Customer Ratings & Reviews

Had this monitor for about a month and I am still blown away by the picture for the price. I was contemplating this or OLED and while I still would like an OLED I can’t help but be concerned about the longevity as I rarely upgrade. Mini LED is the sweet spot for me in terms of price, picture and longevity. To put it into perspective, my 6 year old asked if I had gotten a new computer the first time he saw me using it. If a 6 year old can see the difference, I’m sure you will as well.

I like the monitor enough that I've bought it twice. For $250 it's the best monitor in its price range by a pretty good margin. 1152 dimming zone VA Panel mini led monitors like this typically go for $400-$500 depending on the brand. The picture looks great, and it gets eye searingly bright in HDR with incredible blacks (make sure to run Windows HDR calibration tool if your using HDR). All of that being said, there are three primary downsides to this monitor. The first is a small one, being that you can't upgrade the monitors firmware. Typically most people won't even know they can do this, but bugs can pop up such as when this monitor was first released, and without a method to update the firmware they can't be fixed. The second, and more important downside is the display port being limited to 1.4. This typically isn't an issue for 1440p, but Nvidia cards have an issue where you can't run 1440p 180hz with HDR at 10bit. You either have to lower the refresh rate to 120hz or drop the HDR to 10bit, greatly lowering the number of possible colors. Most people probably won't care about this, but it's still an issue worth mentioning. The third downside is the included stand, which will impact everyone not using a VESA mount. It's terrible. It can only rotate up and down. It can't swivel, it can't move up and down, and it can't rotate. If your getting this monitor you really need to get a cheap arm or replacement stand. One last note, I would highly recommend changing the HDR profile fram the default game to displayHDR. It's a personal preference thing but it looks far better, with the game mode being pretty dim and displayHDR not only being overall brighter, but also having much brighter highlights. Overall it's a great monitor with some downsides that most people probably won't care about a side form the terrible stand. It looks great, has great features, and is the best monitor in this price range. Rtings and Hardware Unboxed have great in depth reviews if you want an unbiased in-depth review of this monitor as well.

Good view angles for a VA. No perceivable VA smear on faster response overdrive. HDR is amazing with great blacks and brightness. Use windows 11 hdr calibration tool.

I connected the monitor to my gaming laptop and the image quality is top-notch. The video doesn't pause, and I can play very comfortably.

This monitor is a great update to the previous mini-led budget champ, the AOC Q27G3XMN (I'm going to refer to them as the G3 and G40 for the rest of the review). Pros -Insanely bright for impactful HDR -Great contrast and highlights thanks to impressive 1152 zone backlight -Decent color performance -Fast panel response (little to no dark level smearing, great for a VA panel) Cons -Color issues (dithering) at max refresh -Terrible stand -Only one Displayport and one HDMI port -VRR flicker in certain situations This monitor, the G40, is a great upgrade over the G3. It has over 3x the amount of lighting zones, so much so that I haven't been able to notice any blooming while using local dimming. Additionally, due to the increase in zone count, highlights stand out a lot better in HDR as the algorithm can better illuminate smaller bright items. There can be some interesting gamma shifts when using the local dimming in SDR, but I haven't seen any issues in HDR. Additionally, there are no issues enabling HDR in windows and having the monitor switch automatically, and SDR and HDR settings can be set separately and retained, which is great. Its amazing brightness (calibrated in windows to around 1300 nits) results in a striking HDR image. Another improvement is the elimination of scanlines when using VRR, which was present in the old model. Now, everything is incredibly clear. There are some cons. The stand is atrocious, and a step down from the previous model. This stand only offers tilt, and is quite low in height. Also, you won't get a fully bloom free pixel perfect lighting like an OLED. Additionally, it won't offer the same motion clarity, but it is quite good for a VA panel (there is visible overshoot at the highest overdrive mode, I recommend using the "faster" setting). Lastly, it would have been nice to have an additional HDMI port, and for the picture settings to retain themselves for each different input, rather than just for SDR and HDR. Lastly, it does flicker sometimes in the low ranges of VRR, but, so does just about every other VA and OLED. Some final thoughts. It isn't an OLED, but what you lose in pixel perfect HDR and lighting, you gain in not worrying about long term burn in, a ridiculously bright picture with no full screen dimming, and clear text rendering due to the sub-pixel layout, so it's a good option for long days of both productivity work and gaming. Disable local dimming in SDR to control the brightness, it's TOO bright for productivity work (spreadsheets and the like). Also, for full 10-bit color performance, limit the monitor to 120hz. For avoiding dithering while using 8-bit+2, limit the monitor to 170hz. Either way, incredibly hard to notice. This is a great update to the previous model and an amazing budget option for an impactful HDR experience, I don't think it can be beat on price, and due to brightness I think it delivers a comparable or better HDR experience to 1440p OLED montiors at half the price.

