Design & Ergonomics

The Predator XB271HU's key aspect as far as design goes is what Acer calls "Zero Frame". That's what they decided to name these incredibly thin screen bezels. The top, left, and right bezels measure in at a mere 5 millimeters, which is almost smartphone-level thinness - on a 27" PC monitor! By making the bezels so thin, Acer achieved an increased feeling of immersion. When using this monitor, you feel as though you have nothing but the picture in front of you, almost floating in midair. Good stuff!


The bottom bezel is significantly thicker (2.5 centimeters). Here's where they placed the on-screen display and, more importantly, the Predator logo. Feel free to call me an elitist (or a man-child), but I absolutely adore the fact that they went with the Predator instead of the Acer logo. Every single person that walked by this monitor while I was testing it took notice of the Predator logo and stopped to ask me about it. It's not that Acer isn't a good name, but it really doesn't compete with something as cool as having the word "Predator" subtly decorating the front of your monitor.


The base of the monitor spans wide and is very stable. The red details are there for added aggressiveness, which I'm not a huge fan of as it could clash with the color scheme of the rest of your setup - assuming that's something you care about. The base measures a full 45 centimeters in width and around 28 centimeters in depth, so make sure your table is big enough to support it.


The stand is massive and carefully thought out. It allows us to adjust the screen in all possible directions, and you can route the cables through the built-in hole.


You can swivel the screen to the left and right by exactly 30° to each side. The smoothness of the mechanism that allows you to do so isn't perfect, but doing so with just a hand is still possible.


Lines that act as markings on both the base and the stand make figuring out when the screen is properly centered easy.


The screen can also be adjusted in height. When placed in its upmost position, the distance between the screen's bottom edge and the table's surface is 18.8 centimeters. After you push it all the way down, it drops down to 3.6 centimeters. That gives us a hefty 15 centimeters of height to work with, which is more than enough for any scenario I can think of.


The angle you can tilt the screen in spans from +35° to -5°, which is again more than enough for any usage scenario. It moves fairly smoothly across that range and has no trouble staying in the exact position you put it in.


The screen can also be pivoted by 90°, which makes plugging the cables in easier and enables you to use it as a secondary screen to follow Twitch and YouTube chats on. Although, truth be told, you'd have to be slightly mad to buy a monitor of this price and quality level for that. Once you bring it back into its horizontal position, you'll have to spend a minute to straighten it out with the surface because it won't fall into a perfectly straight position on its own.


In case you don't want to use the supplied base and stand, you can simply mount the screen onto a standard VESA 100x100 mount and use it that way.

The monitor's overall design, especially its impressively thin bezels, is great, and the ergonomics are impressive - just as you would hope them to be when you spend this much money on a monitor.