AOC - 27" Widescreen Flat-Panel LED HD Monitor - Black

Based on the price of this monitor, I was skeptical on the quality. The 20,000,000:1 contrast ratio was good, but I had seen better on cheaper monitors. However, as soon as I set this thing up, I was blown away. The 27 inches turned out to be far bigger than imagined, the contrast ratio was more than I would ever need, the thing was extremely fast (It has a 2ms response time!) the screen was super thin, and the design was stunning. Additionally, it came with built in speakers! In other reviews, people said the speakers were not very high quality, however I beg to differ! The sound is very crisp and clear, not to mention the fact that it has good volume to it, and can be turned up fairly loud. Additionally, here are some set up tips. When the box is first received, it says that it is "Windows 7 compatible", but don't worry, it works completely fine with windows 8 and 8.1 as well. Make sure to keep the box close when setting up the monitor, as the instructions are printed on the outside of the box. (I found that a little odd, but it wasn't really an inconvenience) Next, the monitor comes with an audio cable and a VGA cable. I DO NOT recommend using those cables, as VGA isn't very fast, and the audio cable has to be plugged into the headphone jack since VGA doesn't have in-line audio, hence making it extremely difficult to switch between speakers and headphones. I would definitely recommend using an HDMI cable, as it has better picture quality than VGA AND has sound in-line as well. I got an HDMI cable from this very website (bestbuy.com if that was hard to figure out :P) for only $5. Last but not least, the monitor comes with a disc too. On the instructions, it makes it look like the computer needs the disk software in order to run, but don't worry, as that isn't the case. All the disk comes with is a PDF of the users manual, an some optional drivers. (For some reason I wasn't able to install the drivers, so it's a good thing the monitor works fine without them.) Overall, terrific monitor! Don't hesitate to buy it!

Bought this monitor around mid July 2014 from Best Buy. 1st week of January 2015 the monitor started producing white screens and blank screens. February 2015 the monitor would hardly work at all. I contacted AOC via website and was directed to a service center for RMA process. UPS was the recommended carrier by the service center, UPS wanted $200.00 to ship the monitor via 2 day so I chose the week+ shipping at $50.00 (my cost). The service center had the monitor for a week approximately, then emailed me a UPS tracking number. I requested it be held for pickup at UPS hub. I arrived at UPS hub to pickup package, the box had not one piece of tape affixed to secure the box for shipping. The box was open and "flapping". I took the box home, opened it to find a new replacement monitor with a scratch on the upper left portion of the screen. I emailed the service center twice, over a week ago, no response. I emailed AOC via their website email structure, over a week ago, no response. The faulty monitor i shipped in for RMA was in brand new condition with the wrap still protecting the screen edges and stand. Mind you, I thoroughly taped each side of the box for shipment across the country. The defective unit was about 6 months old. The service center sent a replacement unit with a scratch on the screen, staring straight at my face, every time I use it. My OCD is getting the better of me at this point. I'm highly disappointed and will never buy a AOC product again. Just my experience.

When I saw this (for $199, $179 now 1 week later!) for 27" I immediately went to the physical dimensions and pulled out my tape measure. There was nothing at this price, 27", and physical size like it. I modified my desk by 1/2 inch to make sure it would fit. I LOVE it! That extra viewing real estate is great, and the picture awesome for PC-ing and watching HD video. The Bad: Sales guy mentioned AOC was popular, but some models had stands that were not so great. They didn't have one on display, but I saw other AOCs that seem to have more sturdy stands than this one does, but if it were not for the BUTTONS, I would not be touching it so would never notice (it doesn't wobble when typing or anything, just when you are fishing under it messing with the BUTTONS). The BUTTONS: They claim in the featureset that it has intuitive buttons. NOT! I plan to use it to switch between two PCs: 1 on HDMI, the other on VGA or DVI. Once you finger-find the buttons, get your fingers in position under all 4 buttons, then like fluting notes, it's 2,vol+ to scroll inputs,button 4 to set. Volume is on button 1 which then becomes VOL- and button 2 becomes VOL+, and you get the OSD off again with button 4. Urrg! There are Utilities which come with it, but I had problems with them (there is no documentation on these). I must admit that I have not looked at both my Intel utilities and theirs which might be conflicting with each other. Also, I did a Win Update, and it grabbed the AOC Driver for this Monitor, so this might fix things up; I'm sure there will be an easy keyboard shortcut I will get working, and my keyboard has volume controls, so I don't plan to need to use the buttons eventually. The provided utilities do let you do the gamut of various settings and modes which, if navigated via Buttons, would drive one insane. Oh, Speakers. SRS, really? Hey, they are okay as PC Speakers, but watching a movie is not great audio experience - my Samsung Tablet sounds better, but this is one of few monitors that does have speakers, and they are good enough for PC usage. OVERALL: Go get one of these. Still have the box, got it last weekend, could take it back, get another for $20 less - yeah, right. Box going to the trash chute tonight 'cause this puppy is sugged into its hole at my desk and isn't going anywhere "till the wheels fall off."

