Acer’s ground-breaking monitor delivers exactly what it promises: A genuine 3D experience without the need to wear any annoying glasses. It even manages to extend that 3D experience to its sound, too. The only issue is that when it’s not doing 3D it doesn’t feel particularly special. So if you’re going to spend £2199 on this 27-inch monitor, you really need to be ready, willing and able to feed it as much 3D content as possible
Pros
- Compelling and immersive glasses-free 3D
- Crisp, detailed and immersive sound system
- Robust and flexible design
Cons
- 3D experience can be complicated and buggy
- It’s expensive
- It’s only middling as a 2D monitor
Key Features
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Review Price: £2199
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27-inch 16:9 160Hz 4K LCD screen The View 27 manages to squeeze a native 3840×2160 pixel count into its 27-inch screen.
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Glasses-free 3D playback Enjoying 3D at home no longer requires you to wear cumbersome, brightness-reducing, headache-inducing glasses.
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Built-in spatial audio system New SpatialLabs Audio technology uses two small speakers hanging from the monitor’s bottom edge to deliver a remarkably spacious, expressive and detailed 3D sound stage
Introduction
While 3D continues – for now – to be as dead as the proverbial dodo in the TV world, it’s undergoing something of a renaissance in the gaming world.
A renaissance that’s potentially about to kick into a much higher gear with the arrival of true consumer gaming monitors capable of delivering 3D without the need to wear those dastardly cumbersome glasses usually associated with 3D experiences.
And right at the forefront of this new wave of glasses-free 3D monitors is Acer’s Predator SpatialLabs View 27. Which will henceforth be known simply as the View 27.
As a veteran of the TV hardware as well as gaming, I’ve seen numerous attempts to make 3D a thing come and go over the past 30-plus years. Issues such as ghosting noise, low resolution, reduced brightness, eye fatigue, the need to wear often cumbersome glasses and flickering, as well as limited (and sometimes poor quality) 3D content availability, have led to a point where 3D hasn’t been available on any new TVs for years, and 3D home video sources have dwindled almost out of existence.
Fans of 3D have long held out hope the format might be saved by a glasses-free version. Toshiba tried this with its 55-inch 55ZL2 back in 2011, but as you can see from my review on this website, the results weren’t exactly a rip-roaring success.
Screen and source technologies have both come a long way since then, so as someone who is very open to 3D experiences, I’m happy to have the chance once more to (hopefully) enjoy some cutting edge 3D fun in the shape of Acer’s View 27 monitor.
Design
- The screen is chunky by modern standards – but build quality is excellent
- Two small but very effective speakers hang from the bottom edge
- The screen’s top edge sports an advanced eye-tracking camera
At first glance the Acer View 27 doesn’t necessarily look cutting edge. Its chassis is pretty chunky by modern standards, and it doesn’t rock any fancy-pants gaming features such as a 21:9-ratio or curved screen.
Its deep grey frame is fairly broad by modern monitor standards too, and while a pair of speakers hanging under each bottom corner catch the eye, there’s something a bit spindly about the way they’re attached.

A strange dark glassy strip built into the middle of the top edge hints at the View 27’s cutting edge 3D nature, as it turns out to hold a head/eye-tracking system designed to give users a more consistently sharp, ghosting-free 3D experience.
Acer hasn’t fitted the View 27 with any fancy rear ambient lighting system, but for those fond of looking at the back of their displays, there’s an appealing mixture of subtle etched lines and Tron-like orange colour splashes to liven things up.

The screen is supported on a boomerang-shaped desktop stand with a stability-enhancing short prop leg sticking out at the boomerang ‘point’. The neck pole sticking up from the boomerang pedestal’s centre allows the monitor to slide up or down up to 12cm to adjust its height. You can also tilt it forward up to five degrees or back up to 18 degrees, or swivel it left or right through up to 15 degrees.
The monitor can be wall-mounted with 100×100 VESA mounting points – though you’ll have to be very precise about where you put it relative to your line of sight if you want to make sure you’re always maximizing its 3D potential.
Specification
- IPS screen
- 160Hz refresh rates
- Audioscenic Experience audio
The Acer View 27 is built around a native 4K IPS-type LCD monitor with a switchable 2D/3D lenticular lens. Response time is rated at 5ms, peak brightness is quoted at a solid 400 nits, contrast is claimed to hit 1000:1 with 10-bit colour depth, and the screen is capable of handling refresh rates up to 160Hz.
The View 27’s connections are limited to an HDMI port, a DisplayPort 1.4 jack, USB Type-C upstream port, two Type-A downstream ports, and a 3.5mm audio output. The monitor does not contain any sort of smart interface, so there’s no Wi-Fi or Bluetooth support.

