So you want an ultrawide gaming monitor, then? You’ve decided that you want to step up the level of immersion in your games and realize one of the best ways to do this is to fill your peripheral vision with epic graphics and action. But do you go with a curved monitor or a flat one? Should it have a VA panel for better contrast or an IPS panel for better color reproduction? Those are tricky questions to answer, but at least you’ve got two great deals on Acer monitors that can fill your ultrawide needs.
To begin with, they’re both 34 inches in size, with a 21:9 aspect ratio and a resolution of 3440×1440. That’s 33% more pixels than regular 16:9 1440p monitors but 40% less than a 4K one, so you’re getting a nice balance between improved visual fidelity and increased workload on the graphics card.
The Acer Nitro EDA343CUR is the cheaper of the two, despite having a 1000R curved screen. That’s because it uses a VA panel with a refresh rate of 100 Hz, so it’s not the fastest you can get. But anything over 75 Hz gives your eyes a much nicer time, and VA panels are great for high contrast ratios and dark black levels.
For $20 more, though, you could go with the Acer Nitro XVC340CK which has a totally flat screen, using an IPS panel rated at 144 Hz. That’s better for your eyes and IPS panels do have better color reproduction than VA ones. A few of us in the PC Gamer office think that if you’re going to ultrawide, then having a curved screen just adds a little bit more to the overall sense of immersion.
Acer states that both monitors are HDR10-compliant, but with peak brightness levels of 300 and 250 nits respectively, you probably won’t want to use them in HDR mode anyway. Fortunately, both support FreeSync variable refresh rate technology, so you can wave goodbye to screen tearing during games.
Neither model has a feature-rich stand, though, with just a small range in height and tilt on offer. At least both have enough HDMI and DisplayPort sockets to let you connect any gaming PC to them.
So which one to choose—a curved VA panel at 100 Hz or a flat IPS screen at 144 Hz? I’d probably go with the former for outright gaming, even though I prefer IPS panels over VA ones. That 1000R curvature is pretty gentle so it won’t take long to get used to it, but it will help the edges of the monitor sit better in the corners of your vision.
Once you’ve gamed on an ultrawide screen, you may never want to use a regular monitor ever again.
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