Acer GN246HLBbid review: Build quality and Design
Acer probably needs to work on its naming scheme as the Predator GN246HLBbid is an unnecessary mouthful of numbers and letters. The Predator part, though, marks this out at a gaming display. The high-gloss stand is X-shaped, which gives it decent stability. It can tilt (forward 5 degrees, backwards 15 degrees), but doesn’t offer pivot or height adjustments. However, it does have VESA 100x100mm holes for you to mount it on a compatible stand. As you’d expect the screen has a matt finish, which prevents reflections in bright-light conditions. The bezels aren’t exactly slim and have a high-gloss finish making it a little distracting if they are reflecting ceiling lights – or the sun. The on-screen-display (OSD) buttons are located at the bottom right-hand side of the monitor, but are not labelled on the monitor’s bezels, making it a little harder to use. No matter which button we pressed it brought up the same OSD pop-up menu, providing us with quick-access to the Empowering Technology option which is used to quickly change colour modes, the monitor’s volume, inputs and the OSD menu.
Acer GN246HLBbid review: Connectivity and OSD
At the back you’ll find HDMI, DVI and VGA inputs and a 3.5mm auxiliary output. It was disappointing not to find a DisplayPort input as DisplayPort can handle both high refresh rates and audio: DVI carries video only. Still, most people will probably connect speakers directly to their PC’s sound card, and not run stereo audio from their monitor. The monitor doesn’t have any in-built speakers, but can output sound (arriving through the HDMI input) through its 3.5mm auxiliary jack. We found its OSD a little hard to use, as the buttons are not marked out on the monitor’s bezels. Through the OSD you’ll be able to adjust the monitor’s LightBoost level, colour temperature, ACM (Adaptive Contrast Management) which is used to change the monitor’s contrast ratio on-the-fly, among the other standard options such as adjusting your brightness and contrast levels.
Acer GN246HLBbid monitor review: Performance
At the heart of the GN246HL is a 1920×1080 TN panel. The display can run at 144Hz when used with an appropriate cable, such as through DVI, and a compatible graphics card. There’s no specific zero input-lag mode, but we found the monitor’s lag to be minimal when tested with fast-paced shooters. Unfortunately, there’s no way to adjust the default response time, and we found the GN246HLBbid to suffer from slight ghosting. Nvidia’s LightBoost technology should improve this, but you will of course need a compatible graphics card for it to work. Our test rig has an AMD card so we couldn’t test LightBoost’s effectiveness for 3D and 2D games. Not unusually for a TN-based monitor, viewing angles were average. Colours shift noticeably when you tilt the display backwards and forwards. We measured the monitor’s gamut and colour accuracy using the Spyder5Elite, where it achieved a 99 percent of sRGB’s colour space and an above average 79 percent of AdobeRGB’s colour space, which is better than most TN displays on the market. Unfortunately this does not mean colours are accurate. The Acer’s average Delta E of 1.68 is poor. Colours look washed out, and aren’t as good as those on the BenQ RL2460HT. We also measured its contrast ratio and found it under-performing at a measured 690:1, meaning its ability to display bright and dull images is rather weak. On the plus side, we measured a maximum brightness of 323cd/m2, which is brighter than most budget displays.
