Game:

Batman: Arkham Knight (2015)

Category:

Review

Duration: 38:42

2,468 views

34

The first half of the video is me reviewing the monitor, while showing gameplay on it. The second half amounts to me apologizing for not considering it to be the "ultimate" monitor that a lot of other people have said it is.

This is a great looking 27in 1440p G-Sync monitor with 4ms grey to grey time. The viewing angles are leaps and bounds better than what I've experienced from TN panels. Arkham Knight, Crysis 3, and Bioshock Infinite look the best on this monitor that they've ever looked to me. And for a lot of people, this is going to be a great monitor that provides smooth gameplay, impressive picture, and enjoyable color accuracy.

Unfortunately, for me, this monitor seems to give me headaches. I don't know if it's the slight amount of motion blur and ghosting I've seen on it, or something else, but the problem persisted, throughout the month of testing. I even ended up buying a second monitor without G-Sync and without IPS to compare it to.

I wanted to like this monitor. I wanted to think it was the best thing on the market. But after almost a week of some disappointing issues, I ordered another monitor for comparison.

For the first week, G-Sync was performing somewhat erratically and not making a good impression. And I, overall, didn't feel something was "right", the first five days, so I ordered the second monitor for comparison.

It turns out that Nvidia had, in fact, put out a possibly not ideal driver around the same time I received this monitor, as a G-Sync hot fix showed up the first week I had the monitor. The problem is: Even with that hot fix, G-Sync never felt right to me. I ended up trying the August driver, and that felt better. The early November driver felt better too.

Still... Sometimes G-Sync seems to be unpredictable. If you have a game that constantly jumps around by 30 or so frames per second, it can give very hard stutters. A 30fps jump, with the 980 Ti, is actually not that hard to do. Even well optimized games like BioShock Infinite will do that. Actually a LOT of games, on the 980 Ti, can have those big jumps. When the card can stretch its legs, it can reach really high. But at times, it's going to make hard jumps down in frame rate, only to immediately jump back up. With V-Sync, or even without V-Sync, the stuttering that can cause seemed minor. Annoying, but minor. But with G-Sync, I constantly had hard stutters, when it happened. The October driver seemed to make those stutters harder than usual.

The thing is: Those stutters, given how beautiful this monitor looks, don't equal a dealbreaker (and notice I don't mention them in this video), but they are something I experienced with G-Sync that most tech-tubers don't notice or bring up in their reviews. This still can affect you, though. So if you notice poor G-Sync performance, you might consider a different driver.

I spend a big chunk, during the last half of this video, explaining that I feel the monitor gives me headaches, and why it might be giving me headaches. The headaches are the real dealbreaker for me. I would have been willing to keep both this, and the second monitor I bought to compare it to, but the headaches make it a moot point. I appear to be sensitive to certain things like motion blur, ghosting, screen tearing, etc; and for me, some monitors can cause discomfort to use.

In the video, I talk about how another monitor, the RL2455HM has also caused me headaches from use, but I fail to distinguish something, in that situation. The RL2455HM noticeably has more ghosting than the XB270HU, and it causes me headaches from use too, but the headaches are not as severe, and it takes much more play time to end up having them. Also, I don't "always" get headaches from using the RL2455HM. I seem to "always" get headaches from using the XB270HU, though.

The XB270HU is a really cool monitor. Image quality looks more lifelike than anything I've experienced in gaming before. Materials like glass, wood, and metal look more convincing than I've ever seen them look in games. The movement of objects in games is generally graceful. It's an immersive experience. It really is a nice monitor, and offers a mostly pleasing experience. But, for me, something is causing headaches, and no amount of prettiness can make up for that. That makes it a deal breaker, for me. For people who don't experience any kind of discomfort from looking at monitors, this probably won't be an issue. I consumed almost 100 reviews, from multiple sources, and I don't know if I ever saw someone else complain about the headaches or discomfort. I don't want to scare anyone off of this monitor or unfairly make claims against it, but at the same time, I think it's reasonable for me to share my experience.

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