Acer Gaming Expands Affordable Nitro Line, Updates Monitors With New Panels

If I had one word to describe this year's Acer gaming hardware announcements, it would have to be "refreshing." As in there are a lot of product refreshes. In the case of monitors, that's not such a bad thing: Monitor technology is changing fast enough that upgrading to a new panel means some new tech. For laptops, it frequently means updated components that deliver a general bump in performance; important when you're buying, but not terribly interesting to read about.

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So I'll start with the monitors.

Acer announced that it's finally shipping the 1440p 360Hz XB273U F5, an Nvidia G-Sync Pulsar display that it "unleashed" in September 2024 for later that year. (To be fair, it seems like Pulsar hasn't quite been ready.) In case you've forgotten, Pulsar is Nvidia's motion clarity-enhancing technology for high-frame-rate games. It should be available this month for about $650.

The OLED Predator X34 F3 updates the earlier model with a new panel, a faster 360Hz 3,440x1,440-pixel QD-OLED. Now, it has the same specs as the new Samsung V-Stripe QD-OLED monitors announced at the show and that Samsung just began mass producing -- 3,440x1,440 pixels at 360Hz -- but Acer PR wouldn't confirm or deny which panel it uses. If it is the V-Stripe, that's cool, since it's the updated Quantum Dot array, which uses vertical stripes to improve resolving thin elements, such as text. If it's not, bleh. Expect to see it by the end of June for $1,200.

This year, the company launched at least a couple of interesting new or upgraded models at the show. You may not be able to get the F5 quite yet, but hey -- here's the XB273U F6! It uses one of the new 1440p IPS panels that can hit 1,000Hz. Big numbers are always better, right? It doesn't do 1,000Hz at 1440p, though, only (only!) 500Hz. To hit the higher refresh rate, you drop to 720p via DFR. To get a decent image at that resolution, you need to use some magic. It's scheduled to be available by the end of June. 

Acer also joins the Year of 5K with a new Nitro XV270X. 5K's not new, but I haven't seen this many announcements before (there's a new panel, so...). The 27-inch display does 5K (5,120x2,880 pixels) at 165Hz, dropping to 1440p for a higher 330Hz via DFR. It can handle basic HDR -- it's DisplayHDR 400 certified -- and has 2-watt stereo speakers. It's slated to ship by the end of June for $800. 

As for the gaming laptops, the updated Predator Helios Neo 16S AI gets refreshed...downward-ish...to a top option of a Core Ultra 9 386H from the X-class processor of the Core Ultra 200 series and maximum of RTX 5070 from the RTX 5070 Ti, though it looks like the OLED display option is new. That may be a reasonable trade. Look for it starting in June.

And Acer expanded the Nitro V AI series of affordable gaming models with a 16 AI and 16S AI, the latter a thinner model, incorporating Core Ultra 7 300H series processors and up to RTX 5070 GPUs. They both have somewhat meh sounding displays -- 1200p IPS at 180Hz -- but that's not as important if you plan to connect to a good external display.