I'll start with what I like about this monitor. First, the HDR on this monitor is awesome for the price. It has phenomenal contrast, capable of producing deep, inky blacks. And when it wants to get bright, it gets blindingly bright. The colors are great, too. As good if not better than my (admittedly dated) IPS panel. Good local dimming as well. Regarding motion clarity, it's good, but sometimes I can find cases of smearing when I am actively looking for it. This is to be expected of a VA panel. That said, by VA standards it's probably better than most others of its kind. You're still going to want to run either the 'Fast' or 'Faster' overdrive setting ('Faster' had a little too much overshoot for my taste, 'Fast' seemed like the best balance). Other miscellaneous things I like about this monitor: No noticeable input lag. Comes with a display port and HDMI cable in the box. Adaptive sync works great. Haven't noticed any flicker yet. I do have some complaints, though. For one, the monitor stand is an afterthought. No height adjustment. No rotation. It has tilt adjustment only. Buy a VESA mount or custom stand for this thing, because the viewing angles are not perfect. You need to be facing this monitor head on or you will see shifting. Also, the menu options are severely lacking. Most of them get locked out with HDR in use. For instance, the 'Brightness' setting gets grayed out, and you have to mess with other settings like contrast or local dimming if you want to change the brightness of the panel, which is far from ideal for obvious reasons. I have also noticed some settings get reset when you power off the monitor, which can be annoying. Another issue with this monitor is the fact it is limited to 120hz if you want to run 10bit with RGB and full dynamic range, and at the advertised 180hz it forces chroma subsampling. You can make a custom resolution of 179hz and get full dynamic range and RGB, but at 8 bit. That is fine, I guess, but why are we even making this compromise? DisplayPort 1.4 should not have this limitation, which this monitor says it uses. Since there are no USB ports for updating firmware, I'll just hope it's a bugged driver causing this. Sadly, the AOC support page is almost non existent. It's just a link on their Australian website (there doesn't seem to be a page on the US site for this monitor yet) that starts a driver download. There is no date and changelog information page, so if they ever do update the driver, you won't have any way of knowing until you download it. This is easily a 4-5 star monitor without the limitations. However, unless you just want a low priced HDR panel and don't care about the other features, it currently leaves a bit to be desired.

Pros: -Good contrast (when using strong local dimming setting, otherwise it is fairly unremarkable) -Motion clarity (very little ghosting or black smearing, especially for a VA panel, I found "faster" overdrive mode to be a good balance) -Extremely bright (when calibrating HDR in windows, adjust the full screen brightness setting I had to squint) -HDR is quite good, especially for $300 Cons: -Colors (monitor definitely has a yellowish hue on default settings, needed to adjust color temperature in graphics driver software to ~7200 K to look more accurate) -Does not support 10 bit color at 180Hz, need to drop to 120Hz to get true 10 bit (180Hz only supports 8 bit w/ dithering, which to my relatively untrained eyes is unnoticeable, but may be to others) -Monitor stand seemed relatively lackluster, but does support vesa mounts, which I opted to use. -Relatively high power draw (Using a kill-a-watt power meter, and comparing between my Pixio 24" 1080p 165Hz display, on the review screen that I am writing on right now, the Pixio draws about 20 watts, while the AOC monitor I am reviewing draws upwards of 60, and I have seen it draw over 100 watts in "worst case scenario".

Great upgrade from my 1080p 165hz IPS monitor. - Colors look amazing - it's plenty bright for me - local dimming allows for deeper blacks - 1440p is a great step-up from 1080p - the HDR is very good The black smearing common in VA panels can be greatly reduced by turning on overdrive (set it to fast or faster. Fastest causes a lot of inverse ghosting). The stand isn't the best because you can't adjust the height, but it's at a good height in my opinion. If you want it higher, it's easy to set it on some books or something. Local dimming is really good for gaming. I turn it off when browsing the web and doing homework because that's when I want things to look more uniform, but it's great for adding more contrast for gaming/movies. Along with making dark areas darker, it also makes bright areas brighter, so it increases overall contrast a lot. I'd only set it to low or medium though, because the high setting makes small, light objects on dark backgrounds (like your cursor against a black desktop) very dim. I am very happy with this monitor.

