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Lots of bang (and some blur) for the buck.
By Matt Clark
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Trying to find the right PC gaming monitor in 2017 can seem like a rather daunting task. There's a multitude of panel types, refresh rates, response times, and of course, price levels. AOC's AGON AG322QCX (See it on Amazon) / (See it on Amazon UK) attempts to find middle ground between packing in all the bells and whistles a gamer could want at a price that won't break the bank. With a 2560 x 1440 resolution, a curved 31.5” screen, AMD's FreeSync adaptive refresh rate technology, and a 144Hz refresh rate the AG322QCX has a really impressive feature set for a $400 monitor. But does the budget price lead to budget picture quality? I put this monitor through its paces to find out.
Design and Features
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AOC has crafted an attractive monitor with the AG322QCX, keeping things understated while adding just enough flair to mirror the aesthetics of a gaming rig. The 1800R curved display has wonderfully thin bezels on three sides, while the bottom portion of the monitor is a bit thicker to accommodate two LED light strips. The lighting can be customized in red, green, or blue, and looks great sitting above an RGB keyboard. The bottom bezel itself has an unfortunate, cheap glossy-plastic appearance; a shame, since the rest of the monitor looks really solid. On its back, the AG322QCX has a winged design with four more light strips. You can tweak the brightness of the lighting, too, and the ambient effect against a wall is subtle and appealing.
The sturdy metal base offers swivel, height, and tilt adjustments, and while the metal feet are quite solid but on my narrow desk they forced me to move my keyboard back a bit, which was a bit annoying. AOC has included a handy flip-out headset stand on the right-side of the monitor which gets the job done well enough. Cable management can be accomplished by feeding cords through an opening in the stand, but the outcome isn't all that clean. I would have preferred a clip on the back of the stand to keep things more out of the way
Similar to other curved 1440p monitors, like the Acer Predator Z35P, the AGON AG322QCX uses a Vertical Alignment (VA) panel. These types of panels generally offer better contrast and viewing angles than Twisted Nematic (TN) panels, while still producing better (sometimes) response times than In-Plane Switching (IPS) panels. This 16:9 display boasts a 4ms response time, although like many VA panels, this can be a tad misleading as I'll discuss below. The screen itself has an anti-glare coating which does a great job of deflecting errant sunlight, but to my eyes also adds a small degree of haze to images. Still, a 2000:1 contrast ratio is more than decent, and with a 300 nit brightness, the AG322QCX can project a well-balanced image.
Under the backside of the monitor you'll find an array of I/O ports, including two HDMI ports, two DisplayPort connections (required for both FreeSync and 144Hz refresh), a VGA port, as well as 3.5mm mic and audio hookups. While these are all located in a rather annoying spot under the monitor, the three USB 3.0 ports are mercifully located at an angle just to the side and are easy to reach. There's also a set of internal speakers in the AG322QCX, but like most monitor speakers, you're better off with a headset. The audio quality overall is pretty poor.
Under the front edge of the monitor is a JOG button for quick access to the on-screen display menu. The button works fairly well, with each direction opening an oft-used sub menu for things like setting the color of the monitor's LED strips or changing pre-set “game modes.” The menu itself, beyond those quick selections, is a pain to navigate and appears fairly outdated. What's offered in the menus themselves is the usual controls for brightness, contrast, and the previously mentioned pre-set color modes. But frustratingly, some of the more detailed options like Image Setup, which includes sharpness, are inaccessible depending on which mode you're using.
The OSD jog dial is also illuminated.
Personally, I felt all the “game mode” settings looked terrible and oversaturated the colors to an alarming degree, so I left things on normal mode. There is an sRGB color setting, but to be frank, I wouldn't trust this monitor—or most VA panels, for that matter—with any detailed color work as in my experience they lack the color accuracy of IPS panels. On a better note, AOC's Shadow Control setting, which intends to fight some of the blending of black tones on VA panels, does a good job and is easy to tweak.
