Rare Acer 27" 3D monitor on Amazon & Newegg now!

The Acer HN274H bmiiid, which is so ridiculously hard to find, has peeked its head up again in the US on Amazon & Newegg. The first production run pretty much sold out in the space of a few weeks early in Q2 (April/May). This monitor and a similar Acer 24" monitor was simply impossible to find in the US, while occasionally they would show up in Europe and Australia.

There were rumors that despite a more-difficult-than-anticipated first production run, due to strong unfulfilled demand Acer was contemplating second production run for the second half of the summer. These may or may not be from the second run, I don't know.

They're very popular (and extremely hard to come by) because they are the only 27" 120Hz 3D monitor with LED-backlight that has all three of these features:
-Supports Nvidia 3D Vision (wireless glasses bundled with them) over the DVI Dual-Link port
-built-in IR emitter
-Supports HDMI 1.4a 3D standard and compatible with Blu-Ray 3d playback


Amazon is showing two units available via their Amazon Marketplace, shipped from Circuit City. Newegg also has it available, not sure how many they have left, so call it quantity=n-1 as I just bought one from there, will look great with my just-arrived ODE-3. Buy.com and Tigerdirect also have it.
 
Now, it's important to highlight that this monitor is a TN panel with a LED backlight, so keep those technologies' advantages and downsides in mind, and don't use the monitor for things that TN panels aren't good for, such as color-critical work. But from what I've read about the units from the first production run, the 2D performance in terms of GTG time is very smooth (2ms) and input lag is minimal.
 
The only other 27" 3D monitors out there, the Samsung S27 series, use the DDD Tri-DEF 3D solution that does NOT work with SLI or CrossFire, and of course is not compatible with Nvidia 3D Vision.

As far as the mythical 27" Asus equivalent to this monitor...well, I'm reading that more and more people are starting to just slap a "Vaporware" sticker on it: Announced, but never shipped.

If 27" is too big for you, then there might be a chance that the Acer GN245HQ may peek its head up on retail sites as well sometime this summer. This is Acer's 24" 120Hz 3D monitor that also does Nvidia 3D Vision and HDMI 1.4a. I've read that the 24" has somewhat better performance in terms of less 3D crosstalk and 3D color burn than the 27", although supposedly in both monitors they're very low already.

The LED backlight makes for a nice, bright image. In fact, reading some reviews shows that the Monitor supposedly pumps way much more light than specified: 500cd/m2 at full tilt vs. the 300cd/m2 in the specifications. This is good as 3D gaming glasses do significantly darken an image.
However, at high brightness & contrast you are increasing 3d crosstalk, 3d ghosting, and 3d color burn, and your color accuracy is worthless, so it's best to turn them down to 40% or less, which still yields around 400cd/m2. 0% contrast still yields about 270cd/m2, still good.


So if you were looking for a 120Hz 3D monitor that works with Nvidia 3D Vision (and comes with glasses), and has HDMI 1.4a, then now is the time to get one.

Or three, if you have Tri-SLI'ed GTX 580's: I have three old 20" 1600x1200 LCDs, and Surround Vision is awesome on the ODE Level 3 (provided you keep a lid on the detail levels as SLI GTX 570 isn't quite enough sometimes), so I can only extrapolate that 3D Surround Vision is just amazing if you have the raw horsepower!


Edited by lukexcom - 26 Jun 2011 at 12:42pm