The View 27’s speakers turn out to warrant much more attention than I’ve given them so far. They’re rated for 2 x 2.5W of power, are actually quite deep by integrated-into-monitor speaker standards, and their mild upward tilt gives you a hint that the View 27 delivers more than just your usual stereo monitor effort. In fact, the speakers are enhanced by Acer’s Immerse Audio system: a spatial audio processing engine that uses AI techniques and years of psychoacoustic experience and research to create what Acer calls a ‘dynamic virtual headset’ capable of creating a three-dimensional soundstage that adapts to your head movements.
This proves to be much more than just marketing hype. With the Audioscenic Experience system activated on your PC, it delivers a sound performance that’s an ideal partner for the View 27’s glasses-free 3D images. Turning the Audioscenic Experience spatialiser on sees volume increase, and the speakers conjure up a remarkably clean, crisp and most importantly three-dimensional sound stage.
This 3D audio space is populated by details that sound both accurately placed for the game world you’re immersed in and use the sensors in the monitor’s top edge to change position in response to your head movements.
Sounds are immaculately layered and track around you with excellent transitional snap and clarity, spreading comfortably beyond the physical confines of the screen – including up as well as sideways – to create a sense of a three-dimensional gaming world beyond the onscreen action. There’s even a sense of rear channel sound effects coming from behind you, which is a first for me when using gaming monitor speakers rather than headphones.

What’s more, far from falling apart when the audio going gets tough, the View 27’s sound in AudioScenic Experience mode actually gets busier and more effective. There’s even a reasonable amount of bass underpinning big action set pieces, and this is delivered without any serious distortions creeping in to break your immersion. Dialogue is consistently well contextualised within different gaming environments, too.
You have to sit in the right spot to get the absolute best effect; Acer recommends around 1-1.2m from the screen. But that distance tallies with the optimal sort of distance for enjoying the screen’s 3D visuals, and is pretty typical of 27-inch desktop gaming monitor viewing distances.
In a perfect world the sound system would be able to go a bit louder – though I’d rather it limit itself to the level it does than start to lose clarity and precision.
Image Quality
- Compelling glasses-free 3D
- Good brightness and colour performance
- Black levels are only average with 2D
Not surprisingly my first port of call with the Acer View 27 was its 3D performance – a process which begins with tracking down compatible games on Steam. Happily it’s possible to search Steam for SpatialLabs TrueLab 3D games, and a quick count of the results finds 166 titles available at the time of writing – a decent number of which are true triple AAA titles. New titles are being added to the list regularly, too.
Having found suitable 3D titles to play, there are the capabilities of your PC to consider. Two ‘tiers’ of 3D performance are available on the TrueLab 3D games list: 3D+ titles designed to be playable with relatively low system requirements, and 3D Ultra titles for people with more powerful PCs.
Some games are available only in one of these two formats, some are available in both.

Acer claims in its marketing for the monitor that its 3D capabilities should be supportable by the same sort of system requirements needed to play a game at 4K in 2D. Which makes sense given the way the View 27’s glasses-free lenticular lens 3D system works means that 3D games present as full HD resolution to each eye.
The level of 3D performance you’ll get can differ from game to game due to the many factors involved in game rendering engines, and the TrueGame system optimisations titles establish to create the best per-title 3D experience. This was borne out during my testing by some significant performance differences between titles on the Intel Core i5/GeForce NTX NVidia-equipped laptop with pre-installed SpatialLabs TrueLab and Acer Immersive Audio software that Acer supplied with its monitor.
The differences between the 3D+ and 3D Ultra experiences in particular is really quite extreme – and I have to say I didn’t come away from my tests feeling convinced that 3D+ was really even worth the effort. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s focus first on seeing the View 27 at its 3D best with 3D Ultra titles.
Focusing in particular on Shadow Of The Tomb Raider and Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, which in slightly different ways make particularly good use of the technology. While there are niggles with the View 27’s 3D Ultra performance that I’ll get to later, for the most part it’s seriously impressive.
The many and varied environments and locations delivered by my two focus games all erupt from the View 27 screen with a pretty remarkable sense of three dimensionality that includes elements that stand forward and proud of the screen as well as a great sense of depth behind the screen’s surface. Many glasses-based 3D experiences I’ve had have failed to delivered such extreme depths of field in their 3D rendering efforts.
Just as importantly, this startlingly extreme sense of three-dimensional space and depth is delivered – at least by these two games – with truly excellent precision. With Hellblade, the way the game manages to place objects and enemies in the 3D world relative to your character’s foregrounded position without any objects feeling two-dimensional or any relative depth positioning becoming confused, even during frantic combat with multiple large enemies, is so convincing that it truly changes the experience of playing the game for the better.

