As a consumer, I’ve always been drawn in by strong visuals and aesthetics. As a visual person by nature, I’m often captivated by pieces of work that include superior visuals. It’s probably why I thoroughly enjoy video games and anime.
So when AOC Gaming offered me the opportunity to test their AOC CQ27G3S 27” curved gaming monitor (“ the monitor” or “AOC monitor”), I jumped at the chance. What better way to enjoy my games than with my very own curved monitor right?
Upon receiving the monitor, I was definitely intrigued. Having read that its a product purpose made for gamers definitely piqued my curiosity and interest.
Right out of the box, the monitor looked sleek, with a premium look and feel that gave me the impression that upon using it, I’d be forever changed. Again, it’s all about the aesthetics and once I set the monitor up, I was mesmerised. With its black base colour and red accents, this AOC monitor really did look like it was made for gamers.
Design
Apart from the sleek look of the monitor, the other thing that stands out right away is, of course, the monitor’s curved design. This AOC monitor comes with a 1000R curved design. R, in this instance, stands for radius and the number, 1000, stands for the millimetres of the radius from one edge of the screen to the next.
Typically, the greater the radius of a display, the less of a curve you get. A 1000R monitor, as in this case with this AOC monitor, is considered to be the best option as it perfectly matches with the human eyesight viewing angles and depth perception.
In other words, the curved nature of this monitor’s display creates a wrap-around effect that allows you to totally focus on the action in front of you. Immersive gaming for the win!
Another benefit that this monitor delivers is that it can be adjusted to suit my level of comfort by being able to be raised up or down and turned left or right. At its lowest height setting, the screen stands at 40cm tall and can be raised an additional 13cm to a maximum height of 53cm tall, which means being able to adjust it to your line of sight perfectly.
The monitor can also be swivelled 40 degrees left or right and can be tilted down 5 degrees and 20 degrees upwards.
Ports wise, this monitor comes with 2x HDMI ports, a Display port and a headset port. Unfortunately there aren’t any built-in speakers with this monitor, which is a shame as I tend to prefer alternating between wearing a headset and enjoying my media without it.
Customisation
As with the adjustments of the screen itself, the monitor also includes several settings that allow you to customise the display. These setting options include: Luminance, Colour setup, Picture boost, On Screen Display Setup and Game Setting. Once again this AOC monitor proves to be one that can be tailored to its users preferred style of use, which is amazing for someone like me who’s not had such options in the past.
Features
FreeSync Premium
To ensure that there’s no disruption to your immersive gaming experience, the FreeSync Premium that comes with this monitor keeps the monitor’s refresh rate synced with your processor’s. This means that you won’t have to deal with any tears or stuttering in the images you see on screen.
Refresh Rate
You don’t even have to worry about blurred images. The 165Hz refresh rate on this monitor will allow it to perform at a high standard, delivering an ultra smooth experience.
For those of you who are not familiar with what a refresh rate means, it essentially refers to how many times per second the display is able to draw a new image. In this case, the refresh rate is 165Hz, which means it is refreshing the image 165 times per second. When paired with the high frame rates produced by a GPU and CPU working together, this can result in a smoother experience and potentially higher FPS. Essentially, the higher the refresh rate, the smoother the visuals.
Response Time
So what about its response time? Well to get what’s considered to be good gaming experiences, a monitor needs to come equipped with fast response times.
Response time represents one of the most vital specs for monitors and determines how coherent an image will appear, whether it will have artefacts like blur, ghosting, or “trailing”, and how responsive the interaction will feel.
The response time of a monitor can be found by looking at the MPRT or Moving Picture Response Time on a monitor’s specs. The MPRT is the standard for measuring the “motion blur” of rapidly moving objects in a sequence of images.
Generally a good gaming monitor will come with 1ms MPRT or close to that. With this monitor coming with a 1ms MPRT pixel response time, I haven’t had to deal with annoying ghosting effects or smearing when playing fast paced games like Halo Infinite.
Display Resolution
When it comes to the display visuals, this monitor comes with a Quad HD (2560 x 1440) resolution that delivers an incredible amount of detail, sharper images and improved clarity. Even while watching others play while I waited to respawn in games, I was impressed by how good the game’s visuals looked on screen. It was quite refreshing to see minute details look so clear on screen.
It isn’t just the Quad HD resolution that helps make images pop on this monitor. The higher dynamic range (HDR) is also beneficial as it helps you see better details in brighter images, making it look more realistic and more aligned with what the creator of the images intended it to look like.
This AOC monitor comes equipped with HDR 10, the industry standard high dynamic range that delivers better colours, brightness and contrasts. Why is it an industry standard? One reason is that it’s an open format and therefore used by many major companies, which means the monitor can make the most out of content being displayed, whether it’s a TV series streaming on Disney+ or a highly visual game like Forza Horizon 5.
Blue-Light Output
Another interesting feature of this monitor is it reduces the shortwave blue light output. The AOC Low Blue Mode setting ensures a more healthy viewing experience for prolonged use, which many of us gamers are guilty of. The good thing is that it does this without compromising the natural rich colours of the display.
I definitely felt the effects of the Low Blue Mode setting as I actually ended up sitting in front of this monitor for a full day and didn’t feel much of a strain on my eyes as compared to my old monitor. Of course, I wasn’t gaming all day and was working so it could’ve been that too.
Conclusion
My experience with this AOC CQ27G3S 27” curved gaming monitor has definitely changed how I’ve enjoyed my media content. Through the monitor aesthetics were personified and amplified in a way that felt natural, like I was seeing the cars on Forza Horizon 5 in real life rather than through a screen (or close to it anyway). It was even really quite immersive watching Moon Knight, the latest Marvel TV series, on the monitor. I really felt enveloped in the moment, especially with headphones on.
As someone who’s not very tech savvy in the sense of understanding the nitty gritty details of how to optimise a monitor for the best on screen visuals, this monitor really made life easy for me by coming with settings that were simple and easy to change. Not only that but I really didn’t feel like I had to change too much apart from adjusting the height of the monitor to be able to enjoy it at its fullest.
Having such a rich and wide display to use now, I don’t think I’d ever be able to go back to working off just my laptop screen or playing games on my old small monitor. AOC has spoiled me and I’m grateful for it.
If you enjoy good visuals and are looking for a new monitor, consider the AOC CQ27G3S 27” curved gaming monitor. It can be purchased at PC retailers like Scorptech, Centre Com and the like.