Acer made a 1,000Hz monitor, and yes, it costs over $1,000

Competitive esports players suddenly have an abundance of bleeding-edge monitor options coming out of IFA — at least if you’ve got deep pockets. Mere hours ago, Dell revealed a 560Hz OLED monitor that does things traditional TN panels can’t. And now, Acer is striking back with a glorious new TN monitor that pushes out frames at a speed OLED can’t even dream of matching. The Acer Predator XB253Q U1 achieves a face-melting 1,000Hz.

Yes, four-digit frame rates are a thing now. Holy freakin’ moly!

“The Acer Predator XB253Q U1 hits 1,000Hz” is what you need to know, that’s the tweet, but Acer’s applying some special sauce of its own to make this beast stand out from LG’s recently released 1,000Hz display. It’s loaded with Acer’s “Visual Response Boost Pro” technology to combat the ghosting and blurring sometimes found in TN panels, along with FreeSync and G-Sync Compatible support to synchronize the monitor refresh rate with your GPU to eliminate ugly screen tearing. Acer also says its Circular Polarizer technology will “reduce glare and eye strain during longer gaming sessions.”

Counter-Strike and League of Legends matches can certainly stretch late into the evening, so it sounds like a helpful feature to slap on an esports monitor!

And there’s no doubt that this is an esports monitor: The 24.5-inch screen size lets you keep the entire battle in view, and its 1080p resolution is favored by esports pros looking to accelerate frame rates (and thus responsiveness) to godlike levels.

But is the juice worth the budgetary squeeze? That’s the question I keep coming back to with these 1,000Hz monitors — because you’re paying over a buck for each of those frames. The Acer Predator XB253Q U1 will cost $1,099 when it launches in the first quarter of 2027.

Now look, I’m probably the sweatiest esports competitor at PCWorld. I’m a fiend for fast frame rates and the crack reflexes they enable. But for $1,099 American dollars? I haven’t tested this beast but off the cuff, that’s gonna be a no from me dawg.

Some of my colleagues scoff at ultra-high refresh rate monitors, saying they don’t notice a difference going above 160Hz or so. And that’s totally fine — but if you play esports often and aggressively, there is a good chance you’ll perform better with a faster monitor. But the problem is the biggest benefit — responsiveness — doesn’t scale the way you might assume it does.

Going from a 60Hz to a 120Hz monitor is a massive leap in visual smoothness — you’re pumping out twice as many frames! — but also responsiveness, assuming your GPU can keep up. At 60 frames per second, frames refresh every 16.67 milliseconds; at 120fps, that drops by half down to 8.33ms, a big latency adjustment that you can absolutely feel in real life.

But by the time you bump up to a 240Hz monitor, frames refresh every four milliseconds — a rate that already pushes the limits of human perception. I’ve happily gamed on a 360Hz monitor’s 2.78ms for years, but its difference in responsiveness over a 240Hz panel is already imperceptible by my hands. I simply don’t think spending $1,099 to get a 1,000Hz monitor with 1ms response times makes sense unless you’re already a professional esports god, especially when you can get a 24.5-inch 1080p panel with 360Hz for around $350, or 240Hz for a ludicrously tempting $150 or less.

Don’t get me wrong: I’d absolutely love to test the Acer Predator XB253Q U1 and see how it actually holds up in games. It’s hard to imagine TN esports panels ever being better than this, and the motion clarity should be utterly outlandish, especially in text-heavy MOBAs. But as exciting as a 1,000Hz monitor sounds in headlines, don’t expect it to magically transform you into an esports pro overnight.

That said, I’d love to get my grubby gamer paws on this. Hopefully, I can secure a review unit when the Acer Predator XB253Q U1 launches next year.