review#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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