We Review Amazon's Best Selling Monitor: the Acer SB220Q 21.5" is just $90
We went out looking for Amazon'south most pop monitor and what we discovered was Acer'due south SB220Q 1080p 75Hz IPS display. This monitor tops both the best selling and the about wished for monitors listing, so that'd seem to indicate not only are customers buying this monitor, but they actually desire it in significant numbers.
Another key indicator that caught our attention were user reviews. At that place are over iv,000 of them, giving it a 4.6 star average which is solid, and then we'll have to meet how it holds upward in our testing.
Clearly one of the reasons why the SB220Q is then popular comes down to that price tag. $90 is very inexpensive for a monitor and information technology'due south hard to notice many cheaper than this. One time yous offset hitting $70 or even $fourscore you start limiting yourself to sub-1080p options and plenty of outdated rubbish. Then if you lot've just built a PC and you lot have nothing left in your budget, grabbing i of the cheapest 1080p displays on Amazon seems like something a lot of people are doing.
On paper, the specs also make this an enticing purchase beneath $100. Nosotros're looking at a 22-inch 1080p IPS panel with a 75 Hz refresh rate. Now if y'all've been following our monitor reviews, this is not in the same realm as the usual 1080p and 1440p 144Hz stuff we expect at. Simply we think what Acer is offering is even so impressive for the toll.
This is an IPS panel, not TN, and TNs are usually the almost affordable monitor category. On tiptop of that, we practice get a slight bump up in refresh charge per unit from baseline 60 Hz to 75Hz. A few little extras here and there tin become a long mode to making an entry-level monitor stand out from the pack.
That said, 22-inches, or more accurately 21.5 inches, is pocket-size for a monitor. Even 24 or 25-inch displays feel like a substantial upgrade in panel size. Something 24.five-inches ends up nearly 30% larger, so this is one of the more significant trade-offs to bring the price down. We looked effectually just in example and y'all can't find a 24-inch IPS display for less than $100.
With that said, the Acer SB220Q does feature adaptive sync support, but information technology merely comes with a single HDMI port (alongside VGA). That means adaptive sync is just usable with AMD GPUs since Nvidia's current-gen products don't support adaptive sync over HDMI. The adaptive sync implementation isn't great either: with just a 75 Hz maximum refresh and 48 Hz minimum, there's no low framerate bounty. This means as soon as your frame charge per unit drops beneath 48 FPS, adaptive sync disengages and you lot'll get-go seeing fierce or stuttering depending on your Vsync settings.
It's not a swell experience to fluctuate in and out of the adaptive sync window, it can be quite jarring. And so having a graphics card capable of consistent 1080p threescore fps gameplay is going to be key. Not anybody buying a $90 monitor is going to fall into that category, if you take an RX 560, for example, yous might struggle. On the other manus, these sorts of adaptive sync bug are present with nigh all sub-100Hz displays, so information technology is non a unique problem to the SB220Q.
Oh, and the SB220Q is the outset monitor we've tested in a long time that merely comes with a VGA cable in the box. HDMI cablevision sold separately. Given graphics cards ditched VGA around a decade ago, is the target for this cable pick those with ancient laptops or PCs?
In terms of build quality, the Acer SB220Q is basic as expected. The stand is most entirely plastic, it'south surprisingly solid and overall the display is very sparse, only this is a inexpensive blueprint and build. Unspectacular plastic, average bezel size, and very limited adjustability. The stand simply supports tilt adjustment, and because of the small brandish size, without meridian adjustability it sits very low on your desk. Most people volition need to raise this up a good x to xx centimeters for ergonomic viewing, and you tin't do that with a VESA arm, as there's no mount. We don't expect budget monitors to feature a height adjustable stand, but not having a VESA mount is a bit of a stinger and really limits this monitor'southward usability.
In that location's no directional toggle for controlling the on-screen display, merely we'll practice with with face buttons. On a positive note, Acer hasn't skimped on the OSD, there'due south plenty of settings in line with most of their other budget monitors, so we withal go stuff like blue light filters and cheat crosshairs. At that place are likewise several overdrive settings, unlike another budget monitors nosotros've reviewed that completely neglect the feature.
Display Operation
Response Times / Overdrive Modes
Speaking of overdrive modes... let's take a look at response fourth dimension performance. Ther are 3 avialable modes: Normal is the default, there's too Off and Farthermost. Off is very dull, we're facing a 16.24ms grey to grey boilerplate which is typical of entry-level 1080p IPS panels without overdrive. Ghosting is pregnant using this mode, with long smear trails post-obit moving objects. But 27% of transitions come close to coming together the lengthy xiii.33ms refresh window, so this mode simply isn't fast enough and wouldn't be great at 60Hz either.
