The budget monitor market is pretty difficult to navigate. This has nothing to do with the latest technology, but rather the sheer number of options available. You can find hundreds of monitors in the 24-to-27-inch range for between $100 and $200. The Acer CB272 Ebmiprx is one such monitor, with decent image quality but can be had at a very reasonable price.
Acer’s CB272 is a typical 27-inch, 1080p monitor save for a few notable specifications. These include a 100Hz maximum refresh rate, instead of 75Hz, and support for AMD FreeSync. Around the back, you’ll find a VGA port, a DisplayPort and just one HDMI port.
Pricing is competitive at under $200, in line with, or slightly undercutting alternatives like the Asus VA27EQSB or the HP M27ha. Sceptre is the only brand that consistently beats Acer on price, and only by a few dollars. This sets a new low bar, and that should excite budget buyers looking for a decent home-office monitor.
Acer CB272 Specs
- Display size: 27 inches
- Panel type: IPS
- Refresh rate: 75Hz
- Native resolution: 1920×1080
- Adaptive sync: AMD FreeSync
- Ports: 1x HDMI, 1x VGA, 1 x DisplayPort
- Stand adjustment: Tilt, Swivel, Height
- VESA mount: Yes, 100x100mm
- Speakers: Yes
- Response Time: 1ms VRB
Design
We’re used to budget monitors with uninspired designs, but Acer places some emphasis on the CB272’s aesthetics. The monitor sports slim bezels on three sides and a chin on the bottom. The panel is supported by a matching circular base that provides 20 degrees of tilt adjustability and also gets height and swivel adjustments that you rarely find on value monitors costing this little. It also has VESA-mounting capabilities. The 27-inch 1,920-by-1,080 resolution IPS panel has a non-reflective coating and a peak brightness of 250 nits.
Along the rear-right edge of the panel is a strip of glossy-black trim that holds four function buttons and a Power Switch, and around the rear-bottom panel are an HDMI port, a DisplayPort, and a VGA port, as well as a headphone jack.
Like most midrange monitors, the Acer CB272 lacks USB ports but gets a pair of built-in speakers. You get basic picture settings, including Brightness, Contrast, Blue Light adjustments, and common (Focus, Position, and Clock) settings. Included in the package are a VGA and audio cables.
Performance
No one demands excellent image quality from a budget monitor, but I think this makes image quality even more important. Any $500 monitor can deliver impeccable image quality, but for a sub-$200 monitor, the expectations are pretty low. Fortunately, the Acer CB272 Ebmiprx is among the better monitors in the budget category.
The CB272 bmiprx’s out-of-the-box color accuracy is good, but not ideal. On a chromaticity chart, its red and green colours are a tad misaligned with their ideal CIE coordinates, but blue is fine. Nevertheless, the panel produces rich, well-saturated colours in testing and while displaying Netflix’s Our Planet on Blu-ray.
Grey-scale performance is also good, although the Acer CB272 displays every shade of grey on the DisplayMate 64-Step Gray-Scale test, it doesn’t get the same level of clarity and shadow detail that you’ll get from a high-end IPS panel, such as the one used on the LG 27UK850-W. Viewing-angle performance, on the other hand, is excellent, with no colour shifting or loss of luminance from any angle.
The panel’s 1-millisecond VRB (Visual Response Boost) pixel does a good job of decreasing blur in fast-moving images to achieve the ideal effects of a 1ms MPRT, but that doesn’t make this the best gaming monitor out there. Brightness comes in at a maximum of 250 nits, an above-average result for this category. Many competitors are closer to 200 nits. This means the Acer CB272 can appear bright and vivid even when used in a bright room without blinds or curtains.
Input lag (the amount of time it takes for the monitor to react to a controller command) came in at an impressive 9.7 milliseconds which is at par with the competing Acer EB321HQU but is slightly behind our fastest monitor, the BenQ SW2700PT and BenQ ZOWIE XL2430, both measuring 9.5 milliseconds.
Should you buy the Acer CB272 Monitor?
The Acer CB272 Ebmiprx is an easy monitor to recommend for budget buyers. It’s not extraordinary – nothing in this price range is – but it’s attractive enough and doesn’t disappoint in any scenario. That makes it a safe bet.
It should fit the bill if you’re looking for a decent, affordable display for workday tasks. For a bit more money, though, you can get a higher-resolution 27-inch panel such as the LG UltraFine 27UN850-W, which gives you a wider range of ports as well (including USB-C).
If this Acer CB272 Ebmiprx Review has you considering some other 27-inch office/productivity monitors, here are some top picks to consider…
Our Pick
Acer CB272 Ebmiprx 27" FHD 1920 x 1080 Zero Frame Home Office Monitor | AMD FreeSync | 1ms VRB | 100Hz | 99% sRGB | Height Adjustable Stand with Swivel, Tilt & Pivot (Display Port, HDMI & VGA Ports)
20 used from $80.59
