Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Acer Predator X38 Pbmiphzx 2300R Curved 37.5" UltraWide QHD+ (3840 x 1600) Gaming Monitor | NVIDIA G-SYNC | Agile Splendor IPS | Up to 175Hz | DCI-P3 98% | DisplayHDR 400

Not perfect, but possibly the best there is.

Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 2021

PROs:
Basically everything. The screen size is awesome and the picture quality is excellent. For those of you who haven't experienced 1600p vertical resolution it is something that I don't want to live without. I've considered going for duel screens, but I don't like the bezel in the middle of my field of view, and my studio monitors (aka high-end speakers for the uninitiated) limit my desk space. This monitor is a perfect alternative to dual monitors in my view. Before buying I was stressing over the HDR 400. My previous monitor didn't have HDR and like most people I wanted to have the best of all possible features in a monitor (which doesn't really exist yet). Don't listen to the nay-sayers, even with only HDR 400 this thing is shockingly bright, and looks fantastic. Honestly it's almost too bright and I don't even have the brightness level cranked all the way up. (I know there's more to HDR than just how bright the screen will get but to my eye the image looks outstanding in games/movies/etc) The large screen, high resolution, and fast refresh rate make for an incredible experience. It's not cheap, but anyone who can own one of these is lucky.

CON:
This may be controversial. And frankly this CON honestly only bothered me for about a day. I'm totally happy with this monitor after doing some reading on the subject. But I admit it did arrive with a few dead pixels. Lots of people will have a knee-jerk reaction to this and say RETURN IT IMMEDIATELY!! But like it or not, most monitor manufacturers won't accept returns for a few dead pixels (ACER requires 6 or more). I use this monitor for work and for gaming, and with how high the resolution is on this monitor plus the overkill level of brightness, practically speaking the few dead pixels are never noticeable to me. Not to mention that it's very hard to come by these monitors right now so a return would likely take months to complete. All things considered, I'm happy with it. PC Gamer claims this is a contender for the best monitor available today and I whole-heartedly agree.

8 people found this helpful

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victor

LG vs Acer vs Dell(Alienware)

Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2021

Verified Purchase

Through thorough research between the 3 and owning the LG one and have the older version of the Alienware i personally think Acer came out on top this time around.

-Between the 3 Displays, Acer has 175Hz, Same with LG (Same Panel if i'm correct), Alienware has 144Hz
-All 3 still use Displayports, so limitations are there, 120hz for 10-bit full, 144-160hz for 8-bit Full, 175hz for Chromasample 4:2:2 10-bit limited(i don't mind after using it).
-All have a massive 38inch screen, and the monitor itself is actually relatively light not including the stand.

Now this part is about the Acer Monitor Specifically
- Colors are calibrated in factory by a worker, i have no color tool tester to confirm whether or not it is but i'd assume they did it.
- the OSD is a lot cleaner and easy to use (very user friendly)
- Has a analog and 3 buttons for presets on the back of the monitor for OSD
- Vesa Mount compatible
- 4 Usb ports total, 2 on the side of the monitor and 2 where all the other plugs go (better under then behind)
- Screen is very Bright and would never need to go more than half way in my scenario, (they calculate by nits in the OSD and not normal increments of 0-100)
- Motion Blur reduction is excellent on normal settings (usually extreme is to much for any panel), it has very minor ghosting if any)
- Didn't have any dead or stuck pixels
- Backlight Bleed - very minimal and not very notable during normal use
- Variable Backlight option is kind of useless and not for me, it just adjusts darks and whites but it does it very noticably so its more distracting then useful.
- Has decent speakers (not to replace any conventional speakers or headphones) but usable in a situation that requires sound.
- It does have a Fan on the back (it is noticable if you listen for it specifically during normal use), it also does not turn off until 15 minutes after monitor is off due to cooling of the G-SYNC module
- G-sync is nice but hate that it adds cost to any monitor as i don't use it, I feel that screen tearing is not an issue at 175hz anyways.

TL:DR - It is a Great monitor that will last for as long as it can until it dies, there is not to many cons if any, it would be a Noise issue with the Fan for those nitpicking, but you are buying exactly what it is specifying.

Side Note- Be careful when unmounting the normal stand when deciding to use a vesa mount instead, i had a screw fell into a hole into the monitor and it took a lot of effort to get it back out and i was concerned it would've damaged something but thankfully nothing to notice yet. Will update this review if anything were to change.

Update 6/29/21- The monitor is still running great and has shown no signs of trouble as of 4 months in.

58 people found this helpful

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Denis

Slow to start, poor on features, good otherwise

Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2022

Verified Purchase

You'd expect for a modern display to be able to auto-detect the source of input and switch to it - I use the display for both home and work computers, both are hooked up to different ports. Last two displays from Dell would scan for input signal on all the inputs if no signal is found on the last used port. In this one you have to manually pick the input every single time - how expensive was it to add it? And the variety of input ports is extremely poor - it's just 1xHDMI and 1xDP, so I can't even use DP on both computers without bringing into the mix some kind of KVM which brings all new set of problems. When you turn the display on it takes some seconds to actually boot and start working, much slower than previous Dells.

