Should I get an AOC AG274QXM?

[Valantar]

Definitely a hard choice when you need a multiuse monitor still not a lot of good options that also support HDR if any. Hopefully that changes over the next 6 months. My only experience with FALD IPS is a Samsung Q80 and QN80 (2021) both had pretty terrible image quality compared to The Samsung QN90a and my C1 especially in hdr maybe it's the size and on somthing 27/32 it would be less noticeable.

Lol, our TV is a Samsung Q80T, and I have zero complaints about its image quality - though that's the 2020 VA variant. The IPS Q80A is reportedly noticeably worse than the VA-based T - but it also seems to have just 50 backlight zones? Wow, that's ... low, especially for a TV. Rtings literally couldn't measure a difference between fixed and local dimming backlight levels with their checkerboard test due to the low number of zones - that's pretty terrile! On the other hand, comparing our Q80T to the Q90, Rtings (which I trust for TV reviews at least) notes that outside of panel-to-panel variance, the only notable advantage of the Q90 is 4000:1 vs. 3000: 1 contrast, higher brightness and better gradient handling, but that differences are overall very small.

Still, VA has some disadvantages for PC usage - for large monitors its worse viewing angles can cause color shifts, and many VA panels have weird artefacting (like black smearing) and I've seen reports of them being somewhat less sharp than IPS panels, though that no doubt depends on the particular panel. Color accuracy is also in my exprience more hit-and-miss with VA monitors than good IPS ones, though there seems to be no real reason for this other than manufacturers cheaping out. If LG launches a high refresh rate version of their IPS Black panels (that sit around or above 2000:1 contrast), that might be a good middle ground. Or if someone took the dual-layer LCD concept more seriously, though I guess that'd be expensive and require bespoke controllers and tricky tuning to get right. Still worth a shot though - the premise of LCD longevity with 1000000:1 native contrast and 4-pixel dimming zones is certainly an interesting one.

 

[Valantar]

So after moving back to Norway recently, and my trusty old U2711 finally giving up the ghost (it didn't die outright, but it was only intermittently accepting DP inputs, and disassembly showed a whole bunch of swollen caps on the motherboard, so I gave it away to someone willing to re-cap it), I decided to treat myself to one of these. It's a compromise - I kind of want 2160p still, and support for either HDR10+ or Dolby Vision would have been nice - but it's still an excellent overall featureset, and the price had dropped quite significantly to 7000NOK. So I ordered one to try out, as I'm now living close enough to walk to the post office if I want to return it Just got it out of the box and onto my monitor arm last night, barely got to look at it. Initial impressions: damn bright! No dead pixels that I could spot (still need to take a closer look though). Definitely noticeable blooming with the mouse cursor moving across a dark background - but I don't mind, as I don't see a point (beyond convenience/lazyness) to keeping HDR enabled on the desktop anyway. Didn't have the time to test any games or anything beyond turning the PC on to see that it worked - which it did. Booted straight into Windows at 1440p170Hz over DP with no tweaks necessary, and enabling HDR alongside my secondary 1080p75Hz AOC 24P2C (which does not support HDR at all according to the specs?) seemed to work just fine. I'll post more impressions here once I have had the time to have some fun with it.


Other impressions:
Packaging is pretty decent - well put together and sturdy, and the solid, compartmentalized box for accessories (cables, power adapter) is a nice touch, as is the thick plastic strap around everything that holds the packaging together and allows for easily pulling the monitor out of the box. The styrofoam packaging is a bit of a let-down though - both in terms of actual protection and the lack of recyclability. Still, it survived shipping without an outer box just fine.

Build quality seems good - solid plastics, well put together. Minimal creaks when handled, even for a relatively thick and heavy monitor. Didn't look at the stand, left that in the box as I use a monitor arm. Port selection is excellent, even if HDMI 2.1 would have been good (not needed at 1440p170 or 144, but it would be nice for guaranteed feature support for future consoles and PCs). Physically the monitor is like a slimmed-down version of the old U2711 - definitely not as thin as many modern monitors, but nice thin bezels and decidedly thinner than the Dell overall, but similarly boxy around back.

The inclusion of a full complement of cables is nice - DP, USB-C, HDMI, and USB-B 3.x, plus the power brick and control puck. The included cables are a bit of a mixed bag though: the DP cable was just long enough to reach my PC after routing it along the arm (which isn't bad - previous monitors have come with far too short cables for that!), and the included USB-C cable is (a bit too) thick and sturdy and quite long, but the HDMI and DP cables feel distinctly cheap. They work fine though.

The inclusion of a shade hood in the package is ... nice, I guess? I associate those with color-critical photo and video work, so it's a bit of an odd inclusion (even if this monitor has a massive color gamut and calibrates quite well), but I guess it's nice still. Not suited for my dual monitor setup, clearly.

