Acer K3 (K273) review: Budget 27in Monitor

The Acer K3 K273 monitor tries to bring quality to a wide range of everyday scenarios despite its eye-catchingly low price of $169 in the US and £159 in the UK.

A quick look at the spec sheet reveals that you’re getting a decent amount of hardware for the low price. The 27in diagonal is big enough to sate most conventional home, office and bedroom situations. On the inside, the Acer serves up IPS technology, a 75Hz refresh rate and even built-in speakers.

Our current budget favourite is the BenQ BL2780T, which is a 27in rival that currently costs $320 in the US and £221 in the UK due to significant price rises since its launch way back in 2019. Can the Acer K3 K273 compete with its older and more expensive rival – and earn a place on our best monitor chart?

Design & Build

• Plain but attractive
• Light for a 27in panel
• Limited adjustment

The Acer’s low cost means that this panel is not eye-catching, but it doesn’t go the other way and arrive with ugly looks either. Its base is a gentle, discreet curve of glossy black plastic with a matte front section, and around the display the bezel is barely thicker than the BenQ.

Acer pairs its middle-of-the-road looks with a weight of 4.5kg. That’s impressively light for a 27in panel, and it’s about 2kg lighter than the BenQ. If you struggle with mobility or just want to move the Acer around to different spots, that’s a boon.

Mike Jennings / Foundry

The K3 is easy to build, too. The stand simply snaps into the back of the screen using a tool-free mechanism, and the base attaches using a tool-free screw.

While the monitor is easy to deploy, it’s less useful in some other practical areas. It has 20 degrees of backwards and forwards tilting movement and supports 100mm VESA mounting, but that’s it for adjustment. The BenQ offers more tilt movement alongside left and right swivel, 90 degree pivots and 140mm of height adjustment.

The Acer K3 isn’t suitable if you want a panel with movement versatility.

Mike Jennings / Foundry

Build quality isn’t brilliant, either: it’s too easy to move the plastic rear, and the screen has noticeable flex. That’s not ruinous if you want a screen to just sit on your desk, but it’s not ideal for frequent redeployment.

The Acer might not compete with the BenQ for adjustment options and build quality, but the K273 is light, looks decent and it’s easy to build – for $169/£159 that’s about as much as anyone can ask for.

Specs & Features

• Full HD resolution
• 75Hz
• AMD FreeSync

The 27in Acer has a Full HD resolution (1920 x 1080), which is entirely conventional at this price. If you look closely you can certainly see the individual pixels, but they’re not large enough to prove distracting and the resolution is high enough to provide decent space for everyday workloads.

IPS technology on the inside should help the Acer deliver decent colour quality, but this specification offers no surprises. It’s got 8-bit colour rather than 10-bit colour, so you don’t get the depth you’ll find on pricier monitors, and the matte coating keeps irritating reflections at bay. The K3 also boasts AMD FreeSync with a peak refresh rate at 75Hz.

If the mention of AMD FreeSync has awakened gaming ambitions, though, don’t get carried away. That 75Hz refresh rate is barely higher than the 60Hz that you’ll find on even the cheapest screen, and it makes everyday animations a bit smoother but offers no big boost in games. This screen is only suitable for casual games, entry-level esports and mainstream single-player titles.

Mike Jennings / Foundry

Around the rear, you’ll find an HDMI input alongside a VGA socket – an archaic port that could still prove useful with old or entry-level hardware. There’s an audio jack, too. There are no USB or DisplayPort options here, though, and the speakers are dreadful – too quiet and very tinny.

A joystick and a trio of buttons around the rear navigate the Acer’s on-screen display. The menu is basic, it responds slowly and the buttons are stiff, but you can still easily get around this OSD to adjust mainstream image settings.

In terms of display specification, there’s very little between the Acer and pricier BenQ, at least on paper – the BenQ also has a 1080p IPS display with 8-bit colour, and its slightly slower refresh rate of 60Hz won’t make any difference in real-world use. But the BenQ does have DisplayPort alongside its additional adjustment options and more robust build quality.