With that being said, quality of the picture and the colors are great. If you have a single PC gaming setup and plan to only use this display with that setup - it's a great choice.

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Joseph Sabatini

Acer Predator X38 Great and not so great.

Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2021

Verified Purchase

Great monitor, when retailers aren't constantly changing price (seems to be happening a lot across Amazon lately).

Great picture quality, especially for media, but even with a beefy 3090 graphics card I noticed streaking and artifacts, this is most likely due to the 21:9 ratio of a high resolution ultrawide. Though games say they support it still noticed it on all games I played.

2 people found this helpful

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Chris J. Cross

Color accuracy. No dead/stuck pixels. Excellent for gaming.

Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2021

Verified Purchase

Another update. ACER has a 5 dead pixel rule before they will replace the panel. So, I’m still rocking the dead pixels on both monitors. I won’t buy ACER again.

UPDATED REVIEW
So, after 3 months and 3 days of having this monitor the honeymoon stage is over. HDR is complete trash. Could be Windows... could be drivers. I still think that the color accuracy is fantastic. The reason I'm back is to give a review of this product after I have had it a little while. I still feel the same about most of the things I have said that are positive.
To the bad things. I don't like how when you OC the monitor to 175hz everything ghosts. It does it with both monitors and it has done it with multiple systems. If I'm doing something wrong someone could reply and I can try to fix this and ill redo this part of the review. HDR flickers. I have tried all of the fixes that I could find. Nothing helps. So, I just disabled HDR. I feel it was just a "let's throw it in" feature anyways.. the picture is great without it. There is a slight difference with HDR with my eyes.. it does look a little better but the flickering is something I just can't put up with. The trade-off for a slightly better picture or a banging headache from flickering is a no-brainer. So, I just leave it off. That's with both monitors and separate PCs.
The next issue. Dead pixels. When I received the monitor there were none. Now.... there is one RIGHT in the middle of the screen. I have tried all the tricks... with no luck. Hopefully, this is something covered by warranty.. we will see.
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I love this monitor! I upgraded from an Alienware 34" Curved 100 Hz. I really liked my old monitor, and I'm not here to trash on a brand because they are both great, but this is a huge step up. ACER really nailed it with this monitor. I have nothing to complain about at all. Right out of the box, this monitor is simply excellent. Thank you, ACER.

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Update.. so I have had it out of the box for about 2 days. Tonight the screen starts flickering. Jeez. We will see if I can resolve this issue. If not I will be returning it for a new one.
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2nd monitor bought and HDR is definitely an issue with certain programs like Chrome. So, my final rating is 4 stars. AMAZING monitor but I can't give it a perfect score if it's not able to do everything it says flawlessly for this kind of money.

2 people found this helpful

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Cody Lynd

Everything looks good!

Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2021

Verified Purchase

Even though my computer can't do 144 Hertz for this monitor (still looks good either way) I love the monitor I mostly play Final Fantasy XIV and even then the picture looks good. The stand is hefty and carries the weight of the monitor, I honestly see no bleeding whatsoever or any dead pixels either. The only bad thing about the monitor is that the included stand is a little too tall for the desk it sits on but that doesn't mean that the monitor isn't good! Also my package came before the intended date and was well packaged enough so that I didn't fear for the monitor being damaged during shipment.

One person found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Absolute game changer

Reviewed in the United States on November 21, 2021

Verified Purchase

This monitor was packaged like Fort Knox for safe transit and came in impeccable shape. No dead pixels, butter smooth refresh rate for gaming and a productivity must have. I was apprehensive switching from dual 27” monitors at first but this display really cleaned up my setup and improved my utility in all use cases. Highly recommend!

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Matt

Stuck Pixel HELL

Reviewed in the United States on May 17, 2021

Verified Purchase

Monitor came with 3 stuck Pixels. Getting it replaced by Amazon in a few days as Acer doesn't cover less than 3 stuck or dead pixels. Will update the review as soon as the next one arrives, but for now, 3 stars. Dead/Stuck Pixels really annoy me.

Update: The second one came in. This one had 2 stuck pixels (1 red, 1 green). I guess I'll deal with them if anything. Definitely really annoyed that such an expensive monitor would come with imperfections. leaving the review at 3 stars. See pictures and brace yourself for stuck pixels.

16 people found this helpful

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Nestor

Beautiful. Awful HDR

Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2021

Verified Purchase

I replaced my 5 year old Acer X34 with this and it's an amazing upgrade. I'm a software engineer and PC gamer. I use this monitor as my main display for both purposes. I connect my PC to displayport input and my work laptop to the HDMI one.

38 inch ultrawide is where it's at. Bigger, but not too large. It's the perfect size. The monitor comes fully assembled. Just pull it out of the giant box, put it on your desk, plug it in, and you're ready to go. The stand is solid metal and looks great offering all the degrees of movement. It has built in speakers too. Acer seems to be the only ones making gaming monitors with this feature. I initially thought I wouldn't care for them on my old X34, but I grew to use them regularly. They're a great built in alternative to desktop speakers when you're just listening to a pod cast, some youtube, etc. They sound like good quality TV speakers. For games, movies, and music, I use my headphones. Despite the predator name, the monitor's aesthetics are also relatively subdued. It doesn't have the excessive angles, red accents, or weird alien looking designs that a lot of other gaming monitors have. No glossy plastic surfaces either. The OSD is controllable through a little joystick thing in the back, which works well.

