The world of OLED gaming monitors is ever expanding, and it’s becoming harder and harder for new models to stand out. But that’s exactly what the Acer Predator X34 OLED does thanks to its deep-dish curve and immersive gaming experience. Coming in at $1,199 MSRP but frequently available for far less (I found it available at multiple retailers for $850 or under), it’s a premium gaming monitor that’s able to deliver an exceptionally immersive gaming experience that many gamers are sure to enjoy. Just prepare for an adjustment period if you plan to use it for productivity.
Acer Predator X34 OLED – Design and Features
The Acer Predator X34 OLED is a 34-inch ultra-wide gaming monitor designed to act as the flagship model for the brand. It comes with premium specs to deliver a fantastic gaming experience and is designed with a gaming-first ethos. It features a deep and immersive curve to create a gaming experience that seems to draw you in. This same quality makes it more challenging to use for productivity, so it won’t be a good fit for everyone, but for pure gaming it promises an exciting and engaging experience.
The monitor’s on-paper specs are fantastic. Since it uses an OLED panel, it promises deep midnight blacks and a wide dynamic range that’s able to reveal detail even in deep shadows. OLED currently offers the best image quality available in gaming monitors, and this most recent generation of panels, as is used here in this display, is less susceptible to burn-in and other drawbacks like text clarity. What you’re left with is fantastic contrast, incredible colors, and high peak brightness rated at an impressive 1,300 nits.
Breaking that down a bit further, the X34 OLED is rated to cover 99% of the DCI-P3 color gamut and 100% of sRGB. It features a dedicated sRGB mode for creators, as well DCI-P3 and Rec.709 modes to act as a reference for color-critical work. OLED monitors are well regarded for the richness and vibrancy of their colors, and the X34 is no exception. It comes well-calibrated out of the box, and its colors, while not oversaturated, appear very vivid.
Its brightness, while rated for 1300 nits, will only hit this in very, very small portions of the screen when running in HDR mode for standard definition content such as normal web browsing. It instead averages around 250 nits, which is relatively dim compared to an equally matched LCD monitor but typical of OLEDs due to power draw and heat. Generally, this is bright enough to use in a well-lit room comfortably, but the monitor should not be placed in direct sunlight.
The monitor has an ultra-wide design and measures 34 inches diagonally with a 21:9 aspect ratio. It has the wide equivalent of 1440p resolution, and due to the extra width, requires more GPU power to run effectively. It has a resolution of 3,440 x 1,440 pixels, which puts it in between a traditional 16:9 1440p monitor and 4K in terms of how difficult it is to run. To reach its maximum frame rate, you’ll need a beefy GPU or be willing to lower graphics settings in demanding games. Even so, it’s a great resolution for a screen of this size and results in a very crisp and detailed picture.
The Predator X34 OLED is fantastically responsive. OLED panels are naturally very fast, and Acer rates the monitor with a 0.01ms response time. I lack the tools to accurately test at such a low latency; however, it’s typical for OLED panels to measure at 0.03ms, while other gaming monitors might top out at 0.5ms (more commonly, 1ms). This leads to bottomed out input latency, so, in a shooter for example, the clicks of your mouse appear on screen as gunshots measurably faster than IPS, VA, or TN based gaming monitors.
The X34 pairs this with a 240Hz refresh rate, meaning that it refreshes the screen 240 times every second. As I alluded to above, it would be very difficult to achieve such a high frame rate in any kind of demanding game, even with the top of the line GPU, unless you are running DLSS and frame generation. Even if you don’t always hit this (it’s typically only feasible in esports and very non-demanding games), setting that high refresh rate results in lower input latency overall, so there’s still benefit to leaving that setting enabled. The higher your actual frame rate goes, motion clarity gets progressively better. For competitive games, this monitor is quite good.
The X34’s most defining feature is its deep 800R curve. The vast majority of curved gaming monitors come in at 1800R or 1500R, both of which are fairly gentle. An 800R curvature is very pronounced and wraps into your peripheral vision to improve your immersion at the same time, but causes noticeable warping of text and images along its curve. For gaming, this doesn’t matter since the wraparound effect is appealing, but for productivity, it definitely takes some getting used to. While some people don’t mind it, many find it distracting compared to a shallower curve or even a flat panel.
The monitor supports a generous array of connectivity options. There are two HDMI 2.1 ports, one DisplayPort 1.4, and one USB Type-C with DisplayPort that’s also able to supply up to 90 watts of power. There’s also a built-in USB hub that offers two USB Type-A ports and an additional USB Type-C. This hub also acts as a KVM, so you can take connected accessories between hosts with the push of a button. The X34 also includes a headphone jack and sports two 5-watt speakers that get relatively loud and, while not as full-bodied as a separate pair of speakers, are better than most others you’ll find built into a gaming monitor.