In the past I was looking for OLED monitor alternatives since OLEDs suffered burn-in, so I chose this monitor when it first came out. The monitor can get extremely bright, and you definitely need to tune it down, but combining it with windows HDR and local dimming, you get pretty close to some QLED monitors and OLED for half the price. There are some caveats though, as I believe all MINI-LEDs fundamentally have some slight glares on high contrast like white on black backgrounds, and since it isn't OLED, your cursor will look dim as well due to the light zones, since it isn't every individual pixel. Be warned if you are using an NVIDIA graphics card, as stated by RTINGS, you can't reach 180Hz on this unless you use an AMD graphics card or do modifications with subsampling on NVIDIA. There is an HDMI 2.0, DP 1.2, and audio port on the back. The included monitor stand is not the best but it is VESA compatible. Would definitely recommend it to those who want to try out OLED-like technologies.

This monitor is excellent for the price - it's definitely not perfect, but it is astoundingly good for what it is. Pros: - The dynamic dimming feature works well for the most part. It is definitely not an OLED, but it is about 90% of the way there when the dynamic dimming is turned all the way up. - The refresh rate is good. - The monitor looks good, it has pretty decent colors, although not what I would consider superior. But again, at this price point, it's perfectly acceptable and it still looks phenomenal. Cons: - When dynamic dimming is on, you cannot dim the monitor at all. This may sound like a non-issue, but when you are sitting in a dark room at night on a page with dark mode, then suddenly scroll past something white, like an image, it will absolutely fry your eyeballs with how bright the white is compared to the surrounding black. It's relatively uncomfortable, and you need to use a third party application to dim your screen. - The dynamic dimming, when turned up to max, sacrifices a good bit of colors if the colors are not extremely bright. It is not super noticeable, but icons, or text, may take on a weird tint and generally just look off compared to if you have the dynamic dimming turned to a lower setting. All in all, it still works very good and gets the job done. Not perfect, but it works. - The monitor is heavy. Compared to my other OLED monitor, this thing is quite heavy. This is likely normal for this sort of monitor as other reviews have mentioned the weight is actually not bad. It's not terrible at all and I have it mounted to my wall, but I thought I would mention it. - Certain icons, especially smaller ones, appear pixelated on this monitor. I could not explain why or how, but I notice it occasionally. On my other 1440p monitor, it is not an issue, but I do notice it with this one. It's hardly an issue and it doesn't really matter, I'm not sure why it happens, but I notice it the most with smaller red icons, such as Opera GX on my Windows taskbar. Conclusion: Great monitor if you want dynamic dimming, good contrast, good colors, and great blacks in gaming scenarios. Overall worth the purchase, especially if you are a gamer and/or like to watch movies/shows. Super good at what it does at a great price point. It's certainly not an OLED, of course (it doesn't claim to be) but it comes somewhat close to mimicking one, it's just lacking in-terms of features. I would recommend this monitor to any casual gamer if it fits their budget and they just want something that looks nice and performs well. I use it as a second monitor alongside an OLED and I haven't regretted my purchase.

The monitor is very bright very good for hdr content.The short comings is some bugs with the local dimming on strong will over time desaturate the image which requires a restart to fix. The monitor stand is horrible I would highly recommend a 3rd party vesa mount.

The visuals of this monitor are extremely good for the price. The pros: It has 1152 local dimming zones using mini-LED tech and that translates into gorgeously vivid (quantum dot tech) and bright (windows HDR calibration tool has my panel rated at over 1300 nits in HDR mode) images on the screen in HDR content such as PC Games and videos. The black levels look impressive as long as the settings are dialed in correctly on your game or video. SDR mode is rated at 450 nits and with tweaking it can also display content to a good standard, although this monitor really shines in HDR content. The viewing angles seem pretty good for a VA panel. Responsiveness in PC Gaming feels the same a my previous IPS monitor and black smearing is very minor on the UFO test although I haven't noticed it while gaming at all with the 2nd highest overdrive setting. You don't have to worry about burn-in like OLED users have to worry about. Some negatives of this monitor are that it is not very robust with features such as lacking USB ports, the HDMI port is limited to HDMI 2.0, there's no way to update the firmware, the stand only tilts the screen, and the AOC USA website doesn't yet have a dedicated section to this monitor with drivers, software, or manuals (although you can go to the Australia AOC site and get everything you want there for this monitor). The bottom line: Great bang for your buck monitor that delivers great visuals while somewhat lacking extra features and ease of use options.