The absence of blur or judder during even the most intense combat sequences if you stick with Hellblade’s recommended settings for your particular PC, helps the game deliver a level of consistency and sharpness that instantly crushes the idea that 3D gaming has to mean sacrificing clarity and fluidity. The way Hellblade manages the foregrounding of your character in its third person environment is also outstanding, with remarkably few occurrences of focus loss or those excessive forced perspective moments that can make 3D gaming so fatiguing on lesser displays or with less thoughtfully designed games.
With Tomb Raider the biggest joys of its 3D rendering as delivered with aplomb by the View 27 lie in the way it convincingly enhances the changing scale of the game’s environments, from its yawning chasms to its tight passages and tunnels and everything in between, and the way it delivers even the tiniest depth differential. Every tiny undulation in a rock face or every slight difference in how far different bricks protrude from ancient walls is portrayed with absolute clarity and conviction, bringing the game’s environments to life in a way the 2D version simply can’t.
Playing Tomb Raider in 3D also adds a totally different feeling to some of the death-defying leaps and ledge-grabs you have to make, amplifying the sense of jeopardy as you try to judge if you can really make that leap to that hanging chandelier while also being far more aware of just how far you’re going to fall if you judge things wrong…
One other positive of the View 27’s 3D performance with both of my focus games in 3D Ultra mode is how bright it looks. There’s much less dimming down compared with 2D than you typically get with glasses-based 3D experiences.
At this point it’s worth pausing to stress that the literally game-changing 3D effects I’m talking about are enjoyed without the need for any glasses, headsets or extra screen attachments. It’s hard to explain how liberating this feels. It also feels innately cool; seeing the look of amazement on the faces of passing friends and family as they’re caught off guard by suddenly seeing pictures apparently projecting out of the View 27’s little screen never grows old.
While the View 27’s 3D experience is mostly overwhelmingly positive with well rendered 3D Ultra titles, it’s not perfect. For one thing you can feel the drop off in native resolution as you switch between a 2D 4K render and a 3D render delivering full HD to each eye. That isn’t to say the results can’t still look sharp and detailed; Hellblade, in particular, proves they can. But if you think game worlds are brought to life more by tiny detailing and textures rather than 3D depth and space, then this aspect of glasses-free 3D is certainly something you need to bear in mind.

