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The Acer S277HK is a 4K display with great picture quality. The uncalibrated colour accuracy results are superb, the brightness and contrast levels are good and the gamma and white point results are excellent.
That makes it a great display for colour accurate work. But the questionable OSD and rigid stand let it down slightly. The backwards and forwards method of navigating the menus is quite time consuming and after a while, annoying. Poor design choices make it hard to find the setting you want to adjust.
A display’s OSD is only part of the package though, and it becomes faster to navigate when you become familiar with it, but it’s still a negative point when compared with how simple the OSDs can be on other displays.
The stand feels great and having such a slim bezel is nice, but the lack of pivot and rotation features or USB ports is a missed trick. We’d prefer a less exciting, traditional-looking display that offered these features. Besides, as a 4K screen, it commands a high price, so you’d expect these features to be included for what you pay.
Keeping the display inputs bunched together at the rear works well though, and made it very easy to quickly switch out devices when needed.
Does OSD design affect whether a display is worth buying? Look and feel is a matter of opinion of course. The plastic covering all over the chassis feels slightly tacky, but surprisingly the overall effect doesn’t come over as cheap.
4K resolution on a 27-inch screen works reasonably well (with the Windows DPI setting raised to 150 per cent). But 4K is undoubtedly more comfortable with with a slightly larger dot pitch on a 32-inch (or bigger) display.
In games, we found that the S277HK performed fine with a PC, with minimal ghosting for an IPS screen, but a PS4 console running in 1080p looked far too blurry unless the ‘Super Sharpness’ setting was turned on. Switch back to a PC desktop and this setting has to then be disabled, which requires navigating the OSD, with no easily accessible shortcut available.
The S277HK isn’t sold as a gaming monitor though, and for most of the time it works just fine, whether playing PC or console games.
It’s up to you whether the stand’s rigidity or the slightly frustrating OSD design is enough to put you off. If you’re shopping for a colour-accurate 4K display, the S277HK deserves a place on your shortlist.
Buy from Overclockers UK for £529.99 inc vat.
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Pros:
- Excellent out-of-the-box colour accuracy.
- Great Adobe RGB coverage.
- Good brightness and contrast.
Cons:
- No pivot or height adjustment.
- No USB ports.
- Poor OSD controls.
- Blurry 1080p HDMI gaming.
Kitguru Says: A great screen but a slightly mixed bag for ergonomics, features and design.