Overall, I'd say this is definitely still an improvement from my 1080p IPS monitor. However, what at first feels like a premium product quickly gives way to limitations. Other reviews have already gone over the coloring situation for the most part. However, other reviewers claim that they simply had to lower their framerate to 170-179 to get the full dynamic 8bit range without dithering. This doesn't seem to be the case for me. My two choices seem to be 10-bit color at 120hz, and 8-bit with dithering at any refresh rate above that. I have not been able to disable dithering at any refresh rate above 120. After adjusting some other variables I've limited the color banding caused by this (which can occasionally be egregious on bright blue skies in games with HDR enabled), but be aware this is only a 120hz monitor if you plan on taking advantage of all of its features. I feel like displaying it as 180hz is almost false advertisement. I would've payed an extra $100 for a monitor that could run 10bit color at 180hz, and I would've been happy if I could've gotten rid of dithering above 120hz at the current price, but so far I haven't been able to. Haven't really noticed much (if any) black smearing or VRR flicker, but I'm not really a monitor snob. I'm overall happy with the picture, but I still regret my purchase. I wish I would've just saved my money and gone with an OLED instead, or at least a mini-led that provides full color. I'm not going to return it, but I imagine I'll be upgrading again within a year or so.

The monitor offers an insane value, especially if you manage to get it for $250 when its on sale. Its extremely bright. The local dimming feature is not perfect but still works really well in SDR. I have it set at the medium setting and the contrast can look as good as oled at times. The colors r very vibrant and while the monitor did have a slight red tint to it out of the box, it was easy to adjust using the OSD. As for ghosting, the “Faster” overshoot is by far the best and offers a fast response time with minimal ghosting. OSD is a bit hard to navigate using only buttons. The stand isn’t the best but I have it mounted.

Pro Great HDR, Contrast, Colors, Blacks, 180Hz, Price Con Stand (Buy a VESA stand) The one included is garbage. 8bit color at max refresh (not a big deal for me but still) Other Make sure to get March or later manufacture date Early ones have bug in Local Dimming on Strong Using Sapphire Nitro X 9070XT with it. I bought it for the HDR (love playing games with it)

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I ordered this — there wasn’t much info out yet — but after a few days of use, I’m really impressed. The colors are close to IPS, and the blacks are surprisingly deep for a VA panel — about 80% of the way to OLED to my eyes. Even with full daylight coming into my room, the image holds up without looking washed out. Motion clarity is great too — I don’t notice any smearing or ghosting in games, and text looks sharp with no weird fringing like you sometimes see on OLED. VRR works fine — no flickering that I can see — and overall the monitor just feels good to use whether I’m gaming, browsing, or watching videos. For the price, it’s hard to beat. Definitely one of the best all-around 1440p monitors out there right now.

$249 - $300 is a very good price for a MiniLED display that has 1152 zones. Monitor has less than ideal viewing angles due to its VA pane, but has great picture quality and contrast with decent motion performance and latency for a VA.

Monitor can’t run at advertised 180hz without it limiting the color range. You have to create a custom resolution at 179hz to get the full color space. No speakers, no height adjustment. Horrible on screen display which locks a lot of options. No drivers, can’t update firmware. Vrr flickering, colors/hdr is good

When you put the local dimming higher, it makes smaller objects VERY dim (like the Youtube scroll bar on the bottom of a dark video for instance). Other than that, pretty good looking monitor. Color settings were a little red heavy out of the box, but was an easy fix.

Bought when on sale for 250. Monitor looks amazing after tweaking osd settings. I like to keep my brightness down and not being able to use local dimming in the dark (because of how bright it gets and not being able to dim) is unfortunate. Other than that super solid. I was upgrading from a 60 Hz 1080p IPS so this is a huge improvement.