Also, while Hellblade manages to retain its crisp look with impressive consistency in 3D, Tomb Raider can look a little soft at times, beyond the basic loss of native resolution versus its 2D version. It’s also more prone to foreground ‘stressing’ issues than Hellblade, where objects close to Lara, especially if they appear during a pan around the room, can suffer with double imaging artefacts and cause your eyes to adjust focus so hard that 3D play becomes tiring much more quickly than playing in 2D.
Over time I found that you can – and actually do, without making a particularly conscious effort – train your eyes to play in 3D on the View 27 in a relatively passive way, where you soak up the general 3D space rather than forever trying to focus specifically on particular objects in the 3D frame. This makes for both a more consistent and less tiring experience. But there are still times with some titles where a sudden retina-straining foregrounding ‘assault’ will break the high level of immersion 3D on the View 27 can otherwise create.
Of course, it’s not actually fair to blame Acer’s monitor for either of the resolution and exaggerated foregrounding flaws I’ve mentioned. One is a simple limit of the glasses-free technology that any display would suffer with, while Tomb Raider’s occasional foregrounding issues are caused by the game – as Hellblade’s greater consistency in this respect proves. But given that, as I’ll come to in more detail shortly, anyone who buys a View 27 is really going to want to use its 3D talents as much as possible, all issues to do with the 3D experience need to be covered here.
One aspect of the View 27’s 3D imaging that very much is down to its specific handling of the format is its unique ‘eye tracking’ system – and for the most part I was very impressed by this. Glasses-free 3D has historically been let down by the way ugly vertical seams appear in the picture if you move your head or even just your eyes. An issue that leads to a sort of ‘frozen head/neck syndrome’ that further adds to the fatigue 3D viewing has historically caused.
With the View 27, while you can’t shift your entire seating position much or tilt your head too far without a seam appearing, I found I could move both my eyes and my head far more without the image degrading or ‘seaming’ than I have been able to with any other glasses-free 3D display I’ve seen.
I was also pleasantly surprised by how little visible disruptions I felt from the lenticular filters lying across the View 27’s screen. Their structure isn’t completely invisible, especially over very bright parts of a 3D image, but I didn’t feel that kind of ‘viewing through gauze’ effect I often have on other, especially larger glasses-free 3D screens. And the lenses don’t negatively impact the monitor’s images when you’re using it in 2D mode, either.
One final point to make about the 3D Ultra gaming experience on the View 27 is that for the most part I’d strongly recommend that you stick with the default 3D settings for depth of field, resolution, frame rates and so on that each title selects based on your system capabilities. Trying to adjust these parameters even a little on the mid-powered Acer PC I was using for my tests can result in all sorts of unpleasantness in terms of frame rates, general clarity and forced perspective eye strain.
While 3D Ultra gaming is typically very enjoyable on the View 27, I found the 3D+ experience targeted at lower-powered PCs disappointing. Judder was far more pronounced for one thing, but the worst issue by far is the appearance around the edges of objects in the 3D world of significant horizontal line noise and blurry ‘halos’. This ugliness draws your attention so much that the benefits of 3D – which are in any case reduced in 3D+ – are pretty much completely overwhelmed.
Again, I can’t attribute the issues with 3D+ to Acer’s monitor; they seem inherent to the 3D+ system. But it’s proof that you need a decently specced PC to really enjoy what the View 27 is made for. It reduces the list of really effective 3D games on the Steam list, given that some titles are only available in the 3D+ format.

While anyone who buys an Acer Predator View 27 will likely have done so specifically for its 3D capabilities, even the most ardent 3D fan will want to use it in 2D mode for some of the time. So how does it hold up as a regular monitor?
First, the good news. Its images are sharp enough in full 4K 2D mode to deliver both the finest details in 4K games and small text with great clarity and refinement. This text capability makes it a more effective workhorse than I might have expected a monitor with such a specific 3D entertainment (or, potentially, design/creative) purpose. It can deliver plenty of brightness, so you don’t have to strain at text against a murky, low-lit backdrop, and there’s no significant jaggedness around small details or text caused by the lenticular lenses.
Colours are pleasingly rich but also nuanced during bright 2D game, movie or desktop use, too. In fact, measurements of the monitor taken using Portrait Displays’ Calman Ultimate software, G1 signal generator and C6 HDR5000 light meter reveal that it delivers impressively accurate tones for the most part, delivering DeltaE 2000 error averages of only a few decimal points beyond the critical 3.0 level below which the human eye won’t perceive any discrepancies.
High frame rate games up to the display’s 160Hz limit are handled cleanly and smoothly, creating a fluid and responsive feel with all game types. I measured input lag with 60Hz feeds in the monitor’s Ultrafast mode at a very respectable 8.7ms, too.
I was a little surprised to find no support for HDR. This has become almost standard on premium monitors now, but it’s a no go zone for the Acer View 27.
My biggest issue with the View 27, at least for 2D gaming and, especially, video playback, is the IPS screen’s lack of contrast and black level support. Dark scenes look significantly grey where they should look black, giving them a flattened, washed out look that feels especially stark after the 3D experiences the monitor can provide. Colours in dark scenes also look a little off versus bright tones due to the tonal shift associated with the grey ‘wash’ over everything, and a few details in dark corners can become lost in the ‘murk’.
The greyness apparent with dark content is, at least, consistent across the screen; there aren’t noticeable clouds of greyness. But coming to the View 27 after checking out a number of OLED monitors, with their gorgeously deep, rich black tones, makes the familiar contrast limitations of IPS LCD monitors like this one feel pretty jarring at times.
There is a small viewing angle benefit for the View 27 over LCD displays that use VA panel types, but for me VA’s typically superior contrast is actually more useful for your typical solo gaming experience, where you’ll be sat directly in front of the screen. Plus OLED screens, which can be bought for significantly less than the View 27 costs, deliver almost infinite viewing angles, as well as delivering far better contrast and light precision. And even premium OLED monitors are brought into competitive play by the View 27’s £2199 cost.
Interface and apps
While the Acer Predator View 27 might be cutting edge with its 3D imaging, it’s fairly traditional in the sense that it is ‘just a monitor’, with no built in smart features. So there aren’t really any major onboard apps to discuss.
Its interface is limited in the sort of adjustments it puts at your disposal too – which is actually quite a relief given that no remote control is provided, leaving you having to adjust the monitor using some fairly basic-looking menus four buttons plus a rocker ‘joystick’ on the back of the monitor’s right hand side.
The software you need on your PC in order to unlock the monitor’s 3D video and Acer Immersive Audio spatial sound features are critical to the View 27’s usability. So it’s unfortunate that at the time of writing they’re buggier and less intuitive than I’d like them to be.

