Acer CB342CK 34 Inch (86.36 Cm) IPS Ultrawide (21:9) QHD 3440 X 1440 Pixels LCD Monitor with LED Backlight I AMD Radeon Freesync I HDR Ready, 1MS…

I originally had a 4k tv (hi sense 43″) which I connected to my Surface Pro 4 tablet with a mini dp to HDMI adapter and a hdmi cable connected to my tv. It displayed 4K on the tv at 30hz but it was fine with me as I mainly used it for day trading/online trading. The TV was mounted on a floor stand with wheels. I used this setup for sometime but I suffered from neck strain (had to tilt my neck up to view screen many times) and the tv had bright glossy screen and produced glare which caused eye strain and fatigue when used for long hours. So I decided to go for a smaller 4k screen which had some anti glare coating and this monitor (Acer CB282k) seemed to fit the bill. I bought it for ₹24999/- through Amazon Prime.

Now I must admit I did not do a detailed research about this monitor and bought it in impulse. It had good rating and reviews and so I bought it.

It arrived in sealed box. On opening I noticed the first gotcha which was the supplied power cord. It was a pc/cpu type cable which are usually supplied with a PC tower or desktop. Now I normally wouldn’t have issue with that but this supplied cable had a large size 3 pin plug which usually come with a large fridge or ac. Wonder why they did this. The average plug point in Indian homes are the smaller regular sized ones and rarely does any home have such plug points in their bedroom or other rooms. So due to this I had to buy a regular power cable for ₹200 and could not use monitor immediately on arrival and had to wait for one day before I could use it.

The next gotcha for me was I could not mount this monitor on my TV floor stand. The stand comes with two plates/rods which have holes on them. You need to align them with the screw holes of your tv and insert screws to fix them. Almost all led TVs and new monitors have a flat surface behind and makes mounting easy but this model does not..To start with the holes are located in a square shaped recess/well. Then the back of monitor is not fully flat and bulges a bit in the back (so mounting area is not flat). So your floor stand plates/rod won’t fit flat on them. Also due to the recess/well part of the screw threads will be visible even after tightening. The reason this has a recess/well is so that the supplied monitor stands top part can be attached to it. This monitor can be wall mounted with a suitable wall mount which you need to buy extra. But those looking to use this with a floor stand see if your model is compatible with it. Mine was not. I used floor stand with my TV as I could move it back and forth. Also I could shift it to corner of my bedroom at night when not using it. Now cannot use my floor stand with this. So had to use this on my table and that was the next gotcha for me.

This monitor is supplied with a great stand as it lets you tilt, rotate, adjust angle height etc. Now the issue for me was this stand is quite heavy. I think it is more heavy than the monitor. I was aware of this when purchasing it but was not going to use it as
had planned to use it with my floor stand. My room has a small table and it is not strong enough to mount this monitor. And so had to shift a table (heavy duty) from next bedroom to my room so this monitor can be placed on it. This is temporary as I am planning to purchase a computer table for using it but then it will be extra money spent as far as I am concerned. The picture in listing makes it look like the stand base is small when in reality it’s much bigger.

More gotchas in store for me. As mentioned above I used my surface pro 4 tablet with hi sense 4k tv by means of mini HDMI adapter and HDMI cable and it worked fine with that TV. Now same setup didn’t work when I plugged it to this monitor. My surface pro 4 did not detect it. I tried unplugging and plugging it back many times but did not detect it..I then tried a mini dp to regular dp cable and it detected it.

The speakers on the monitor are below average. Even if you set volume at 100% it won’t be loud. If you have fan running in room then it’s noise will drown it further down. You have to invest in speakers if you want to hear anything clearly.

This monitor is sold for professional use such as graphics or video editing (where colour accuracy is important) but that’s not the reason for my buying it. I am using it for day trading and does the job. Colours look great and more vibrant than my hisense tv.

Going to other things if you run this monitor at 4k and 100% scaling (windows 10) you will need sot quite close to it especially if you want to read text.. Else you will need to set scaling to 150%. Now with my hisense tv this was not an issue as could see text clearly at 4K 100% when seated 2 feet away.

Both HDMI ports are hdmi 2.0 standard and can display 4K 50/60hz RGB if your graphics card can output it.

Now coming to important issue of eye and neck strain for me. I was able to use for 5-6 hours (with 10 minute hourly breaks) and compared to my tv the strain was lesser. The supplied stand let’s me set at the right angle and height and so neck strain was very less for me. Also due to 28″ size you see entire screen of seated from right distance.

I played a few videos and they look fine. If you are planning to buy it to play games then have a rethink..Most games even today top at full hd and when such games are played in 4k monitors might not look great due to upscaling issues..A full hd monitor with higher refresh rate might be a better option.

So would I recommend this monitor? If I was aware of above mentioned gotchas I would not recommend it. But then these issues were specific to me. Ignoring the above issues I am quite happy with it as It is useful for my day trading regime.

Not a bad buy for its price point of ₹24499.

To conclude this monitor is good for office work, day trading, graphics and video editing, probably cctv usage etc.

Awesome 4k monitor at this price for working from home.
Not sure if it’s good choice for gamely for development work I would definitely recommend.

Purchased this product june2023 for the purpose of photo and video editing. The quality of color is totally different and not up to my expectations. The quality of color in my laptop is more realistic than this monitor. I tried doing color adjustments. No change

I got it 25.8 k, its with ips with led backlight, pic quality is decent, height and tilt adjustment, no pivot movement so you cant place it vertically, i fell at this price point full led display would be worth. Sound quality is decent, overall quality is good.