This reviewer has a confession; ever since the gaming PC was built in January of this year, he has been playing Tomb Raider, Resident Evil 3, DBA: FighterZ, Counterstrike: Global Offensive and many many more on a kindly-donated 19-inch monitor from 2006.
Suffice to say, after three months things came to a head when, in the middle of a Sea of Thieves session, trying to go to the depths of a ship to empty a few gallons of water to save our ship from sinking was in vain. The darkness of the monitor left me to not know where I was, and in turn, the ship sank.
This, coupled with other games where I just couldn’t see, ran out the last of my patience, and after much research, a
Table of Contents
arrived a week ago.
It’s certainly different; from 1440x900 to a 2560x1440 resolution, here’s why it’s the best monitor I’ve owned in a long while.
Display - Score 96
Let's start with the obvious; it’s big.
If you’ve been spending the last few years on an iPad or a laptop with a 14inch screen, this will feel overwhelming at first. Granted, it took me a week for my eyes to adjust to the screen with its 2560x1440 resolution, but once it did, I can’t ever see myself going back to a lesser-sized screen.
For years I’ve been using a Mac to boot into Windows, just to play some games at Medium settings, and at a 13” screen, so to go to a PC with a 31.5 screen was a revelation.
Playing games such as Portal 2, Tekken 7, Zone of the Enders 2, Worms and even Sonic Adventure DX in a 1440P resolution made everything bright, crisp, and pop out so much it felt as if I was in my own cinema.
Setting the monitor up was straightforward, with having to screw-in the stand to the base of the monitor, while trying to angle it on the desk so that I could have a good view of all the 31.5” pixels. The only downside here is that there’s no way of changing the height of the stand itself, only to change the angle; a shame but minor in the grand scheme of this display.
It comes with the standard HDMI, DisplayPort and VGA inputs as one expects, alongside a headphone jack for plugging in any speakers or headphones. These are easily accessible at the back, so you will be able to tell in time, just where the headphone jack is to feel more immersive in Quake II.
As the monitor is an LED IPS display, alongside 75Hz refresh rate and a brightness of 250 cd/m2, everything from a video on YouTube, to a game like Hitman 2: Contracts runs fantastically, GPU willing.
As long as you have either an onboard or external GPU that’s mid-range, you should have no problem in running the majority of games at this monitor’s native resolution. There are some games that will not even have a setting of running at 1440P, so a windowed mode may have to be the option, but even then, the games look fantastic, and you’ll soon forget that it's running in a window.
There will also be some games that will have a maximum resolution of 1600x1200, such as Hitman and Quake II, but even in this 4:9 aspect, the games run and look crystal-clear.
Once you play Worms Armageddon in
2560x1440, you won't go back
Value - Score 98
At
for what this monitor offers, it is a straight-up bargain for other monitors that are out there. We’ve discussed previously that it’s far too early to look into a 4K monitor, and this display by AOC justifies it. A huge screen with fantastic colour and brightness output, the price is at a fantastic value, and it will hold your PC setup in high stead for a few years to come.
For a monitor this size, its price is fantastic value
Our Score
Pros
- Incredible 1440P resolution for majority of games
- LED Screen really makes everything vibrant and bright
- Fantastic price for what it offers
Cons
- Work on the name next time AOC
- Stand can't be adjusted height-wise
This is a fantastic monitor that has succeeded in every task I’ve thrown at it. From running Sonic Mania at 1440P to Call of Duty Warzone, the colours are consistently bright and vibrant, and mixed in with the 75Hz refresh rate, its ideal for gaming and even office work if you want to show up a Google Sheets file in 1440P.
It’s at a great price currently, so if you think your PC or Mac needs a new external monitor for the home, you can’t go wrong with
.
Although a rethink of the name next time wouldn’t go amiss.
Fantastic Monitor, but lets work on the name next time AOC?
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