Can't decide on new monitor - ASUS PG278QR or ACER XB271HU. TN or IPS?

[Havoc Ryder]

My birthday is coming up shortly and I thought I'd treat myself to a new monitor. My current 1080p 60hz one is wasted on my 1080Ti anyway.

I'm stuck between these:

ASUS:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01LWQGIUR/ref=s9u_simh_gw_i2?ie=UTF8&fpl=fresh&pd_rd_i=B01LWQGIUR&pd_rd_r=a2564455-7d48-11e8-a558-7b590a9b8a81&pd_rd_w=859Sz&pd_rd_wg=UwXpO&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=&pf_rd_r=NP5JB4FZG73XB0N4GSZM&pf_rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=f3df9628-2b30-4071-ac96-e7086fd86f1d&pf_rd_i=desktop

ACER:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Acer-Predator-XB271HU-screen-Monitor/dp/B017DG09WM?th=1

They have almost identical specs, but one is IPS 4ms, and the other is TN 1ms.
Response time isn't a huge deal for me, but I really don't want things like ghosting coming into play.

Anybody have any suggestions or experience with these? I'd be happy with a TN panel as long as the colours are good.

Thanks.

[ImCrimson]

I recently switched from an old Samsung TN monitor to that Acer XB271HU.

IPS makes a big difference in how colors are displayed. They appear much more vivid. Turning it on for the first time was like a unicorn jizzed in my eyes. However, backlight bleed can be a major issue, especially with IPS. My monitor bleeds some light in the lower-right quadrant, which becomes somewhat noticeable when viewing dark areas in videogames. A colleague of mine claims he has no backlight bleed on his monitor (same model); it's a bit of a lottery. Aside from the backlight bleed, I'm happy with my choice. In my completely unscientific opinion; Acer makes damn good monitors.

Take the response time figures with massive quantities of salt; they tell us nothing about the actual latency end-to-end. Don't let them control the choice.

The ASUS one seems to be, in my opinion, a different price class to the Acer. I considered that very same ASUS monitor but went with the Acer because it was cheaper.

[Humin]

I like my Acer. Won't touch TNs anymore.

[gdfsgdfg]

Looking at those stats that acer looks way better.

[Havoc Ryder]

Thanks for the comments so far. Do we know why the ASUS is more expensive considering if anything, it has lower specs overall?

Definitely leaning more towards the Acer now.

[pebkac]

IPS any day, it's pretty much guaranteed to reproduce colors more accurately and you won't get the weird color/brightness shifting when you look at the screen from an angle. While low-end IPS panels (especially in cheap phones) can exhibit very noticeable ghosting, it shouldn't be a problem. Don't pay much attention to manufacturer-provided response times, those are very vaguely defined and not guaranteed to be anywhere near accurate. But since you're buying an expensive high refresh rate gaming monitor, that shouldn't be an issue anyway since those are usually tuned for low input lag and minimal ghosting. If you really want to know all the nitty gritty details of how the monitor actually performs, TFTcentral has very in-depth reviews that go into pretty much every aspect that matters.

[Havoc Ryder]

Thank you my dudes, will go with the Acer!

[pebkac]

Actually the saturation of colors doesn't necessarily depend on the panel type, it varies a lot from monitor to monitor. I've seen some super saturated IPS panels, but others (like the one I'm typing on right now) actually have kind of understated colors. Same goes for different TN monitors. Similarly with color tint, some panels are naturally warmer while others tend towards a bluish tint. Thankfully, if all the colors are uniformly off in the same direction, that's easy to compensate for in your monitor's settings. What is true is that IPS has more accurate and consistent colors in general. It's easier to get the colors to look right by tweaking the basic settings, while it might not even be possible to do that with a TN and it'll just always look of by a bit. For example a TN monitor that I have tends to crush the blacks and blow out bright colors to the point where it's practically impossible to tell between #f9f9f9 and full white, while an IPS monitor will have more linear behavior across the entire range of brightness values.

Backlight bleed is a legitimate issue with IPS panels though. But again, the amount you get depends on the panel. It's not really noticeable most of the time, but can be a bit annoying if you watch a lot of dark movies/TV shows.