How Much Does it Cost?
The AOC AGON PRO AG276QZD is available now from Amazon with an MSRP of £599, but at the time of writing it had come down to just £499.97. That is a lot of money, but for a panel of this calibre it’s about on par with the competition. It’s a big investment. However, I don’t think I would use this monitor for my daily work, as the dimming and pixel shifting of the panel is honestly a bit distracting. Of course, if you’re using it solely for gaming, which is definitely what it was built to do, then there’s no competition, it’s hands down an absolute game changer.
Overview
OLED is a wonderful technology, but it can be a pain to live with. You will get lured in by the amazing contrast, perfect black levels, and on this panel, that staggering brightness too. However, I don’t like that every four hours the panel tells me it needs to perform maintenance, or that static images cause dimming, etc. That being said a “normal” OLED panel doesn’t have these issues, but this one is pretty extreme, with insane brightness, and an extreme refresh rate. As far as monitors go, this is a hyper car, and needs more love and attention than a traditional sports-car-esque gaming monitor would, if you can make any sense of that analogy.
However, quirks aside, when it comes to gaming, it absolutely shines. I spent hours last night playing Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer, with HDR turned on, the brightness turned up (on the monitor), the refresh rate set to 240Hz, G-Sync turned on, and honestly, it’s just the absolute best gaming performance I’ve had from a monitor. The response time is telepathically fast, there is absolutely zero blur, ghosting or smearing, the HDR performance is staggeringly beautiful, the colours are like candy, and there was no screen tearing. You simply cannot ask for more from your monitor.
Well, saying that, you could perhaps ask for a bigger panel, or a higher resolution, but even on an RTX 4090, 1440@240Hz is hard work for AAA titles, pushing to something like 4K@240Hz would increase the cost of the monitor significantly, require an extremely powerful computer, and use a lot more power and generate a heck of a lot more heat too. 1440p is a great resolution for a 27″ panel, 240Hz is plenty fast even for an eSports pro; overall, I think the AG276QZD is a bit of a sweet spot.
Should I Buy One?
For a daily office and work monitor, it does suffer from a few quirks, as do many OLED panels, but with this one being so extreme in terms of brightness and refresh rate, it seems a little more prone than less-extreme panels. However, when it comes to gaming, nothing else comes close, it’s an absolute weapon of a monitor that excels in absolutely everything gaming related.
