Did you know that Acer acquired a Japanese design firm called Amadana late last year, which makes classy coffee gear, retro calculators, air purifiers, and all manner of minimalist lo-fi tech? Neither did I until today — but it goes a long way to explaining why a few of Acer’s new monitors at IFA 2025 are leaping off the page.
Acer’s new Amadana and CE270 monitors are unusually, strikingly stylish
A breath of fresh air.
A breath of fresh air.
Image: Acer
is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
Unfortunately for stateside readers, Acer has no current plans to ship its Amadana-branded products below to the US. The 27-inch 27ART0 P1 desktop monitor — with a display that is just 8mm thick — and the 16-inch, 1.4-pound 16APM1QJ portable monitor, are headed to EMEA regions in Q1 for €169 and €119, respectively.
They’re not heavy on tech, anyhow: they’re 1080p IPS screens, at just 250 nits of brightness, and only the desktop monitor reaches 144Hz. The portable panel, with USB-C and mini-HDMI input, is limited to 60Hz, though both monitors offer a variable refresh rate.
But the Acer CE270U Z, below and atop this story, will head to North America for $700 in Q1, and it will feature a 26.5-inch 1440p OLED panel at 280Hz. It also has AMD’s flavor of variable refresh rate (FreeSync Premium Pro) and peak brightness of 1,000 nits in HDR (250 nits typical), with two HDMI 2.1 ports and one DisplayPort 1.4.
Here’s a look at some earlier Amadana products, courtesy of Acer. Amadana writes that it’s named after a location in Japan’s Edo period where fine lacquerware was sold.
Image: Amadana / Acer
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Andrew Liszewski and Jess Weatherbed
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
