Acer has announced two incoming budget-yet-premium gaming monitors to power AMD's FreeSync-supporting graphics cards. The new XZ1 series will come in 27" (XZ271U) and 31.5" (XZ321QU), thus appealing to two different market segments. The new monitors both sport a 144 Hz, 1 ms, 16:9 VA panel with WQHD (2560 x 1440) resolution. Both are curved affairs; contrast stands at 3000:1; color coverage is at 85% of the NTSC color-space; and we're saying they are HDR10 ready because with their maximum brightness of 250 and 300 cd/m², respectively, they'll never be able to showcase the tiniest amount of HDR10 detail. Like the initial HD ready TVs which only supported 720p resolution but could process higher-density images, so does this HDR10 badge not mean there's an actual ability to properly display HDR10 content as it was meant to be.

Connectivity stands at 1x DisplayPort 1.2, 1x mini DisplayPort 1.2, and 2x HDMI 2.0 headers. There are two 7 W stereo speakers and a headphone jack in each monitor, as well as a quad-port USB 3.0 Type-A hub. The stands can tilt between -5 to 25 degrees, swivel +/- 25 degrees, and provide height adjustments of up to 120 mm. Both panels can now be purchased at Amazon.com, with pricing set at $527 and $550 respectively (not final retail pricing for the Americas).