One of the most requested reviews here at NUpgrade is finally coming out of the oven, Acer lent us its low-cost Acer KG241Q 144Hz monitor, the Acer KG241Q 23.6 “and we will compare it directly with the Warrior Kai, monitor that took everyone by surprise – including us – and it was very well accepted by the public and by us as well.
We will touch all possible aspects of the monitor, just as we already do in the current reviews and we will see which model assumes the title of 144Hz monitor with the highest cost x benefit in the Brazilian market, come on.
External Construction and Design
Let’s start with the most striking aspects of the monitor, which are its support feet and its side edges that are quite large. The monitor really gives the impression of not being very modern because of the more square design, without curves or thin edges like some of its competitors.
Whether it is beautiful or not with you, the important thing is not to hinder the usability of the product, and fortunately it does not hinder anything. Going to the rear of the monitor we find two HDMI 2.0 Inputs (supports 144Hz) and a DisplayPort 1.2 (also supports 144Hz). A DP cable was included in our box, but as our monitor is already in use, we are not sure if Acer sent it together or if it actually comes in the box.
The monitor stand is almost the trademark of Acer in its gamers monitors, we have the two red “claws” jumping forward with the main trunk recessed and all in black. Unfortunately this support only has tilt adjustment, offering no elevation or rotation on the axis, be it horizontal or lateral.
On occupying enough space I would say it depends. At its rear there is a stretch, but this is done to ensure greater stability of the monitor on the table. I prefer the KG241Q’s V-claws instead of the AOC Hero’s round support as you can put things there without sliding.
But in fact the only good points of the support foot are the stability and the inclination, besides the Hero is undoubtedly much more complete – height adjustment, inclination, rotation – and the other manufacturers owe this point.
The navigation and Power On / Off buttons on the monitor are all positioned at the front front with easy access and indented in the monitor housing, probably for design reasons. One thing I think they could do is put small reliefs to better define the function of each button by touch, because many times I ended up pressing the wrong button exactly because of the lack of it.
Acer is undoubtedly one of the manufacturers with the most complete menu, and because of that there are great gains that can be made if you do a color calibration on the monitor. There are also FreeSync, DCR options, among other things that I will explain better in the color section of this review.
Oh, before any of you ask, the monitor does have support for VESA mounts and its measurements are 10cmx10cm, so just look at the hole in the support to see if it matches with the monitor and see if it supports at least 4kg.
So for now the monitor does not take any penalty on your note, not least because I do not score points for visuals with the exception if it hinders use, which it does not. Now let’s talk about the panel itself.
Image quality
This part of the review will be separated by several parts, it is the most important aspect of a monitor and therefore it is the one that deserves the most attention on our part. Let’s start with color fidelity.
Gaming
This is the most focused aspect of the monitor, so this time I decided to start the review by talking about it. The first game that I ran with this monitor with CS: GO, I did it because it is the game that I am most familiar with at the moment and I know every corner of it.
The first thing I noticed was the saturation, which ended up “bouncing” the colors on the maps much more. In hell, for example, there are several places that I am used to seeing whites with shades of blue – partly because of my AOC Hero at home – and that on Acer they turned out to be more yellow, and highlighting the greens too.
Of course, in addition, 144Hz makes all the difference compared to a common monitor and I had no problem with that. After the CS game, I decided to go to Metro Exodus, and the image quality did not disappoint us one bit.
In Metro Exodus the story changes a little, there is clearly a “green filter” in the colors of the monitor and it is very apparent in this game because it contains cold and dark colors , highlighting this tone pull. The good news is that this can be corrected without any major difficulties directly on the monitor.
And so, we decided to go to Far Cry New Dawn which has lots of bright colors and that makes monitors with good reproductions shine even more. Once again we liked the results we saw and without putting it side by side with other monitors we certainly wouldn’t see anything bad.
In general, if you buy the Acer KG241Q to play and follow the few changes we’ve made directly to the monitor settings, you shouldn’t be bothered in the slightest. The user experience was great and we had nothing to complain about within the price and panel limitations it offers. To see what we have changed on the monitor, just see the section below.
Colors and Contrast
According to the specifications of the panel itself, it covers 72% of the NTSC color aspect, which in theory gives us 100% coverage of the sRGB aspect. Unfortunately we cannot validate these numbers because we do not have the testing tools.
