Acer BE270U 27-Inch QHD/IPS Monitor Review

OSD Setup & Calibration

To bring up the OSD, press any key, then the middle button. A small, quick menu appears first followed by the full set of options. Experienced Acer users will have no trouble here; the layout is pretty much the same one found in the company's other monitors.

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The OSD is efficiently divided into three sub-menus: Picture, OSD, and Setting. Everything you need for image tweaking is in the first panel. There are five picture modes, but only User allows any changes. If you attempt adjustment in one of the other presets, the BE270U automatically reverts to User.

Picture controls include a reasonably fine brightness control and a correctly set contrast slider. There are three gamma presets that are too far apart to be truly useful. 1.8, 2.2, and 2.4 are the values, and none will hit a measured 2.2 by default. There are three color temp options, one of which is a low blue light mode which can be adjusted in 10% increments. The User preset unlocks an excellent set of RGB sliders which start at center-range and offer precise control. You can also change the color gamut with six-axis hue and saturation sliders.

Back in the main picture menu you’ll see a super sharpness option. It creates slight ringing in areas of high contrast, so we recommend leaving it off. There is an sRGB mode which locks out all adjustments and sets output at 285cd/m². There’s no real need for this, because the BE270U’s User mode offers the same level of accuracy while allowing changes to brightness.

OSD options extend to language (15) and timeout (120 seconds max). The Settings menu has everything else you’ll need to control DisplayPort version, aspect, DDC/CI, input selection, and the like. Overdrive has three settings: weak, normal, and extreme. It should be noted that it will not work in FreeSync mode. This means that final nth degree of motion resolution is not available. You might notice it in some games, especially those with fine detail and texture, though we didn’t observe a problem during our testing.

Auto Source can lock onto the first active video signal on power-up. The Quick-start mode shortens the time between pressing the button and an image appearing. It also consumes a little more power in standby. Power-off USB charge leaves the ports active so you can top up your hand-held devices when the monitor’s off. Finally, there is an info screen that offers only resolution and refresh rate values. There’s still no indication of FreeSync operation.

Calibration

Once you change any setting, including brightness, the BE270U kicks into User mode, so that’s what we chose as a starting point. It’s reasonably accurate without calibration, but there are some gains to be had with proper adjustment. The RGB sliders are very precise and will reward you with super tight grayscale tracking. The six-axis controls are useful but largely unnecessary; the gamut is quite good natively. Our main beef is the gamma, which is closer to 2.4 by default. The next lower option is 1.8, which drops the trace to around 2.0—too light for our taste. The monitor looks OK at the 2.2 setting and color is not greatly affected. But we’d like to see a future firmware update fix this issue. To replicate our test results, please try our settings below.