Ultrawide monitors—displays that have an aspect ratio of 21:9 or greater—are a great way to make your gaming experience more immersive. Having more screen in your peripheral vision really does pull you into a game's world. Some of these monitors can be really pricey, but you don't have to splash the cash to join the ultrawide club.
With a price of $170 at Newegg, this Acer Nitro ED306C (specifically, the Xbmiippx variant) is a lot more expensive than a typical 27-inch 1080p gaming monitor, but it makes up for this with a huge amount of real estate. Boasting a 29.5-inch (shall we just call it 30-inches?) VA panel, it'll feel like you're sitting in a monitor.
A normal 27-inch 1080p, with the usual 16:9 aspect ratio, will have a pixel density of around 82 PPI (pixels per square inch). This ultrawide Acer is actually better, despite being larger in size, with a density of 94 PPI. That will help to ensure desktop icons remain crisp, even while sitting close.
This is handy because the reasonably tight curvature (1500R) somewhat demands that you need to be close to the screen.
The rest of the package is pretty decent, too. You're getting a refresh rate of up to 200 Hz, with AMD FreeSync Premium support for tear-free gaming. However, the panel's lowest refresh rate is 48 Hz so if a game's frame rate drops below that value while using FreeSync, the monitor will do frame doubling to keep things in sync. It's not a major issue but it can make the game a little choppier in such cases.
Stand-wise, you're not getting anything special at this price, as there's no height adjustment (though it can be tilted). That's countered by the unusually high number of input sockets: two HDMI 2.0 and two DisplayPort 1.4 ports. Most monitors at this level only offer one DP input.
Although I'd personally prefer a 1440p ultrawide monitor, they're at least $130 more expensive than this Acer model, so you're saving a fair chunk of money. And in terms of total pixel count, this screen has 25% fewer pixels than that in a 16:9 1440p screen, so you won't need a really powerful GPU to get the best from it.
