Acer B273HU

A plain, matte black cabinet houses the 27 inch panel, which has a maximum resolution of 2.048 by 1.152 dpi, a 16:9 aspect ratio, and a 5 millisecond (black to white) pixel response rate. The 14.5 pound enclosure is supported by a square base with a swiveling, telescoping arm that provides up to 4.3 inches of height adjustability and 70 degrees of swivel. A hinge at the top of the stand gives you 5 degrees of forward tilt and 15 degrees of backward tilt. Unlike the NEC EA261WM, this monitor does not support pivot rotation, but the NEC model will cost you around $200 more and you'd have to settle for a slightly smaller (26 inch) panel.

Around back you'll find VGA, DVI, and HDMI inputs, one upstream and two downstream USB ports, and an audio jack for the integrated 1.5 watt speakers. The speakers are adequate for low volume listening but could use a subwoofer component to help pump up the bass tones. Two additional USB ports are located on the left-hand side of the cabinet. Embedded in the lower right hand bezel are five thin function buttons and a power switch, all of which use black lettering. Not surprisingly, the buttons are very difficult to identify against the black cabinet color.

The "e" button brings you to Acer's "Empowering Technology" setting, which offers a choice of five luminance presets, including Text, Movie, Graphics, Standard, and User modes. The Auto button automatically adjusts clock and phase settings (analog only) the Menu button brings you into the main settings screen, where you can tweak color temperature settings, adjust contrast and brightness levels, select an input source, and activate Acer's Adaptive Contrast Management (ACM) feature. This bumps the contrast ratio up to 40.000 : 1, a setting that found to be way too bright for normal desktop use.

The default contrast ratio of 1.000 : 1 is much more comfortable for close up viewing. Two arrow buttons (left and right) are used to select and change the highlighted settings and also act as hot keys for raising and lowering the speaker volume. On the Scaled Fonts portion of the DisplayMate (www.displaymate.com) test suite, Acer B273HU did an outstanding job of displaying Arial fonts set to 5.3 points, the smallest setting available. Each character was clear, sharp, and evenly spaced. Color quality was equally impressive swatches on the Color Scales test ramped evenly from black to the lightest shade, and there were no signs of tinting or color tracking errors.

Dark grayscale performance was also quite good. However, there was considerable compression at the high end of the grayscale, resulting in washed out light grays and a lack of highlight detail in my test photo. Viewing angles maxed out at around 160 degrees, as advertised, on both the horizontal and vertical planes. Although it is touted as a business class monitor, Acer B273HU is more than capable of handling your gaming and entertainment needs. Acer B273HU comes with a three year warranty covering parts, labor, and backlighting and ships with DVI, USB, and D-sub (VGA) cables. Unfortunately, an HDMI cable is not included in the box.