AOC, nosotros demand to talk almost your production names. The monitor I accept to review today has a name that's but too long and complicated for anyone to remember. It'due south called the Agon AG322QCX, which no one sane will retrieve after reading it. And that's a shame, because there'south quite a memorable spec canvas to discuss.

It'due south a 31.5-inch, 1440p curved display (1800R) with a maximum refresh rate of 144 Hz. Information technology uses MVA technology, and so we're getting a great mix of contrast, colour performance, viewing angles and response times. It supports FreeSync, which is great for those with AMD graphics cards.

And if you want an AG322QCX? You lot're looking at $430 when it hits the U.s.a., which is a keen price for this sort of hardware.

Before discussing annihilation else, I wanted to talk a bit about this monitor'southward curve. Normally I'g not a huge fan of curved displays unless they're ultrawide, just at this size – nearly 32 inches – I think the curve works provided you're sitting reasonably close. The sheer size of this display means that at a comfy viewing distance, information technology occupies most of your field of view, and the subtle bend helps to keep the display immersive for gaming.

The design is not one of AOC'due south best. To exist honest, the build quality looks a bit cheap: almost of the brandish housing is very basic plastic in either black or silver, with noticeable seams and quite an unattractive raised bar forth the bottom of the panel. The stand is a shiny silverish metal, though there'south just something almost the blanket that makes it look less premium than other stands I've seen recently. It requires a screwdriver to construct besides, which is ever a scrap of a pain.

Forget the build quality, though, the worst attribute to this monitor'southward design is the LED lighting. This monitor packs lighting on both the rear and along the lesser border, which can be set to 1 of iii colors. Technically information technology's RGB, as it can display red, green and blue, merely that'southward literally it. Information technology likewise but doesn't look good: the bottom light strips are unevenly lit and the rear lighting suffers the aforementioned fate. Disabling the lighting is the best selection.

While this is far from the all-time monitor design I've seen, it does have some positive aspects. The bezels are relatively slim – not as slim as what AOC portrays and states on their website, only slim nonetheless – and the stand up supports tilt, hinge and height adjustment. The range of motion here is great, and every position feels sturdy. Yous can't use the display in a portrait orientation though, which I guess doesn't brand sense with a curved panel anyway.

Another great aspect is the connectivity: there's lots of it. It's not a M-Sync console, so at that place's no limit on inputs, and AOC has taken full advantage by offering two DisplayPort one.2 inputs, two HDMI 2.0 ports, and VGA. There's a USB hub too, along with iii.5mm sound input (for the weak included speakers), a iii.5mm sound output for headphone passthrough, and a farther couple of 3.5mm jacks for microphone passthrough. These passthrough ports are handy for cablevision management and tie in nicely with the fold-out headphone stand on the correct-hand side.

I'm really glad AOC went for a directional toggle for their on screen brandish. It's the simply skillful manner to navigate through the many options included with modern gaming monitors. What you'll observe here is all the usual stuff, like game modes, low blue low-cal, a shadow boosting feature, and fifty-fifty a weird way called Picture Boost that I don't know when yous'd apply. Of course, there's also some moving-picture show quality controls, which I'll use a bit later for calibration purposes.

Gamers will love the 144 Hz refresh rate this monitor provides. High-refresh panels of this size are relatively uncommon, specially with a resolution of 2560 x 1440. The combination of size, a decent resolution, and a loftier refresh charge per unit makes this an attractive pick for anyone who wants to be immersed in games but would rather non splurge on a large ultrawide.

In an article I wrote before this year, I discussed how high-refresh 1440p is the best choice for gamers right now, and that still holds today. If you have a GTX 1070 or Vega 56, 1440p gaming at 60 FPS or amend is very doable, and those with faster GPUs will more oftentimes be able to button up towards that 144 Hz limit. If your hardware isn't that good right now, a monitor like this still gives you lot room to grow when yous upgrade in the future.

Of course, AMD users will be more than inclined to buy this monitor equally information technology supports FreeSync. Those with Nvidia GPUs won't get the benefits of variable refresh engineering science, however if you're planning to game at loftier frame rates, this isn't a big deal. Currently, at least as far as I'k aware, there is no G-Sync alternative to this AOC monitor on the market only yet.

Permit'due south talk about the LCD panel. Y'all'll exist glad to know this is an MVA panel, and so we're getting excellent viewing angles despite the curvature, along with a reasonably high 2000:one rated contrast ratio. Response times are okay, 4ms grey-to-grey co-ordinate to the spec sheet, which isn't quite as fast as a top-end TN merely still decent for gaming. I didn't discover ghosting, pixel response or motion blur to be a significant issue with this brandish, especially if you set overdrive to medium.

AOC claims the monitor is good for 300 nits of superlative brightness, though in my testing I achieved 266 nits, which is still well in a higher place what nearly people volition use comfortably. The contrast ratio actually exceeded what AOC listed, at 2081:1 with a very expert acme black bespeak of 0.xiii nits. This ratio is held quite well throughout the brightness range too: at 100 nits, it was nevertheless 2066:i.

At that place are some problems with uniformity, which isn't unusual for a curved display. My review unit was tinted slightly red along the left half, progressing to a more than yellowish tone in the right half. The deltaE difference we're talking about is as high as 4.8 relative to the middle of the display, which is easily noticeable when viewing a solid colour. Not a huge result for gamers, but it's a known trouble with a lot of curved panels and something to exist aware of.