AOC CQ27G2U 27″ 144Hz Curved Gaming Monitor Review

Performance

The panel on this monitor is pretty well equipped for this price range. It doesn’t have the most colour advanced panel in the world, but the refresh rate and resolution will be enough to entertain the masses easily enough. At 27″ it offers a fairly good productivity space. I can comfortably read two pages side by side at a 100% scaling, and despite being a 4K user myself, I don’t feel limited here. The curve still feels a bit weird while reading though, it’s certainly something I’m more comfortable with while gaming or watching a movie. However, it’s something you adapt to quite quickly.

The speakers on this monitor are much better than I thought they would be. I belted out some Steve Vai on here and it sounded pretty good. I mean, crap compared to desktop speakers and completely lacking in bass, but honestly, for daily tinkering, it’s more than enough and pretty loud too.

The colours on the panel are really nice, not as rich as some of their more high-end models, but then it’s not as expensive as them either. Black levels are really uniform and there’s no noticeable banding or torching going on. Plus, if you’re watching native 24 FPS movie content, that fits inside the frame timing at 144 Hz nicely, so you don’t get dropped frames.

For gaming, the 144Hz is what really pays off though, ultra-fast refresh rates, a slight panel curve, and Adaptive Sync are going to ensure a much smoother gameplay experience, especially for games that benefit from the bigger frame rates, such as the recent Doom game.