If you don't want to use the menu button on the monitor, however, AOC has also included a strange little mouse-sized remote which connects to the monitor via mini USB. The remote does actually make the experience of navigating the menus easier, since you're not constantly hitting the wrong button. But honestly, it's just another plastic brick taking up valuable desk real estate. The thing is hardly worth keeping around once you've calibrated the monitor.
Testing
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In order to get a better look at how the AGON AG322QCX holds up under pressure, I turned to the Lagom LCD test pages. This series of images allowed me to see how the monitor performs in terms of things like contrast, viewing angles, response time, and gamma. The VA panel under the hood performed well on contrast tests, with most tones from black to white easily discernible without any dithering. Some of the darkest tones did tend to blend into the black background, though—a common issue with VA panels. Again, some tweaking with the Shadow Control setting helped somewhat. Gamma output was great, with colors landing solidly in the Windows Standard 2.2 range, and this also translated over to perfect grayscale gradients. I witnessed no banding whatsoever, so you can expect consistent color transitions.
The viewing angles on the AG322QCX were quite impressive, helped no doubt by the rather steep 1800R curve and the 31.5” screen size. Moving my head left to right, colors stayed consistent outside of extreme angles. Moreover, I witnessed no “backlight bleed” or errant glow coming from the monitor when taking a step back and looking at a dark screen. Sometimes, with VA panels, the bleed can be an issue, but not with this monitor. It's important to note, however, this can vary from unit to unit.
Response times can also be a area of contention with VA panels. The Lagom tests use a series of flashing pixels, transitioning from light to dark and vice-versa, wherein perceived flashing indicates an estimate of response time. While AOC claims the AG322QCX has a decent 4ms response, manufacturers tend to publish the easier “grey to grey” figures. This appeared to be the case with this monitor, as the darkest transitions were significantly longer. Light to dark transitions were very fast and almost unnoticeable, though.
Unfortunately, slower response times can also cause ghosting, or perceived blur, behind moving objects on the screen. I tested this on the UFO ghosting test page, and as expected there was some significant blur trailing behind moving objects on a darker background. Lighter backgrounds were less noticeable, but ghosting was still present.
Gaming
The inclusion of FreeSync adaptive refresh is a big draw for anyone using a compatible AMD graphics card. I utilized a Radeon RX Vega 64 during testing to take full advantage of the anti-screen tearing capabilities and resolution of the AGON AG322QCX. As expected, the two worked very well together, with no discernible screen tearing or stuttering while playing games like Middle Earth: Shadow of War or Battlefield 1. The latter allowed me to take full advantage of the monitor's 144 Hz refresh rate, and when the framerate held to that high standard, gameplay was smooth and looked good despite some slight blurriness. The steep curve of the display coupled with its large 32” size made for an immersive experience indeed.
But screen dimensions notwithstanding, I more often than not felt myself put off by the AG322QCX's ghosting and blur issues. Playing Shadow of War on High settings, for example, where the framerate holds around the 60fps mark and scenes can be considerably darker, there was an aggravating amount of softness to the screen. This looked even worse in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, a game that's admittedly in the earlier stages of optimization. Jumping into the fray felt like I was watching a British television show in PAL format at times. It looked that fuzzy.
None of this is helped by the fact that pixel density becomes more questionable for 1440p displays above 27”, or the—admittedly minor—amount of haze I could sense from the screen's anti-glare coating. Color-wise, as previously stated, the AG322QCX looks perfectly fine on its normal settings, but utilizing any kind of pre-set game mode is an oversaturated affair. Game 1, for example, turned the desert in Battlefield 1 a bright orange and the sky into a flat blue.
Purchasing Guide
The AOC Agon AG322QCX has a surprisingly low MSRP of $399.99, and since it just launched that's the same price it is on Amazon:
The Verdict
The AOC AGON AG322QCX is an aesthetically pleasing, incredibly priced monitor with a host of excellent features like a 31.5" curved panel, FreeSync, and a 144Hz refresh rate. But the blurry ghosts of your in-game enemies should steer you away to slightly more expensive pastures. It's worth the money to look elsewhere.
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