We’ve been sitting on a little gem, and now with the release of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, a lot more people are searching for an affordable 4K monitor to play console games, do 4K PC gaming, watch content in ultra HD, or just get a massive boost to desktop space.
So this 32” Acer ET322QK wmiipx is a great 4K screen, and may be the answer for you. It’s not that expensive, has some great features for creators, and this Vertical Alignment or VA panel has great colors and brightness, and at 60hz it shines with some PC gaming too, like if you’re doing action/adventure titles like Cyberpunk 2077.
If you need 144hz you’d be looking at a 1440p gaming display for shooters. 4K 120 or 144hz displays are still double or more for price, and with PC gaming, 4K requires roughly double the GPU power over a 1440p screen, and 120 hertz is double 60 hertz again, so over 4 times the power required for a 4K 144hz image.
And you need a top end RTX 3090 or Radeon 6900XT to run games at that on ultra. Some games may be able to hit that, others will be too GPU heavy, so you may have to turn down details to hit that reliably. So if you’re into fast online action, get a 1440p 144hz instead.
Today though, we’ll review this 4K monitor, and with HDMI 2.0 it should support PS5 and Xbox X without issue, we tested and it works fine with a PS4 Pro outputting 4K. If you grab this 4K monitor through our affiliate links, it does help us out a bit here, so thanks for your support.
To keep up with our new videos and tech coverage you should give us a quick follow on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook all at techspinreview. At Techspin we deliver honest testing and opinions on tech, so you can decide quickly if it’s right for you. And if you find a great deal on a 4K screen or need a review on one, leave your comments down below. We’re finally reviewing this!
From sponsored links and as an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Learn more
Sponsor- Please use our affiliate links for FSP Hydro G Pro Power Supply at
AmazonUS: https://amzn.to/3uYPfTp Multi-Region: https://www.techspinreview.com/afl/200920
Acer ET322QK Quick Summary
Here’s a quick summary- the Acer ET322QK 32” 4k is a really nice 31.5 inch display with great colors and brightness, the 10-bit color supports multiple color spaces and it accepts HDR input over HDMI. It has decent viewing angles with a little color and contrast shift as you get towards the viewing angle limits. With speakers that deliver pretty okay quality and volume, it comes with a bonus headphone hook. This monitor has got a lot to offer.
Now Acer isn’t necessarily a name that jumps to mind for monitors, but actually they’ve made something pretty special here, with a unique stand and clean looking white back to the panel.
This Acer ET322QK wmiipx 32” 4K comes in at 430 USD, 400 British pounds, 500 Celine Dions- we found a listing at Walmart Canada, and around 670 Auzzie bucks. In the US we found an apparent variant with the same model number in black with identical screen properties but different stand for 380- on sale for 350, we won’t know if it’s really the same until we hear reports. Note availability and the stand changes per country.
From sponsored links and as an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Learn more
Please use our affiliate links for the Acer ET322Q 4K Monitor at
AmazonUS: https://amzn.to/3WkbcIZ Multi-Region: https://www.techspinreview.com/afl/201215
This Acer ET322QK is a 31.5 inch 3840 x 2160 16:9 4K VA panel at 60 hertz, this 10-bit color panel has a brightness of 300 cd/m2 (candala), and we searched and found a quoted 3000:1 contrast ratio with 47 watts power consumption. Measuring 73 centimeters wide by 53 high and 25 deep, it weighs in at 6.8 kilos, which is 12.4 pounds. Without stand, the monitor is 73 by 43.3 by 64.3 and 5.6 kilograms in case you want to mount it.
The matte finished VA panel does *100% sRGB color gamut with 178° degree viewing angles, giving very small color and contrast shifts as you move around, pretty good. The monitor also supports AMD Freesync to remove screen tearing, and it’s possible to use Freesync with NVIDIA graphic cards, so we hear. Backlight bleed is a bit noticeable, and we’ll try to show it the best we can on camera, however with an image, we didn’t feel it was that noticeable for a non-OLED panel.
4ms GtG response time on the Acer ET322QK
We found a test online that quoted around a 20 millisecond time for input lag, which is still in the average for gaming type monitors and TVs, although faster models are closer to 10 milliseconds. Since milliseconds are measured in thousandths of a second, at 60 hertz every 16.7 ms is another frame, so this means a one-frame delay, fairly average. We hope to get our hands on our own testing equipment for this soon.
