AOC’s 32-inch AG322QCX monitor exhibits you don’t want 4K for lovely big-screen gaming

I’ve been utilizing a 30-inch, 2560 x 1600, Dell IPS monitor on my desktop rig for the previous decade (that’s why it’s value spending the cash on a high quality monitor – they need to last more than any of your PC builds) and the additional immersion that comes with big-screen gaming, the place your face is nearly pressed up towards the panel, is hard to beat.

But, regardless of my show being over ten years outdated now, discovering a monitor with a diagonal show over 27-inches has lengthy been an actual problem. For no matter purpose panel producers haven’t felt assured they might promote sufficient big-screen shows to justify their creations. It’s largely the identical now, and the few giant scale panels you will discover are usually given over to the doubtful promise of 4K and it’s frame-rate-killing native decision.

Thankfully, AOC have stepped into the breach with their 32-inch AGON AG322QCX – a 16:9 VA monitor with a 1440p native decision, adaptive-sync help, a 144Hz refresh price, and a price ticket that may make you query dropping nigh on $800 on a smaller Asus ROG Swift.

At $430 (£470), the AGON is significantly cheaper and arguably offers a extra arresting gaming expertise, particularly in the event you’re rocking AMD graphics silicon inside your PC. Given the value tag you’ll be able to in all probability guess there’s no G-Sync module lurking inside this AGON monitor, however the FreeSync help is there to offer 144Hz of body smoothing on your gaming pleasure.

Given the selection between a 32-inch native 1440p show with a excessive refresh price, and a equally priced 27-inch 4K display caught resolutely at 60Hz, the gaming alternative is definitely apparent. The additional constancy of 4K gaming solely simply begins to develop into seen at this scale, however having a a lot smoother body price is at all times going to ship a much more pleasurable expertise in your favorite video games.

Unless, after all you’re rocking a pair of GTX 1080 Ti playing cards, wherein case I’d be saving my money for a 4K G-Sync HDR panel. Whenever they flip up…

Now, the VA panel contained in the 32-inch AGON isn’t excellent. While the color distinction is great the black ranges go away just a little to be desired. At the darker finish of the spectrum, the panel’s blacks get crushed collectively, which means you’ll miss just a little element down there. You can enhance that with the basic AOC Bright Frame setting, however whereas that does lighten issues up, it additionally washes the display’s picture out. It’s just a little odd for a VA panel as they’re usually rather a lot higher at coping with completely different ranges of black, this appears extra like an IPS in that regard. The white saturation is a unique story, permitting some clear distinctions between the brightest tones.

The viewing angles aren’t excellent both, which could be a little little bit of a problem on a curved monitor like this. It’s not massively noticeable basically use, however when there are giant, uniform blocks of color on the display you’ll be able to see a discolouration on the excessive edges of the panel.

But no monitor panel is ideal… nicely, okay the one utilized by the likes of Asus, Acer, and Viewsonic in our favourite gaming screens is shut, and what I’ve seen of the next-gen HDR displays has had me salivating, however then we’re speaking about displays which price near twice, and even three or 4 occasions, as a lot.

If you’re after an reasonably priced, immersive big-screen PC gaming expertise then the AOC AGON AG322QCX has undoubtedly received to be a part of the dialog. You don’t should lay our a fortune on some ultra-enthusiast graphics card to have this type of influence, only a mid-range card and this vibrant 1440p 32-inch panel will see you proper.