The panel itself is the same one found in most monitors of this size and resolution. Mine overclocked to 175Hz fine. Colors look great, HDR though, does not. HDR400 is a joke of a certification. The biggest problem is the lack of any localized dimming with its reliance of global dimming and the low brightness ceiling. This means if you enable HDR on an HDR400 display the entire screen will be adjusting its brightness to try to display the current scene. This looks pretty bad. This also makes blacks look terrible crushing them into voids of light with no detail in them. If you try to play games with dark scenes in them (as in any game) you will get lost in certain areas as you walk into these black voids. No amount of calibration can fix this. It's just how it is. So, I do not recommend you buy this monitor because of the HDR. While it can look better than SDR under certain conditions, it will overall deliver a poor picture quality experience. Is it worth sacrificing most of your experience for a bit of extra color popping here and there?

The monitor also has a cooling fan in it. This fan is a bit on the louder side by default with no immediate way of adjusting it. Not sure why everyone doesn't team up with Noctua at this point for cooling fans.
Turns out there is a way to tune the fan. The monitor has a service menu. Use the three menu buttons in the back: bottom 2x, middle 2x, top 2x and it'll activate this menu. You can disable "Smart Fan" mode, which was keeping the fan at 49% speed. You can then manually specify a fan speed. I dropped it down to 30%, which is significantly quieter. G-sync module temp went from 53C to 55C, which is well within operating spec.

5 people found this helpful

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Wes

How does a $1700 monitor with a G-Sync module have such poor overdrive? Save your money, buy the LG.

Reviewed in the United States on November 13, 2021

Verified Purchase

I've been using the LG 38GN950-B for a couple weeks now and have been really enjoying it for gaming, but had been disappointed with its panel color uniformity. The Acer Predator X38 P uses the exact same panel from LG, but given that it is much more expensive, and Acer touts display calibration in the factory (Delta E<2) I bought it hoping it would have a higher grade panel. Unfortunately the panel isn't any more uniform. It is warmer in the center, and cooler along the edges, making it seem like there is a smudge across the center of the screen. This is almost exactly the same as my LG so it is probably just a fault of the panel.

What isn't a fault of the panel though is the overdrive. Monitors that have a physical G-Sync module are tested and calibrated by Nvidia through a certification process and so usually have the prefect balance of blur and overshoot. Somehow, even though this monitor costs $1700, the overdrive here is just bad. While testing this monitor on the Blur Busters UFO Test Ghosting / Pursuit Camera the top and middle row look great, but the third row on the lightest background has a noticeable overshoot trail behind the UFO. This was very apparent when moving around windows and gaming. It's like an edge outline sharpening filter was being applied between areas of high contrast. Black text on a white background would become pixelated, appear bolder, with a double image trailing behind. Anywhere that something dark bordered something light would glow.

This wasn't just an issue as max refresh rate, I tested at 175, 160, 144, 120, 100, etc. and got the same results. So the Variable Overdrive provided by the G-Sync module is working to keep the overdrive consistent at different Hz, it was just tuned poorly for this panel. Turning off overdrive fixed the overshoot in high contrast scenarios, but just made everything else blurrier.

This was incredibly disappointing. You pay a premium for a G-Sync module, and as of today the only appreciable benefit of a G-Sync module over Freesync or G-Sync Compatible is the Variable Overdrive. Thing is, the overdrive on this monitor is so bad that I had to turn it off making the module completely pointless. My G-Sync compatible LG 38GN950-B has far better overdrive clarity without a G-Sync module and I feel no difference in terms of adaptive sync, tearing, latency, etc.

And I haven't even mentioned the fan. The fan is very apparent. I could not ignore it. It was not a high pitched whine or anything but it was moderately loud. Nearly as loud as my PC while gaming, but constant. It would not slow down even while idle. I wear open back headphones so this was not going to work.

I did return for a replacement but unfortunately the second unit had the exact same panel uniformity issues, same overdrive overshoot issues, and same loud fan. What a disappointing product. I bought the LG 38GN950-B for $1300 renewed as well and can tell you it is a much better deal even if the panel uniformity is just as a bummer.

3 people found this helpful

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Acer Predator X38 Pbmiphzx 2300R Curved 37.5" UltraWide QHD+ (3840 x 1600) Gaming Monitor | NVIDIA G-SYNC | Agile Splendor IPS | Up to 175Hz | DCI-P3 98% | DisplayHDR 400 | Display Port & HDMI, Black

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Acer Predator X38 Pbmiphzx 2300R Curved 37.5" UltraWide QHD+ (3840 x 1600) Gaming Monitor | NVIDIA G-SYNC | Agile Splendor IPS | Up to 175Hz | DCI-P3 98% | DisplayHDR 400 | Display Port & HDMI, Black

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