With no height adjust, swivel or rotate, the sturdy gray aluminum stand does give a tilt adjustment of -4° to +12° degrees, and the legs make the monitor super stable.
It measures 10 millimeters wide, and with a millimeter of black screen inside and the 4 mil white shroud outside, pixel to air is actually 15 millimeters at the sides and top, the bottom has an extra centimeter of bezel so 25 mil total.
On the white back there’s a screw hole for the included headphone rest, a welcome feature. At the top there’s a standard 100 mil mounting spot at the top, and 4 way joystick and three control and a power button will be on the right side as you’re using it, and we’ll check out the menu in a bit. Build quality seems really well done, and it’s held up to multiple VESA mounting and base stand swapping.
Acer ET322QK’s Brightness, HDR
300 candala or nits, same thing, is a good brightness for a display of this size that’s close to you, and though it does support HDR through HDMI only, basically we’ll translate this to, it can accept the HDR signal. Gamers who appreciate HDR will want a monitor that’s 500 candala, and creative professionals need 1000 candala for real HDR color grading work, with at least 90% of DCI-P3 color range.
The Acer ET322QK can’t do this, so enabling HDR may not look better, in some cases slightly so, sometimes a little under contrasted or over-saturated colors. However the strengths of the monitor come from the 100% sRGB color gamut and advanced colorscape and calibration options, we’ll look at those in a moment.
In the box comes a DisplayPort cable, HDMI and a power cable. On the back of the Acer ET322QK there’s connections for two HDMI 2.0 ports, one display port 1.2, all supporting 4K at 60Hz, and a headphone jack. This monitor accepts HDR over it’s dual HDMI inputs, but since DisplayPort 1.4 introduced support for HDR, the Acer ET322QK’s DisplayPort 1.2 port won’t accept HDR.
This monitor has dual two watt speakers, and their quality is actually really decent considering their size and power. We listened to a bunch of music and in our subjective opinion, the audio has a fairly flat but good sounding response with tiny speaker bass, and you know what that sounds like.
Overall, it sounded much better than we expected, and with Party Rock Anthem we hit an average 74db from 30 centimeters, however the vocal only parts hit 84db in a few spots. We noticed some vocals or electronic music appeared to punch through more when there was no bass or accompanying sounds, so there’s a power limiter so you don’t fry your speakers, something we appreciate.
The Acer ET322QK menu
Hitting any of the three rear or joystick button will bring up the menu on the Acer ET322QK, the default has menu, mode, brightness and input. Hitting Mode we have sRGB, Rec. 709, HDR, User, Standard, Eco, Graphics and Movie.
Brightness is a simple slider, Input selects between HDMI 1, 2 or DisplayPort. Apart from the top to bottom wrapping menus for easy navigation, one of the cool features is that you can reassign the top two, modes and brightness, to something useful like Volume. Getting into the menu, we have Picture with Blue Light, ACM which is Adaptive Contrast Management, HDR and Super Sharpness. ACM adjusts the Contrast dynamically depending on content.
Color has Gamma, Color Temp when set to User, enables the 6 sliders below, next page has Modes which we’ve seen, and Color Space which has Standard, sRGBRec. 70, HDR, EBU, DCI, SMPTE-C. Below that are 6 axis Hue and Saturation controls.
Audio is a simple slider, next is Gaming, options for OverDrive, Freesync, Refresh Rate Num, and AimPoint, which puts a cursor dead center. Overdrive is supposed to be better for gaming, though we saw displayninja.com mention it caused a little bit of reverse ghosting. If you have this monitor, let us know in the comments what settings you chose for this.
In OSD you have a choice of 15 languages, OSD TImeout you can adjust from 10 to 120 seconds, and Transparency steps from Off, to 20, 40, 60 and 80 percent. In System there’s Input, Auto Source, DPFormat, WideMode has Full, Aspect or 1:1, there’s PIP or PBP settings, and this area has PIP large or small, or PBP settings.
Below that is Hot Key Assignment where you can assign Volume to a button, DDC/CI we’ll get into, HDMI Black Level has normal or Low which you can toggle if your picture looks a little washed out, and finally, Quick Start Mode to On if you don’t want to see the Acer logo when you turn on the monitor.