On the bug front, the most annoying problem I experienced was the PC losing contact with the eye-tracking cameras, essentially disabling both the screen’s 3D imaging and spatial audio features. A full PC reboot was usually required to sort this problem.
Sometimes the monitor refused to switch into lenticular lens mode, even when I’d correctly entered Steam through the SpatialLabs app that’s required to access 3D games. For some reason this issue occurred much more often when playing Hellblade than Tomb Raider.
The fact that you have to remember both to manually put your PC in ‘SpatialLabs mode’ to enable 3D and separately enable an AudioScenic app to get the excellent eye/head-tracking spatial audio system working also feels unhelpful – though I was told that efforts are being made to simplify these processes, so they may improve over time.
Should you buy it?
You love 3D but hate 3D glasses
The Acer Predator SpatialLabs View 27 does exactly what it says it should: delivers a compelling three-dimensional gaming experience without cluttering your face with cumbersome, flickery goggles.
It’s very expensive for anyone who isn’t totally committed to 3D
The View 27 only rates as a fair to middling 2D monitor. Which makes its £2,199 asking price look very steep for anyone not intending to use the hell out of its 3D capabilities.
Final Thoughts
Acer’s debut stab at delivering a glasses-free 3D monitor for the consumer/gaming markets delivers a compelling 3D experience across an already impressively wide range of 3D-capable games. The technology truly works (at last) and works well.
A few bugs and confusions with the driver software needed to unlock the monitor’s 3D picture and equally excellent sound capabilities can frustrate at times, and the problematic 3D+ system for delivering 3D from low-spec PCs means you really need a pretty well-specced PC to enjoy the 3D Ultra titles that really unlock what the monitor can do.
But still, overall, the Acer View 27 is a 3D success story. The monitor is only solid in regular 2D mode, though, with a lack of contrast hurting both its 2D gaming and video capabilities. As a result, its £2199 looks very expensive for anyone who isn’t pretty much obsessed with the idea of adding a new dimension to their gaming experience.
Trusted Score
How we test
We use every monitor we test for at least a week. During that time, we’ll check it for ease of use and put it through its paces by using it for both everyday tasks and extended gaming sessions
We also check its colours and image quality with a colourimeter to test its coverage and the display’s quality.
- Used as main monitor for 10 days
- Used a colorimeter to get benchmark results
FAQs
The Acer View 27’s screen is 27 inches across, measured diagonally corner to corner.
It’s a 16:9 aspect ratio IPS LCD screen with a native 4K resolution.
Its screen is fitted with switchable lenticular lenses that enable it to deliver glasses-free 3D, and it carries a pair of 2.5W speakers that can be driven by an AudioScenic spatial sound system that delivers a 3D audio experience capable of responding to head movements courtesy of tracking cameras built into the monitor’s frame.
Test Data
Acer Predator SpatialLabs View 27 Review | |
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Brightness (SDR) | 530 nits |
Black level | 0.46 nits |
White Visual Colour Temperature | 6100 K |
sRGB | 99.7 % |
Adobe RGB | 86.4 % |
DCI-P3 | 95.66 % |
Input lag (ms) | 0.03 ms |
Full Specs
Acer Predator SpatialLabs View 27 Review | |
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UK RRP | £2199 |
USA RRP | $1999 |
Manufacturer | Acer |
Screen Size | 27 inches |
Size (Dimensions) | x x INCHES |
ASIN | B0DN4BL9SN |
Release Date | 2024 |
Model Number | Predator SpatialLabs View 27 |
Resolution | 3840 x 2160 |
Refresh Rate | 160 Hz |
Ports | 1 DP (1.4), HDMI, USB Type-C upstream port, two Type-A downstream ports, 3.5mm audio out |
Colours | Dark grey |
Display Technology | IPS, LCD |
Syncing Technology | AMD FreeSync |