AOC C32G2AE FHD 165Hz Gaming Monitor Review

Performance

First impressions of this monitor are really good, the panel looks very well set up right out of the box with good colours, contrast and black levels. Of course, Windows is silly and defaults it to 60hz, so be sure to go into the display settings and set it to 165 Hz and to enable FreeSync if that wasn’t on by default. Of course, in games like CyberPunk where 165 FPS isn’t easy, rocking up with FreeSync leads to a much smoother experience overall.

Viewing angles on the panel are excellent, even on this very sunny day, the panel isn’t washing out that much and has more than enough brightness to compensate.

Also, I like that the stand doesn’t stick out too much on this monitor. It means my keyboard has a lot more room on my desk than you would expect from a monitor this large.

The fast response time and high refresh rate of the C32G2AE made Elder Scrolls Online look stunning, not that it didn’t already. I did a run on Maelstrom Arena this afternoon, and it was easier than ever to track what was going on. I’ll enjoy my 4K monitors pixel count, but I’ll miss the frame rate when I box this back up!

For a 1080p monitor, the level of detail is excellent. I expected it to look a bit blocky on such a large panel, but it works really well. Plus, the higher refresh rate provides a lot more information, especially when panning the camera or moving quickly, so the resolution looks a lot higher than it actually is. You don’t realise how much blur there is at 60hz until it’s not there!

I can have font sizes quite small on text, it’s not like 1080p is lacking in detail, but the panel size does mean I can fit a lot of information clearly on the screen.

For movies, the balanced colours and motion work great. Watching a Ghibli movie looked gorgeous.

There’s a little frame stutter on some pans, but that’s because the movie is in 24hz, and the panel refresh rate doesn’t divide well. Setting it to 144hz for movies will sort that out as 24 goes into 144 six times, so you don’t drop any frames.

The C32G2AE features some built-in speakers. Testing the speakers on The Dark Knight, they’re pretty OK. It sounds like it’s being played down a pipe, but they’re small speakers and tucked around the back, so it could be worse. For windows noises, a podcast or two, and some casual games, the built-in speakers are serviceable.

Overall, it’s easy to watch stuff and play games on, but the larger panel makes it a joy to use for work too. You’ve even enough screen space to cram in some reddit while you work on your spreadsheets.