Display Profiles for Acer Nitro VG220Qbmiix – for Gamers and Designers on a Budget

LaptopMedia.com Reviews and Analysis Display Profiles for Acer Nitro VG220Qbmiix - for Gamers and Designers on a Budget

From: Simeon Nikolov 08 January 2024 / 20:37 | 0

If you’re looking for a small monitor suitable for both gaming and work, Nitro is a model you should consider. At first glance, Acer Nitro VG220Qbmiix doesn’t impress with 144, 240, or 480 Hz, nor with its resolution. However, when your budget is tight and you take a look at the available offerings, the monitor does start to make sense.

Indeed, even though the resolution is “just” Full HD, the 21.5-inch screen size ensures that it still appears perfectly detailed – what Apple would refer to as “Retina” quality – when viewed from about 33.5 inches (85 cm) away. Additionally, the image quality can be significantly enhanced with our Display Profiles. Be sure to scroll down to the bottom of this review to access them.

As for the other specs, Acer has been able to bump the refresh rate to 75Hz, which is just slightly higher than the 60Hz that we see in most budget and office monitors. What we feel like is more important is the response time. It makes it so pixels can shift colors faster, so you get a more responsive image. It helps with ghosting, which is when the remnants of a frame that has been displayed before still lingers.

The Acer Nitro VG220Qbmiix brings a 1ms response time, along with AMD FreeSync support, which matches the refresh rate of the monitor to the framerate of the game, reducing screen tearing, which can be distracting.

You can check the current price of the Acer Nitro VG220Qbmiix here: Buy from Amazon.ca (#CommissionsEarned)

Specs sheet, Drivers, Design, Connectivity
Display quality, Buy our profiles, Verdict

Specs sheet, Drivers, Design, Connectivity

Screen size	21.5 inch (54.6 cm)
Refresh rate	75Hz
Response time	1ms
Panel type	IPS
Backlight type	LED
Screen finish	Matte
Resolution	1920 x 1080
Technologies	Contrast ratio: 1000:1 (Static) Brightness: 250cd/m² Viewing angles: H/V° 178/178 Tilt: -5 to 25° VESA mount: 100×100 Measurements (with stand): 384 x 490 x 221 mm Power consumption (Idle): 27W Power consumption (Stand-by): 0.50W Speakers: 2x 2W
I/O	2x HDMI 1x VGA 2x audio jack

Drivers and software

The monitor is super easy to set up, as you don’t need to install any drivers whatsoever. Everything is plug-and-play. If you want any further control of the monitor, you can install Acer’s Display Widget, which replaces the OSD menu, giving you the ability to access the monitor’s settings with a mouse and keyboard.

Design and Connectivity

The monitor has a classic look, with a black and red theme. Despite being only 21.5 inches in diagonal, Acer has found the space inside to implement a pair of 2W built-in speakers, meaning that you wouldn’t have to spend extra money to get a separate speaker setup. While they might not be the best, this is a budget monitor for what we feel would be a budget gaming setup, so having audio and video covered by the monitor is great to see.

As for the front, Acer advertises its ZeroFrame design, promising thin bezels, and while they are thin, we have seen better. Still, the monitor looks good and after all, the image on the screen itself is way more important than the bezels that surround it.

In terms of ports, the monitor is rather good, with two HDMI ports, an old-school VGA port, and two audio jacks. On the back, you can also see the VESA mounting points, which allow for a wall mount with an arm.

Display quality, Buy our profiles, Verdict

The Acer Nitro VG220Qbmiix uses a Full HD IPS panel with a 75Hz refresh rate and a 1ms response time. It has the recipe of a gaming monitor, however, the ingredients just aren’t as much or as good as the bigger and more expensive gaming monitors. Still, we believe that you can have a great gaming experience with the Acer Nitro VG220Qbmiix.

Color coverage

Here’s an illustration (Fig. 1). The whole “sail-shaped” map below consists of all the colors we can see, while the black crooked line shows all the colors from real-world scenes and nature around us.