What I can say is that we put it against other monitors certified for 99% DCI-P3, and what I can say is that it is far from this level of image quality, which reinforces its very low price which is currently varying between $ 181and $ 221, depending on the day and stores you access.
Again we put it in comparison with other monitors and also with its biggest competitor, the Warrior Kai 144Hz. If you haven’t seen his review, it’s worth checking out.
We placed the two monitors side by side in two different comparisons: one before calibration and one after, and the results were very interesting, quite different from what we expected to see.
When we place the two monitors with the factory default settings, the difference between them is clear and Kai is in the front by a large margin. The KG241Q’s colors are too green and the monitor looks not only like a green film but also exaggerated.
The contrast is also a place where Kai is ahead when the monitors are original from the factory, something that was totally expected due to the different technologies used in both monitors.
But, as I mentioned before in the review, we always do color calibration to get the closest to the real colors of the images, and this is where the Acer monitor goes ahead. Because of the extensive color configuration menu that Acer provides, it has a lot of adjustment flexibility and ends up having a much more accurate color reproduction after the internal adjustments.
Adjusting the image just like we did shouldn’t take you more than 5 minutes, and to help you even more I’ll leave you with a short list of the adjustments we’ve made.
- Brightness 76
- Contrast 30
- Black Boost 4
- Gamma 1.8
- R Gain 54
- G Gain 42
- B Gain 50
- R Bias 47
- G Bias 46
- B Bias 45
- Blue Light, ACM, Super Sharpness, VRB and Aim Point OFF.
The rest that was not mentioned have been kept at the default values.
So, to finish this part, we can conclude that your factory colors are not very good, there is a great tendency towards green and it is very apparent depending on which environment you are using the monitor. But, after correct adjustments the colors are much clearer as well as the contrast improves a lot, making it a great option and competition to Warrior Kai, his main rival.
Ghosting / Fringing
Ghosting is the effect caused by the slow change of pixels on a computer screen, the ideal is that when we take a picture of the monitor, we need to see only the image that is being shown totally static, without any kind of blur or trail behind the image.
As usual, for the video review, we use the iPhone XR with slow-motion recording and for the photos in this article, we use a Canon T5 with 1 / 160sec shutter speed, giving more than enough time for the monitor to display fully static images on all the UFO Test tracks.
And luckily the result is very good for an input panel, there is a little fringing in the images, but low enough not to be noticed during the game, while Ghosting is very little and again it doesn’t bother.
Even with the good results presented by the monitor, he still ends up being minimally behind the Warrior Kai, but it is so little that you don’t really notice the difference during use, only in tests. If that was a concern with the monitor, then know that you no longer have to worry.
Input Lag
The Input Lag “test” is always recorded in slow motion to give an idea of the monitor’s delay. We always use the same environment and the same game to ensure that there will be no gross differences between each monitor.
Again, I emphasize that it is more a visual test than a scientific one and it is an aspect that I do not conclude – unless it is a big problem – due to the lack of testing equipment. As soon as we have the appropriate equipment we will update all possible reviews.
From the video, everything indicates that the Acer KG241Q has a delay very close to the Warrior Kai, with only one instance being longer than the rest, but this could very well be an external influence – like some other program updating in the Background, for example.
We can then conclude that there are no major delay problems on the part of the monitor and that you should not have any problems in competitive games because of that, after all I also played a lot with the monitor and could not notice any problems.
Conclusion
And this review ends with yet another good evaluation of a monitor that has been competitively priced and has not shown any serious flaws during the tests, proving to be the Warrior Kai’s real competitor in both price and quality.
In the end, what will define which one you prefer will be your preference. Want a more modern design and just plugin, connect to the PC and play? Warrior Kai. Do you want a slightly better image as well as firmer support on the floor and don’t care much for the appearance? Acer KG241Q.
Acer proved to be a good option between $ 161-201, prices that are seen almost weekly in several retail stores and the good part is that this is also true for Kai, but the criticisms still remain the same: IPS panel, greater color aspect coverage (at least 100% of Adobe RGB) and foot with more adjustments should already be standard at this time of the championship.
But regardless of which one you choose from the current options, you will undoubtedly be well served by the price and you should not regret your choice.
Pros:
- Plenty of color and contrast adjustment flexibility, greatly improving image quality
- Very stable support foot
- Low price
Cons:
- There are no height adjustments and no vertical / horizontal rotation
- Panel still uses TN technology
- Design gives an old product look
- Factory colors are not very good
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