Normal takes things the other way, now we have a 6.40ms gray to gray average which is decent for an IPS monitor, and allows the SB220Q to reach 100% refresh charge per unit compliance. Nonetheless, this has come at the expense of overshoot, and quite a pregnant amount of overshoot. An boilerplate error rate of xiv.six% is high, and around half of all transitions experience inverse ghosting. Plenty of transitions are above 25% overshoot, which is noticeable.
The extreme mode is worse. It does push button the greyness to greyness average up to 3.77ms, but overshoot becomes overwhelming, leading to huge bright halos around moving objects. This mode is unusable.
Unfortunately, when you lot expect across these three modes neither is particularly good. In fact, we'd phone call Off and Normal 'bad' overdrive modes, and Extreme is terrible. So we're left with a predicament: is it amend to accept 16ms transitions with no overshoot, or 6ms transitions with substantial overshoot? Neither is platonic, merely this is what Acer presents us here.
When we wait at pursuit photographic camera footage using Blur Buster's UFO Test, which simulates how the human being center sees motion on this display, you lot tin see this in activity and how neither Off nor Normal deliver a peachy feel. Off is very slow with huge amounts of ghosting and smearing, with trails backside the moving UFO. Only then with Normal, these ghost trails are replaced with inverse ghosting, a bright trail that in some circumstances is more than noticeable than the blur trail.
We'd probably slightly prefer the Normal mode with inverse ghosting, we call up movement clarity is somewhat meliorate merely nosotros're choosing betwixt ii bad options.
The monitor is not whatever better at threescore Hz -- rather operation is worse at lx Hz than it is at 75 Hz with even greater levels of overshoot. It is a budget monitor, then we judge we can't expect more, but motion handling is definitely non one of this monitor'south stiff points.
How does the SB220Q compare to other 1080p monitors nosotros've tested? Well, in terms of grey to grey average using the Normal overdrive way, 6.40ms is non too bad for an IPS monitor. Nosotros get decent dark level performance, beating another cheap VA options like the Pixio PCX243, for example. Response time compliance using this mode is also fine, as y'all'd promise with a 75Hz refresh rate.
Simply it's with mistake rates that everything falls apart for the SB220Q. An average error of 14.half-dozen% is the highest we've tested among 1080p monitors, most of which sit more than in the 0 to 4% range using their optimal overdrive modes. This gets even worse when looking at changed ghosting: 46% of transitions suffering from the consequence is fashion higher than most 1080p monitors, to the point where inverse ghosting is more obvious than with whatsoever other monitor on this listing.
Let's run through some options here. The Viotek GN24C is a VA panel we've quite often recommended in the budget category, existence 1080p 144Hz, and it puts upwardly a 5ms grayness to gray boilerplate with 5% changed ghosting and similar night level performance. That is significantly better motion handling than you lot get with the Acer SB220Q.
Another more recent add-on is the Pixio PXC243, which has virtually no inverse ghosting simply suffers from a slower grey to grey boilerplate effectually seven.5ms. In other words, it's about 1ms slower than the SB220Q, simply completely eliminates the inverse ghosting trails, all with a VA console. Information technology too has significantly better movement handling, and of grade we can meet other options here likewise from AOC, LG and others.
Nearly of these other monitors are more expensive, around the $150 marking, so it makes sense they would perform better. Just nosotros're just not sure the SB220Q is delivering a neat bang for buck experience with this sort of performance.
60 Hz performance is okay in terms of response times, but does suffer from severe inverse ghosting.
Input lag is typical of a budget monitor, we're seeing a processing delay around iii.5ms, a slow refresh charge per unit and minor response times, and so this isn't delivering a low lag experience. Getting a 144Hz console instead would go a long style to lowering input lag merely once again, they're more expensive.
Power consumption is low at effectually 16W, although not that much lower than some 24" monitors nosotros've tested. Nevertheless, if heat output is a business organization, the SB220Q is gilded in this area.
At this bespeak nosotros've established the Acer SB220Q isn't very good every bit a gaming monitor, how about as a general office blazon monitor or just something for web browsing? This is where colour operation is much more of import, and then let's dive right in...
Color Functioning
Out of the box calibration is decent, which is welcome news for buyers after a neat colour experience. Our unit had near-perfect white levels, and while this did fall off slightly when moving through the rest of the greyscale with a small-scale xanthous tint, it wasn't that noticeable and far exceeded my expectations from a dirt cheap monitor. A greyscale deltaE of 2.45 isn't perfectly accurate, but very expert in this cost category.
