In the middle, there’s a spot to attach the stand, and you can also use it with a VESA mount if you want to use your stand. The stand is pretty cool, too, as you can adjust its height up to 110mm, swivel it left and right, and tilt it from -4° to 22° for a comfortable view. But it doesn’t rotate or pivot. Connectivity The lighting brings nothing to the experience, and you'd be better off setting a specific color or just turning it off altogether. It's a shame since more manufacturers are now looking at ambient lighting, using in-game and on-screen content for showcasing color around the display. It's not a deal breaker, however. The weakest LBL setting with only a very mild effect on blue light output or indeed the overall image. As factory defaults with significantly higher gamma. Things now appear deeper and fuller with a vibrant and saturated look. The overall colour balance is good, with the white point just slightly higher than the target and no green tint. The greyscale gradient appeared smooth without obvious banding or dithering. The upper end (brighter shades) had a misty appearance due to the screen surface.

The AG273QCX makes a great first impression. Its 27-inches is already generous but the 1800R curve works to enhance its perceived size, taking up more of your field of view. I’ve used curved displays large and small and, while it ultimately comes down to personal taste, I find 27-inches to be the point where they find their value in gaming as they’re large enough to actually draw me further into the game. The curve is also well implemented here as I didn’t see any text blurring or other deformation at the edges of the screen. The monitor is bright and can be configured to be at the maximum output of 400 nits, but this isn't an impressive figure for HDR displays. It's of striking quality, but don't expect to be blown away by HDR content on this panel. It's designed more like a gaming display.

On a more positive note, it’s one of very few gaming monitors to feature AMD FreeSync 2. Compared to normal FreeSync, FreeSync 2 monitors are validated by AMD and are guaranteed to feature High Dynamic Range, low latency, and low framerate compensation. The last is particularly important as it extends the FreeSync range throughout the monitor’s entire refresh range instead of the limited window of original FreeSync.Though isn’t on Nvidia's list of G-Sync approved FreeSync monitors, that may change in the future, and you can always force G-Sync with the latest Nvidia drivers. If you're still using a 1080p display, own an AMD GPU and are looking for an upgrade to 1440p, you should consider the AGON AG273QCX. It has all the features you'll need for butter-smooth gaming, it isn't too badly calibrated out-the-box, and it comes with FreeSync 2 and HDR support, though the latter isn't particularly noteworthy. Fairly low input lag and a 144Hz refresh rate to give a good ‘connected feel’, and Adaptive-Sync working for both AMD and Nvidia users to get rid of tearing and stuttering from frame and refresh rate mismatches It has a QHD screen, which means it has excellent sharpness and clarity. This makes it great for gaming and office work, as you can see the text clearly without zooming in. The monitor has a slight curve, but isn’t very noticeable since the screen isn’t too big. The AOC AG273QCX is an affordable 27″ 1440p 144Hz gaming monitor with 1ms MPRT, FreeSync 2, DisplayHDR 400, and plenty of additional features.

