So what do we know about Pixio? Well, they make monitors. We’ve never seen one before to give it a test though I have experienced them in the past. Today we’ve got the Pixio PXC277A gaming monitor on the desk to try.
The standout here is the fact it’s curved. I do really like a curved panel, especially for the immersion it can bring. It has a 1500R curve which is definitely a noticeable curve, but still very reserved when it comes to its wrap-around feeling. It does still have a 16:9 aspect ratio, so unfortunately it doesn’t give you that wider 21:9 wider feeling of an ultrawide, but the curve definitely makes up for it. The bezels, minus of course the bottom look nice and thin at only around a few millimetres thick. The overall colour looks to be a very dark gun-metal type grey which looks nice and stylish, and there are no garish RGB effects here, just a very small blue light on the bottom right to let you know it’s powered. It’s got a small Pixio logo on the front which again is very unobtrusive.
The monitor stand is nice and thin to match the overall aesthetic of the monitor, though unfortunately it only offers tilt options. There is no swivel or rotate here. The surface area it takes up on a desk though feels nice and slim, and on my desk behind me, I could easily fit it comfortably if I didn’t have a soundbar on there. It’s also high enough to keep your keyboard underneath it, though I must say with my Streamdeck Plus, I would have struggled to find space underneath.
The panel itself uses VA technology which isn’t strictly known for its colour accuracy but is definitely a capable enough technology for gaming panels, and far beats TN panels when it comes to colour. It has a 2560 x 1440p resolution and a max refresh rate of 165Hz, making it nice and capable for those faster FPS titles. It’s advertised as having a 1ms GtG response time, though after running a UFO test, I did find that its MPRT sat closer to around 5.6ms. It has adaptive sync technology and does support HDR, at a max brightness of around 300 nits which we’ll go into in a moment, it wasn’t a great enough effect to warrant keeping it on full-time, especially when gaming.
Diving into some technicals that I pulled using my Datacolor Spider Elite, and I must say it was generally pretty decent. So out of the box, I ran a display analysis so let’s start with the gamut. The Pixio screen here can hit 100% of the sRGB colour gamut, 83% AdobeRGB and 88% of the P3 gamut which in my opinion is pretty decent actually for your gaming, though content creation could be a bit hit or miss.
This matched with the colour accuracy of the panel I must say for a budget gaming monitor, I was shocked. It gave me an average Delta-E score of 1.77 with a high of 3.28 which was amazing to see.
Moving on to its uniformity, the monitor at 100% brightness gave me some hotspots in the top quadrants, and even at 50% brightness this didn’t really help either to keep it under control. Its luminance uniformity didn’t fare much better, with a hotspot in its top right quadrant and dark areas towards the left-hand side of the panel. Overall though I was very happy with the performance. The backlight bleed too was extremely well-controlled and I couldn’t really find any complaints here. It was slightly noticeable in the very far corners, but if you’re playing darker media or dark games, you’re not going to have any issues here.
When it came to the contrast ratio, again I was pretty happy with the results. At 100% brightness, the panel achieved a brightness of 312.9 nits with a contrast ratio of 2190:1, while at 50%, I achieved a very respectable 173.7 nits and 1510:1 contrast ratio. This unfortunately was quite a distance away from its advertised 4000:1 contrast ratio, but I must say the black levels did feel nice and inky. If it wasn’t for its uniformity, this panel would have been almost unbeatable at this price point I think. But unfortunately, it did let the team down a bit. But anyway, let’s talk about some games.
Of course, with all of my monitors, I fall to a UFO Ghosting Test to check out its motion blur, and I must say it does really fall down here, in certain scenarios. I ran four tests and filmed them, admittedly on my phone in slow motion to give you some idea of what to expect, the first being that no gaming features were switched on as in no Freesync and no Overdrive. The second I turned on Freesync Premium, the third I turned on Freesync Premium and the Overdrive on a low and medium setting, and finally, I turned off Freesync Premium and turned on Overdrive to low. And I must say that anything set at a medium overdrive looked really bad. The little UFOs produced really strange blue-type ghosting, and Freesync Premium didn’t help with this too much either. It was especially noticeable in darker scenes, and my advice would be to keep these switched off. The guys over at TechteamGB do go into far more detail about this in their monitor video, so go and check that out before making a purchase decision. The link will be in the description.
But inside of games though, I can’t say that I noticed much in terms of ghosting in real time really. I’ve been really into some Dave The Diver recently, and I must say here that the image quality is nice and bright and sharp and the colours do really pop though there aren’t really any dark areas, nor does anything zip around the screen fast enough to feel blurry. I’ve also played a decent amount of F1 2023 on this screen and didn’t mind this too much either. It’s nice and fast-paced and everything felt responsive and really sharp. And again, playing some Hunt Showdown, it felt absolutely great to game on.
Around the back, you’ve got some great inputs to choose from for gaming. First, you can find of course a power input, of which you need to use the included power brick. You’ve got a USB Type-A port for firmware updates and this is not a hub unfortunately, a HDMI 2.0 port for that 1440p 144Hz gaming, and surprisingly two DPI 1.2 Ports which I must say I’ve never seen on a monitor before. Maybe I’ve missed it, and maybe I’ve missed the point of having two on the back, but I suppose it could be useful if you’ve got two PCs on your desk, like if you’re a livestreamer for example. You’ve also got a VESA100 mounting option, which Pixio does include a flat metal plate to mount it to an arm or wall mount in case you can’t get your bracket into the mounting holes due to the curve of the monitor which is a nice touch. And finally, a 3.5mm headphone output as this monitor does not have any built-in speakers.
Pixio has the PXC277A listed at $239 which I for one think is a fairly decent price for this monitor. It does fit within the budget category in terms of monitors, but if you’re after something as a casual gamer I can definitely recommend it here. However, for competitive gameplay, look elsewhere because if you’re the type of gamer who wants pin-sharp details to scope out those long-range headshots, the ghosting found here could be an issue. It can be negated somewhat with a low Overdrive setting, but unfortunately, it won’t eliminate it completely. But for me, a casual gamer, I did enjoy my time with the Pixio PXC277A. It’s a decent-looking monitor, and the immersion from the 1500R curve does draw you in. And for the most part, the image quality is actually pretty great. So top marks here for Pixio I think.
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