Price point fine for a slightly larger replacement display for another vendor's, which had failed totally while viewing. Much brighter, but maximum resolution of 1920 x 1080 only just sufficient for the size while I am writing software or word processing. No flicker or discolored areas. Brightness excellent and is actually is a bit more than I require, but I haven't dealt with the adjustment buttons (see below) enough to decrease it. No problems with initial setup on Windows 7, 8, and 8.1. A newer driver is an optional Microsoft download. (Couldn't tell any difference after installing.) Had read other reviews and now agree the buttons could hardly have been more poorly thought-out. No matter, I hardly have any need of them. But if you want usable buttons, tiny black ones that run under the black bottom edge with legends that are just raised black surfaces (and therefore totally useless) are not the thing. That odd looking thing to the right of the others is the ON lamp, as I discovered once I powered up. (Initially I had kept pressing it to get unit to power on, but finally tried the real power button, the one to its left.) However, if you just want a good display at reasonable cost, fine. I tried the software and found it disappointing, with one "English" version still having nearly total Japanese language. And that was the only one I thought I might actually use! Have not tried the speakers and cannot comment on them. In short, does a fine job at being a bright, large display at a truly fair price. But that's about it. (As to my "Recommend to a friend" choice, I wish there were a third option of "It Depends". For some friends I would certainly say Yes, but others might require a more sophisticated device.)

I needed (okay wanted) a larger monitor for work for the obvious advantages. Since I need to listen to occasional webcast and did not want the added clutter of speakers to my work area I wanted a monitor with built in speakers. The prerequisites on my search for a larger monitor: 27” or larger, built in speakers, DVI-D input, decent style to fit my office décor and affordable. This OAC fit the bill. Yes, as many reviews state, the control buttons are inconvenient but, for my use, once set I don’t really care. I actually prefer the visual hiding of the buttons. My primary purpose for this monitor is for typical day-to-day office work; staring at spreadsheets, email and the alike. Couple times a month I need to watch/listen to webcast and the speakers work just fine for me. If you are expecting surround sound quality I doubt you’ll find that in any monitor. The picture quality is pretty good for a monitor this size and this price range I’d say the picture quality is excellent. This AOC replaces my 23” Dell P-series monitor that is still working just fine. The Dell has a better picture quality but at a higher price, denser pixel placement and smaller screen. I do not do gaming or watch action movies etc… but if I did I’d say this picture quality would be okay but the speakers/audio to be substandard. I will admit I did not (visually) look at other 27” since this monitor is for work and I’m know to be rather, well, cheap. Even at the normal sell price this monitor is a really good deal, but when it went on sale I decided to get it right away since there is nothing out there that gives you as much bang for the buck. This is an entry level monitor but has better than entry level features, quality and style. I’ve now had this monitor for a couple months and have absolutely no regrets. I’d buy another in heartbeat. My only wish list to this monitor would be a couple USB inputs. (I think I just talked myself into buying another one since they’re on sale again)

Bought this monitor to try and save some money. I'll admit I'm usually picky with these sort of purchases and the image quality is just not what I'm used to. Positives: I think this is an awesome monitor for someone that is on a budget looking for a larger screen size. I loved that it had VGA, DVI, and HDMI connection, which is actually kind of rare at this screen size for some reason. Another positive is this did not have the usual power brick that I saw on many monitors, and since it's a traditional LED LCD, the response time was fast. Negatives: If image quality and color reproduction are things you care about, you'll definitely want to avoid this monitor. The colors looked really washed out in a lot of instances. I was hooked up through DVI and HDMI via computer and Xbox One respectively. The computer wasn't too bad, but I really noticed the colors weren't that great on the Xbox (Tip: switch to Full RGB on Xbox One settings to improve this). Compared to other monitors this is not aesthetically pleasing as the borders are very notable and the monitor is bulky in comparison. A couple of side notes: speakers are bad as expected, plugging in my headset or external speakers to the monitor did not sound great either as i heard some popping and distorting when the sound got loud (Monitor volume does affect the output volume, I had at around 50-60 out of 100). So, I'd recommend hooking up audio directly to whatever device is in the HDMI input rather than through the monitor. Overall, I ended up switching to an IPS display and it's much better suited for my needs, however, I would absolutely recommend this display to someone who is looking for a cheap 27" monitor as there weren't any issues I saw while testing the display.

I was skeptical about the brand and monitor for about a year. When it dropped down to $150 during President's Day weekend, I had to jump on it. (For reference, my previous monitor was a 2008-2009 Samsung 24" 1080p LCD Syncmaster which still looks better than most monitors today.) I've only had this monitor for a day. Out of the box, the picture settings were horrendous. Washed out colors and virtually no black levels. After a few tweaks within the monitor's OSD settings, the colors were still not to my liking. Then I discovered my graphics card has a setting called "Nvidia Vibrance" which enhances color and darkens blacks. After a few tweaks, this monitor stood out! Blacks are deep and colors are vibrant. Out of the box, my set has no dead pixels but horrible flashlighting (backlight is visible on the edges of screen where bezel is on too tight). 1080p content on this monitor looks great, anything lower than that (1080i/720p) looks awful. Text is nice and sharp. Overall, this is a great monitor for doing papers and playing games in 1080p. Just please have the patience to tweak the settings before writing it off like I almost did.

I just bought this monitor to replace my 21 inch Samsung TOC monitor. I had never heard of this brand before, but that could be my ignorance but the price was right and so was the screen size, so I jumped the gun. Upon setting it up (easy assembly), I noticed that the monitor is super bright. The buttons are a little hard to work through but you will only have to do it once. I then launched a soccer game called Fifa 2014 and the grass looked less greener than my 21 inch monitor. I am hopeful that after some warm up and color adjustment, I should be able to get the kind of picture I want on it, but I would say that the display is decent but not great. This is accentuated by the fact that it is 1080p. They claim that the output response time is 2 ms GTG and that is supposed to be super fast, but I am unaware of what the input lag is, and if this super fast output response time is actually going to make any difference. Overall, if you only care about the screen size and want a decent display, go with this for under $200 in July 2014. You can't go wrong. But do ensure you have no dead pixels. If you do, return it right away.