Display Quality

• Ok brightness
• Good contast
• Everyday colour

Out of the box, the Acer achieved a brightness level of 204 nits, which is reasonable for everyday home and office use if there isn’t a source of particularly strong light, and that figure was paired with a black point of 0.2 nits – another good result that creates suitably dark areas in photos and videos.

Those figures combine for a contrast ratio of 1,020:1. That’s a good figure for any affordable IPS panel, and it means that the Acer can handle everyday tasks with reasonable depth and vibrancy – websites, Office apps and everyday media files will all look decent.

The average Delta E of 4.09 is mediocre, and the panel rendered 84.4% of the sRGB colour gamut. Those results are, fine for everyday use, and ensure that this screen will produce most shades needed by everyday situations with acceptable accuracy.

But it’s not good enough in terms of breadth or accuracy to handle colour-sensitive creative workloads, and the BenQ is noticeably better, with broader sRGB rendering and superior accuracy.

Mike Jennings / Foundry

There are other areas where the affordable Acer can’t handle anything beyond basic tasks. Its backlight strength dropped by 20% on the right-hand edge and was nearly as bad elsewhere. That doesn’t hinder everyday use, but it means this screen doesn’t have the uniformity for creative work. Don’t look to the alternative screen modes for help, either: the sRGB mode delivers a minor Delta E improvement but the rest mostly adjust the brightness level without any other improvements.

If you want to use this display for everyday computing duties then you won’t need to fiddle with settings and display modes. Out of the box, the Acer is acceptable, but if you need a screen for content creation, you’ll have to spend more.

And, if you want to play games on this panel, stick to casual, slow or single-player games rather than eSports – the Acer has noticeable ghosting and the 75Hz refresh rate isn’t good enough to guarantee crisp gameplay, with far too much obvious blurring throughout.

Price & Availability

The Acer might have its faults, but it’s still perfectly serviceable for everyday office and home use and is one of the most affordable 27in IPS panels you’ll find anywhere: it costs $169.99 in the US and £159.99 in the UK from Acer and Amazon, albeit at an inflated price. If you want to buy the Acer, search for model number UM.HX3EE.006.

Note that there is also a K3 K243 which is a smaller 23.8in model at £119.99 in the UK.

The Acer is far cheaper than the BenQ, which costs £221 in the UK and $320 in the US. That display may have more adjustment options, better build quality and a broader range of colours, but many people simply don’t need those features in an everyday screen – so opting for the Acer is a good way to save some quick cash.

Another affordable option is the Huawei MateView SE which comes with a choice of stand and prices starting at £139.99 but it’s not available in the US.

Check our chart of the best monitors for more options.

Verdict

The Acer K3 K273 does not have the colour quality, the gamut coverage or the refresh rate ability to work well with more demanding content-creation tasks or the latest fast-paced games, but it does have the contrast and colours to make conventional computing tasks look decent.

Combine that with its 27in diagonal, decent looks and low price, and you’ve got a rock-solid everyday display.

Look to that pricier BenQ and similar alternatives if you want better colours or more adjustment, but consider the Acer K3 K273 if you need solid workaday performance without spending loads of cash.

Specs

• Panel size: 27in (69cm)
• Resolution: 1920 x 1080
• Display Technology: IPS
• Aspect Ratio: 16:9
• Typical Brightness: 250 nits
• Static Contrast: 1000:1
• Variable Sync: AMD FreeSync
• Response Time (MPRT): 1ms
• Maximum Refresh: 75Hz (with adaptive sync)
• HDR: n/a
• Video Ports: 1 x HDMI 1.4, 1 x VGA
• USB Ports: n/a
• Other Ports: Headphone jack
• Speakers: 2 x 2W
• Weight: 4.5kg