The monitor also comes with a decent stand that is relatively thin, though it does have two long legs that protrude out to increase its overall footprint on your desk. It offers the ability to adjust height up and down a bit over four inches, tilt from -5 to +15 degrees, and pivot with a range of 15 degrees as well. The assembly is tool-less and easy to do, even if you’ve never set up your own monitor before. I recommend having an extra set of hands if at all possible to avoid needing to lay the monitor down on its face or risking putting pressure on its very fragile panel.
The OSD is straightforward and navigated using a joystick built into the display. It’s fairly standard fare at this point with a number of different picture presets based on the genre, as well as the ability to adjust the gamma and saturation settings. It offers a sharpness setting as well as an OLED Care menu to toggle its different protective features on and off. There’s also a uniform brightness setting, which limits overall brightness and reduces the fluctuations that occur when expanding full screen content. I didn’t find this to be very noticeable, so I left it turned off, but if you’re sensitive, the option is there.
It’s also worth noting that Acer has an installable software suite to control many of these settings called Acer Display Widget. In truth, there are few monitor brands where the configuration software feels like more than an afterthought, and this isn’t an exception. Still, you’ll find most of your most used options here, so it’s an effective alternative if you hate fiddling around with the actual OSD.
Acer Predator X34 OLED – Performance
The Acer Predator X34 OLED is a gaming monitor first and foremost. That works to its benefit, but it can also be a detriment in other areas, like the aforementioned productivity concerns I outlined in the previous section. You also see that manifest in some other ways.
For pure gaming, it’s great, but you should be prepared to either put a little work in or make a handful of concessions if you plan on using this as your daily driver for both work and play.
For starters, though its calibration isn’t bad, it’s not the most color accurate out-of-the-box, and would benefit from calibration for creative work. Grayscale accuracy measured a Delta E average of 4.78, tending toward the green end of the spectrum. Color accuracy was a bit better with a Delta E average of 3.12. With a calibration run using my SpyderPro colorimeter, I was able to dial that in to an average of 1.21, so it’s possible to get very good results (generally, anything under an average of 2.0 is considered well-calibrated).
Response time is excellent with no ghosting whatsoever. I would expect nothing less from an OLED gaming monitor, and particularly one that runs at 240Hz. Testing in the BlurBuster’s TestUFO Ghosting Test, there was no ghosting whatsoever. In-game, it’s equally crisp with motion clarity that’s on par with the competition, which is to say: as good as any monitor can be at this point. Now, your skill will need to be equally matched to this level of clarity. Making a headshot mid-spin is still a skill that takes equally matched reaction time, but this removes one more glass ceiling for pro-level play.
The experience of daily driving the monitor is going to vary from person to person. As I mentioned before, for productivity, that text warping can be distracting. I tried using it for a bit of everything during my test window, and it’s not a monitor I would choose if I was going to be writing or reading. Most of the time I was at my PC for creative work and video editing in particular, it was much better.
I especially liked it for video editing. The ability to see more of the timeline and have it wrap around visually a bit more made editing more efficient. Though I would be remiss to leave out that this would also be true if the curve wasn’t there at all. Simply being able to view more of the timeline at any given point allows that efficiency. The curve just enhances the experience… if it’s to your taste.
And that right there is the crux of this monitor. You have to love the curve, and it’s not a given that you will, even if you enjoy other less-curved monitors. 800R is deep. It’s made to simulate having two curved monitors in surround mode without a bezel in between. If you’ve been a PC gamer for a long time and have tried this yourself, then you’re likely to feel right at home. If the idea sounds ludicrous, then it’s probably best to stick to a shallower curve.
I fall into that camp, having tried this setup myself only a few years ago. Regretfully, I only had 32-inch curved monitors to try it with, and it dominated not just my desk but what felt like half of my office, and since they were each 1440p, it was extremely difficult to run. It just wasn’t practical. But for driving games, flight sims, and even many first-person games like Doom Eternal, it was quite immersive. It can also be pretty darn enrapturing.
So I like it. I really like it. It’s a perfect fit for games like Microsoft Flight Simulator, but as someone drawn to this type of curvature in the first place, I also find a lot to enjoy with it in other genres too. I found myself scooting closer to the screen than I usually sit in Baldur’s Gate 3, so it would occupy more of my peripheral vision. In Battlefield 2042, it felt a bit strange at first, but soon I was immersed in the game, feeling like I had my own wraparound view of the furious fray before me.
At least for me. That’s the thing. This type of display is so subjective that I could only recommend picking it up blind if you have a return policy you can rely on. The quality of the monitor itself is excellent, but the experience of using it is something you really can’t know without trying it or another that’s similar for yourself. If you like it, you’ll probably come to downright love it in time. If you don’t, you may just find that your expensive new gaming monitor is just plain untenable.