Then, we’ve drawn some of the most important and interesting color spaces, compared to the colors the panel of Acer Nitro VG220Qbmiix can show:

Standard/For Web: sRGB – widely used color space for most consumer devices, ideal for Web design and development
For Print: AdobeRGB – used in professional photo editing, graphic design, and print
For Photographers/Video Editors: DCI-P3 – used in high-end film production, post-production, and digital cinema
Premium HDR: Rec.2020 – the widest consumer ITU color standard, covering a massive 75.8% of the visible spectrum, a benchmark for premium HDR content

Acer Nitro VG220Qbmiix: the yellow dashed triangle (– – – – – –) represents the range of colors this monitor can display. In our tests, we calculated the total color coverage of the monitor at 88% of the sRGB color gamut.

(Fig.1) Acer Nitro VG220Qbmiix covers 88% of the Web colors (sRGB)

This means that if the Acer Nitro VG220Qbmiix tries to show any color outside of its triangle, it will show the closest color to it that’s inside the triangle.

Color accuracy

Now let’s see how big is the difference between the real colors and the one you’ll see on the Acer Nitro VG220Qbmiix. We measure that distance in DeltaE – the bigger the number, the more different they look.

For the next illustration, we’ve chosen 24 common colors like dark and light skin, blue sky, green grass, etc.

Values below 2.0 are considered suitable for color-sensitive work. Before our calibration of the Acer Nitro VG220Qbmiix, the Average color accuracy was 2.9 dE (Fig. 2), and with our Web Design and Office Work profile, it lowered to 2.1 dE (Fig. 3). This is just on the fence of being accurate enough for professional use, however, we’d still deem it pretty good considering the price of the monitor.

(Fig. 2) Acer Nitro VG220Qbmiix in its factory condition

(Fig. 3) Acer Nitro VG220Qbmiix with our display profiles

Comparison in the sRGB color space (primaries and D65 white point specified in ITU-R BT.709, sRGB encoding curve).

Left: No Profile | Drag the slider to see the difference | Right: Design & Gaming Profile

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom-tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate (they may seem strange at first but after a few minutes our brain will start recognizing them as accurate ones – that’s how Health-Guard differs from alternatives like f.lux).

Pro Tip: As the Health-Guard profile simulates paper and has as accurate as possible colors, it could be a great tool for prepress designers!

Left: No Profile | Drag the slider to see the difference | Right: Health-Guard Profile

Gaming and Movies

We also have a third Gaming and Movies profile, which regulates the black colors, making dark areas in games and movies appear more visible, thus giving you a better viewing experience. Shooting at your opponent first can be a make-or-break moment, so make sure you’re best prepared with our profile.

Left: No Profile | Drag the slider to see the difference | Right: Design & Gaming Profile

BUY OUR DISPLAY PROFILES

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

$9.90 BUY NOW

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

$9.90 BUY NOW

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

$9.90 BUY NOW

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount

$19.90 BUY NOW

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for the Acer Nitro VG220Qbmiix.

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Verdict

The Acer Nitro VG220Qbmiix encapsulates the budget (and we mean very budget) gaming monitor perfectly. It’s the same as if you buy a budget sports car, like a BRZ or a GR86 (petrolheads surely know what we’re talking about) It drives well and is very smooth, giving you a great driving experience, in the DNA of a Porsche 911, however, the Porsche is faster, much faster, and feels nicer inside, has better sound.

However, the sports driving DNA is there. This Acer Nitro monitor brings the Gaming monitor DNA inside, thanks to its refresh rate and response time. They are good and provide smooth and responsive gameplay, especially thanks to the 1ms response time.

Also, it gets relatively accurate with our Display Profiles, with a dE value of 2.1, which is just above the 2.0 mark that we’d consider ready for professional use. What this means is that images, games, movies, and pretty much everything will look great. What we have for you gamers specifically is the Gaming and Movies profile, which makes dark scenes more visible, which can be helpful in both games and movies. Let’s take The Batman movie from 2022. There are many dark scenes there, so having the profile on definitely helps you distinguish the people and characters in the scenes. As for gaming, seeing your enemy first often means victory, so having that advantage is essential if you’re very competitive.

You can check the current price of the Acer Nitro VG220Qbmiix: Buy from Amazon.ca (#CommissionsEarned)