In this main menu the three buttons give you Information, Modes, and the X is Close, which you’ll need to select to turn on AimPoint or Refresh Rate Num. The Info area shows your Input signal stats, unfortunately, the first option is Reset All Settings and the bottom is exit. We have no idea why this is located here instead of settings, as here it makes no sense, and it’s too easy to reset by accident.
I needed to research DDC/CI which stands for Display Data Channel / Command Interface, and it enables control with a program like ClickMonitorDDC to see info and adjust brightness and contrast of your monitor by clicking on the Taskbar icon.
Acer ET322QK Summary
A really good package deal, the Acer ET322QK wmiipx has impressive color and brightness bringing sharp 4K resolution monitors to a more affordable price range. It’s really suitable for 4K console gaming like PS5, XBox Series X and PS4 Pro, we ran Netflix’s Our Planet and wow, that’s beautiful imagery.
With solid no-wobble construction and a sturdy no-tip base, the color profiles, a headphone holder and pretty decent speakers are icing on this cake. The monitor color design also feels very unique with a white colored back case and black frame at front, though the bezel could use a diet.
We’ve been using this monitor for almost a year already and really depend on the picture it provides, so it’s great for content creation too. We also tried some gaming on it, and the amount of details is really amazing, seeing Witcher 3 in it’s full high-res glory was amazing and we’re super stoked to play Cyberpunk 2077 on this! It also performed really well with PS4 Pro 4K and should be just fine for next gen consoles also.
For graphic designers and content creators the color spaces and massive work area is a huge bonus, making the monitor a good partner for editing media that needs high color accuracy, even if it doesn’t have a listed DCI-P3 rating.
The 3000:1 contrast maybe doesn’t sound impressive compared to other monitors’ bloated specs, but on screen it looks quite good. It can accept HDR over HDMI only due to the DisplayPort 1.2 not 1.4, but just be aware the 300 candala is fine for normal use, so don’t expect to experience amazing HDR, nor do pro HDR grading on this monitor.
With a wealth of color and display settings to choose from, the viewing angles deliver an accurate picture even off to the side a bit, though as you get to a really wide viewing angle the color and contrast starts to vary slightly, which is better than other VA panels we’ve reviewed so far. Plus the dual button assign-ability makes for easy volume and other feature access.
For console gaming, this monitor is a no-brainer, and for PC gaming, again, 4K 60 hertz will be fine for action adventure games like Cyberpunk 2077. Those looking for fast 144 or 240 hertz refresh rates should be looking at a fast 1440p screen anyways. The 4 millisecond gray to gray response time and roughly 20 millisecond input lag is average, and equals about one frame difference.
Although the stand is pretty broad, for more desk space you may consider VESA mounting it. The high mount location means the monitor tries to self-level, but with the weight off center, forget about doing Portrait unless you can stop the display from rotating under its own weight.
Now there is a different black version with a different base stand on sale for a lower price on Amazon US, the specs are identical as is the model number listed so the panel itself should be the same, but we won’t know until we hear reports. If you grab one, please let us and our viewers know of any differences in the comments.
Acer ET322QK Great, but points that could be better…
Now, things to be improved, and we only really have one issue here, which is the info area in the menu, if you’re jumping through menus quickly, since reset as well as the follow up confirmation are selected by default, you can wipe your settings accidentally. Acer, you need to make Exit and Cancel the default options here.
Since the announcement of PS5 and XBox Series X we’ve seen an uptick in performance for our old Asus VP28U 4K video, link up here, and this week we’re still fielding questions on it, but this Acer ET322QK immediately replaced it on our main editing rig due to the better viewing angles, color, brightness and this one actually has speakers.
If you decide to grab this Acer or start shopping for a 4K monitor, shopping through our affiliate links will help us here with no extra cost to you. And follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at techspinreview. Future updates on the Acer ET322QK usage, or issues we find over time will be added to our techspinreview.com post, and check that out for more episodes.
So what features are you looking for in a 4K monitor? Did you find a sweet deal you wanna share? Join the discussion down below. And we’re interested to hear what new hardware you want to see reviewed, let us know and we’ll try and get to it.
If you liked the video go ahead and hit that THUMBS UP button, or let us know how we can improve. If you want to see more videos like this, then please do subscribe for new content, and click that BELL icon to get notified when we put up a new video! We read and reply to the comments so if you have a question or we missed something, please tell us down below. We really appreciate you watching this far, thanks for your time, and we’ll see you on the next. Bye for now!
See more Acer products, Monitor, PC case reviews