High refresh rate 2560 x 1440 monitors are highly sought-after amongst gamers who are looking for nice image quality and good responsiveness without requiring insane amounts of GPU horsepower. Many 27” options of this size and resolution use either a TN or IPS-type panel, but there are some exceptions. The AOC AG273QCX of the AGON 3 series is one such exception, featuring a curved VA panel. This is coupled with support for Adaptive-Sync (including AMD FreeSync 2) and HDR processing. We take this monitor for a spin using our usual range of tests to see whether it hits the sweet spot between image quality and performance. The panel driving that gaming experience is VA with a native resolution of 2560x1440 and a maximum refresh rate of 144Hz. This is the “sweet spot” for modern high refresh rate gaming, offering a fluid, crisp gaming experience while not demanding most cutting edge hardware on the market. The display is also DisplayHDR 400 certified, though that comes with a big caveat. The monitor offers excellent contrast and brightness levels, making it easy to differentiate between light and dark areas in games. This enhances the overall visual experience, making scenes more captivating and realistic. The brightness levels are adjustable, so you can optimize them according to your preferences and the ambient lighting conditions in your gaming space. Be it the mass of ports, FreeSync Pro adaptive sync support or something as simple as the two headset hooks, every detail in the AOC AGON AG273QZ has gaming in mind. It looks modern and premium, with seriously sharp, stand-out image quality and has comprehensive on-screen menus. But while the specs are impressive, they aren’t quite top-tier, ultimately allowing for a mid-range price and just a few high-end features.Setting the overdrive option to ‘Boost’ enables the Motion Blur Reduction technology. You cannot use MBR and VRR at the same time. Our suggestions regarding use of VSync also apply, but obviously you’re using Nvidia Control Panel rather than Radeon Settings to control this. The setting is found in ‘Manage 3D settings’ under ‘Vertical sync’, where the final option (‘Fast’) is equivalent to AMD’s ‘Enhanced Sync’ setting. You’ll also notice ‘G-SYNC Compatible’ listed under ‘Monitor Technology’ in this section, as shown below. Make sure this is selected (it should be if you’ve set everything up correctly in ‘Set up G-SYNC’). As mentioned in the above section of the video review, we consider the overall pixel on this model to be somewhere in the middle as far as VA models go. Somewhat weaker than what we observed on the Samsung C27HG70 and the AOC C24G1 (even using the ‘Medium’ overdrive setting there). And certainly weaker than on the LG 32GK850G, with appropriate settings. But improved compared to the likes of the AOC Q3279VWF. And quite in-line with the AOC AG322QCX, overall. We also made observations on Shadow of the Tomb Raider. These were largely similar to our observations on BFV and more broadly. This title had a large number of dark shades, with dimly lit interior areas, so ‘smeary’ trailing and ‘break-up’ trailing was quite common. Users probably won’t generally find it distracts too much from the gameplay on titles like this. It’s potentially a lot less bothersome than on titles like BFV, where the added perceived blur and removal of the competitive edge can be more of a nuisance. This won’t provide you with an otherworldly HDR viewing experience the high-end displays offer. Instead, you just get a glimpse of HDR can do, which is understandable at this price range.

Some users may wish to use the monitor at a lower resolution than the native 2560 x 1440 (WQHD). Either for performance reasons or because they’re using a device (such as a games console) that doesn’t support the full native resolution. The monitor provides scaling functionality via both DP and HDMI. It can be run at resolutions such as 1920 x 1080 (Full HD) at up to 120Hz and use an interpolation (scaling) process to fill the pixels of the screen up. If you’re connected via HDMI 2.0, the monitor also supports an upscaled 3840 x 2160 (‘4K’ UHD) signal at up to 60Hz. This will be useful if you’re using a games console which supports that resolution but not the native 2560 x 1440. To ensure the monitor rather than GPU is handling the scaling process, as a PC user, you need to ensure the GPU driver is correctly configured so that the GPU doesn’t take over the scaling process. For AMD users that are using this monitor, the driver is set up correctly by default to allow the monitor to interpolate where possible. Nvidia users should open Nvidia Control Panel and navigate to ‘Display – Adjust desktop size and position’. Ensure that ‘No Scaling’ is selected and ‘Perform scaling on:’ is set to ‘Display’ as shown in the following image. As above, but a significantly weaker LBL setting with no noticeable green tint. The blue channel is weakened only slightly compared to factory defaults. The ‘Overdrive’ setting did not function with Adaptive-Sync enabled on our Nvidia GPU. All settings behaved as ‘Off’.AOC has gone the extra mile by building an equalizer and DTS surround sound right into the monitor itself. The surround sound isn’t very good, unfortunately, and there’s no low end to speak of but at only 5W per speaker, it’s to be expected.

title=More%20Expert%20Tech%20Roundups&type=articles%2Cvideos&tags=tech-roundup&count=6&columnCount=6&theme=article Other design features include a headset hanger, a carrying handle, and a light matte anti-glare screen coating. For gaming the curve provided just a subtle feeling of extra depth, drawing you in just a bit without feeling uncomfortable or unnatural. As we observed on the desktop, the effect was subtle. Steeper curves and wider screens can enhance this effect, but in this case it’s certainly a minor addition to the experience. The images below show a variety of games running on the monitor. Again, they exaggerate the curve and do not accurately reflect how the monitor appears in person (in terms of image quality or the curve). They are purely for illustrative purposes.

It’s a 27-inch flat gaming monitor with QHD resolution and to please the most avid gamers, has a 0.5ms response time, paired with a 240Hz refresh rate, made possible at this price because of the TN panel. The TN panel does mean that you’ll need to be sat head on to the display to get the right viewing angle, and the colour accuracy could sometimes be a little off. FreeSync Premium Pro is supported but there’s no Nvidia G-Sync and the Vesa Display HDR400 isn’t the best you can get either.