I've barely poked at the OSD, which immediately seemed a bit clunky, but the included OSD control puck seems handy - for the three times a year that I'll be in the OSD after initial setup. I'll probably velcro it to the back of the monitor to keep it out of the way but still accessible. No visible RGB on the front - yay! No idea if there's anything on the back - if so, one of the trips into the OSD will be to turn that off. Can't comment on stand RGB as it's in the box.

The power brick though ... ugh. Why? It's so damn huge. I'm very happy I have a cable organizer under my desk, but it's just so unnecessary. Why does this monitor need a 330W power brick? Even with 65W USB-PD, 10W through all four USB-A ports, and however much power that miniLED backlight draws, I cannot for the life of me imagine 330W ever being needed even for 1000 nit full screen white flashes. I hate power bricks to begin with, and this is especially atrocious. It even removes the one advantage of power bricks - easier cable routing through thinner wiring - as the DC cable is easily as thick as (and much stiffer than) regular C14 AC inlet cables. It's entirely possible that an internal PSU would have concentrated heat output enough to necessitate active cooling with that powerful backlight, but honestly, I'd have preferred that over having this massive monstrosity beneath my desk. It also looks identical to Dell's old, chunky 330W laptop bricks, which speaks to it being an old and relatively cheap design. If it's made by the same OEM then at least it's a known good design that's relatively easy to find a replacement for, but still ... ugh. There are newer, more compact, more efficient alternatives out there, and something around 200W would likely have been plenty powerful. No thanks.

 

[Chrispy_]

Careful going in with that assumption without having prior experience - on paper that's how it should work, but in my experience at 27-28" downscaling to 1440p or 1080p on 4K is somehow equally if not more ass than 1080p on 1440...reminds me a little of "120Hz works better for 60fps games", sounds great doesn't work

If you're going to run 1080p on a 4K monitor, you absolutely MUST use integer scaling. The default trilinear upscaling of your monitor or GPU are awful in so many ways that I don't even care to start listing them.

Nobody ever wants blur.

 

[Valantar]

If you're going to run 1080p on a 4K monitor, you absolutely MUST use integer scaling. The default trilinear upscaling of your monitor or GPU are awful in so many ways that I don't even care to start listing them.

Nobody ever wants blur.

That was my plan if I got a 2160p panel. No good options there though, especially not in my price range, so we'll see if this AOC holds up. I definitely won't be using it at 720p with Integer scaling though

 

[Valantar]

I ended up not having a lot of time to test the monitor yesterday, but I did play half an hour of Rocket League and spent a little more time playing around with it.

Some impressions:
- No dead pixels, yay!
- Brightness is great, colors are vibrant - but pretty oversaturated at stock. The sRGB profile seems reasonable, but I don't have a colorimeter. I tried TFT Central's ICC profile (also sRGB) and recommended settings, which did seem to produce good results.
- Rocket League with W11's auto HDR looks fantastic
- I don't have enough experience with high framerate monitors to judge, and I'm not particularly sensitive to pixel response blur, but 170Hz RL looks amazing too IMO.
- However: gamma in HDR mode is noticeably off. Enough to make some desktop icons look weird, but also in-game elements like the "ball cam" indicator text in RL - which is very glowy and kind of looks like those gamma curve test patterns in Windows' built-in calibration tool, so it really showcases the weird gamma.
- This isn't enough to distract from the image overall looking very good, but it's definitely annoying. Will be interesting to see how it looks in a game with less bright overall visuals, and more dark color gradations, as that would likely exacerbate the problem.
- No gamma issues outside of HDR
- The complete lack of image adjustment options in HDR mode is annoying
- The OSD is rather poorly designed. It's workable, but ... meh.
- The rear RGB is actually kind of useful as a rear accent light for eye comfort using HDR in a dark room - set to medium brightness and a fixed warm white color.
- The OSD control puck is genuinely useful, especially as the monitor is right up against my case on the side where the control nub sits, but not being able to configure what the 1-2-3 mode shortcut buttons do is annoying. Guess I'll need to RTFM to figure out if they can be made useful - if one can be set to sRGB/color accuracy and one configured for gaming, that's something I'd want to use. Maybe one for daytime brightness and one for nighttime? Depending on what can be set for each, I definitely see potential in having this available.
- It seems that the red light ring around the OSD puck is always on as long as the monitor is on, and is not at all configurable? That's ... weird.


Am I going to keep it? We'll see - I'm on the fence still, and I need to test more use cases to see how bad HDR gamma really is. But outside of that, this seems like a great true HDR gaming monitor.