Right, finally got my forum account approved this morning so I can chime in on this monitor (the Acer 32" for the record, not Samsung or BenQ)
My was received Saturday - yep, I needed one quickly as my trusty Digimate 24" from 6.5 years ago finally packed up. It's currently sat in the hallway all boxed up (in pristine condition I might add) waiting to be picked up and returned.
My little review...
I initially contacted sales prior to buying as I was concerned on poor reviews regarding response times. I was concerned about gaming. Obviously there are multiple types of gaming and I'm mostly and MMO person. I was assured that the response times are mostly marketing guff and it would be fine for my purposes so I took the plunge because of the great price. I went 32" because I wanted something a bit bigger and had been used to 1920x1200.
Well, when it arrived I nearly died at the size of the box!! But on getting it out, it's not so bad, there's a lot of good polystyrene packaging in there!
OK, first up, I would encourage anyone that sits at a desk to think long and hard about a 32" 16:9 screen. It is massive and frankly started to make me feel sick even if I pulled my desk away from the wall a bit and pushed the monitor back as far as I dared before it was in danger of toppling off.
But that was only the start. I actually had the exact opposite of what I expected. Immediately I noticed that ghosting on the desktop was appalling, Windows with GTX670 connected over Dual DVI or Display Port and OS X (11" MacBook Air) connected over DVI-I adapter (so admittedly only 1920x1080 due to the mini display port to DVI adapter).
When I say ghosting was appalling I mean just dragging a window would leave a dark trail behind that I'm absolutely positive is not some visual effect in Windows or OS X that I've not seen before. Additionally, in OS X, (and this is a weird one that I can't explain!) if you open a new Safari window that has the "Favourites" tab open and you drag that window, Safari would really flicker and stutter like it was running at about 5 FPS. Thats the best I can describe it and it only did it on that particular window. Very odd indeed.
To be fair to the sales guy, I could not fault this display in my gaming that I tried. I tried WoW, Skyrim, Elite Dangerous and Borderlands 2. I'm sure a hardcore gamer might not be happy, but that's not me!
Another thing, the colours on my old Digitate were so vibrant that this thing just looked washed out in comparison. I couldn't get it looking nice at all but that's very much a personal preference kind of thing.
I did manage to get the ghosting down to an acceptable level but to do that I had to knock brightness and saturation down real low and it just looked nasty. Oh, and I HAD to use a dark desktop wallpaper. And those that too many restrictions I'm not prepared to accept.
So, the colours and the terrible ghosting were enough on their own but also given the sheer size of it made me feel sick it has had to go back. Very odd since others seem to be singing it's praises!! Maybe I'm just picky? I don't think so though and given my other use than gaming is development I'd be looking at that ghosting a LOT.
One nice thing that I was able to do in the few hours I worked with it was to set up a custom resolution of 2560x1080 and try that out. I had previously discounted a 29" super wide as too small but in that resolution the Acer is pretty much identical in measurements to what you get with 29" Super Wide and I have made the decision that smaller will in my case be better and have therefore ordered an LG 29UB65 which is turning up tomorrow to replace the Acer.
Sorry if that is a bit long but I hope it helps somebody and doesn't offend anyone that thinks the monitor is the bees knees