Default Color Performance
Saturation operation is similar with a deltaE average of 2.48, mostly limited by some oddities with reds and greens. The panel used here tin can't quite hit 100% sRGB coverage, we're more at 93% so in that location is a flake of clipping with greens, but overall operation is solid even though we end up with a 3.39 deltaE average in ColorChecker.
Calibrated Color Operation
There isn't much that can be done to meliorate things using the OSD controls given the white point is already quite good, so the side by side step is a full calibration. As usual, this resolves most of our bug with this brandish'south manufacturing plant performance, tightening us up to a beneath 1.0 deltaE average across the lath. It's non perfect, again we come across clipping issues with green and cyan, and then we wouldn't recommend this display for color critical work, simply for a sub-$100 display this can deliver bang-up color performance.
Brightness from the SB220Q is mediocre at 240 nits after scale, although not likewise far away from near upkeep monitors. This is still brilliant plenty for nigh use cases merely if you take a really bright viewing surround like a sunny room, this might not be enough.
Contrast ratio is mediocre. Non surprising given information technology's a inexpensive IPS panel but 882:one puts it in the bottom rungs of our charts and more often than not this is low for an IPS. If you want better black levels and dissimilarity ratio, you'll have to fork out for a VA display. Information technology's besides worth pointing out this is a native half-dozen-fleck panel that achieves 8-chip through FRC, so color banding with gradients is a little more noticeable here than with a true 6-fleck display.
Viewing angles are excellent and the coating handles reflections well, so despite not having the about punchy blacks, the viewing experience here for colors we retrieve is quite good. If yous're doing some office piece of work, watching a few YouTube videos so forth, it's hard to complain about what the SB220Q delivers.
Uniformity is good as well. Not the best we've seen only the central area is well under control. At that place was a fleck of autumn off in the top left and bottom correct of my retail unit, and there was also a small amount of IPS glow noticeable in darker viewing environments, but nothing too terrible.
Wrap Upwards
By now you should accept a pretty good idea of how the Acer SB220Q performs as a sub-$100 monitor. We haven't reviewed a ton of monitors in this toll category despite how popular they are, but hither are some terminal thoughts and comparisons based on what nosotros'd wait from an entry-level production.
To reach this kind of price point, clearly lots of compromises had to be made. Outside of panel performance, the small 21.5-inch size and lack of VESA mount immediately jump out as trade-offs, along with the slow design all-circular. But these are common areas where we'd expect costs to be cut and honestly, for a lot of use cases information technology's non a large deal.
In terms of bodily panel performance, we call back the Acer SB220Q is perfectly fine for basic viewing, office tasks, productivity, video playback and those kind of tasks. We're getting skilful manufacturing plant calibration with a very solid white signal. At that place'due south no obvious tint and that makes information technology dandy for certificate editing and spider web browsing, which is nevertheless dominated by expansive white areas. Combine that with fantabulous viewing angles and acceptable uniformity, and yeah, for a $90 monitor nosotros're impressed with the colors.
As was to be expected, the SB220Q is not good for gaming. If yous were fooled past the 75Hz refresh rate and adaptive sync at the dirt cheap price betoken, unfortunately none of the overdrive modes are skilful, leaving the states with either bad levels of smearing or bad levels of changed ghosting. This is an ultra-affordable low-terminate IPS panel with deadening response times. And to its credit, it'south probably not that unlike to other sixty to 75 Hz IPS monitors around the same price.
With today's depression prices for 144Hz 1080p monitors, we don't call up the SB220Q delivers a lot of blindside for buck as a gaming display. The Viotek GN24C, PXC243 and AOC C24G1 are all $140 to $160. That's ~60% more expensive than the SB220Q, but what you get is at least twice as fast and twice as good at motion handling.
Just of class, $90 vs $150 for a lot of buyers is comparison apple tree to oranges. For around $xc we tin't see many ameliorate options than the SB220Q.
We feel this situation is somewhat similar to depression-terminate graphics cards. The value isn't quite there with the absolute cheapest GPUs, and you're improve off moving one tier up where you lot get significant improvements. Those 144Hz monitors are such dandy value right now that our recommendation for entry-level gaming monitors is going to stay with them, just for simpler web browsing, office productivity, YouTube, watching movies, perhaps you want it equally a second monitor, it's really slap-up for $xc.
Shopping Shortcuts:
- Acer SB220Q on Amazon
- AOC C24G1 on Amazon
- Viotek GN24C on Amazon
- Viotek PXC243 on Amazon
- LG 27GL850 on Amazon
- AMD Radeon RX 5700 on Amazon
- GeForce RTX 2070 Super on Amazon
- GeForce RTX 2060 Super on Amazon
Source: https://www.techspot.com/review/1981-acer-sb220q-amazon-most-wanted/
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