Author: Adam Simmons

Date published: November 23rd 2016



Whilst initial high refresh rate models were restricted to TN (Twisted Nematic) panel technology, we’ve recently seen a few high refresh rate models making use of alternative panel types. This includes 27” 144Hz AHVA (Advanced Hyper-Viewing Angle) panels with a 2560 x 1440 resolution, an IPS (In-Plane Switching) type technology designed for superior colour consistency and viewing angle performance compared with TN. These AHVA panels are used on a relatively small number of models currently, including the ViewSonic XG2703-GS. The AOC AGON AG271QG makes use of the same AHVA panel, providing a potentially attractive mixture of responsiveness and image quality. To further entice gamers, this monitor includes support for Nvidia G-SYNC and a 165Hz refresh rate. We put this screen to the test using a range of ‘real-world’ applications, including games and movies, and see if it’s as good in practice as it is on paper.





This model features a 27” AU Optronics AHVA (Advanced Hyper-Viewing Angle) panel, an IPS-type panel supporting a 165Hz refresh rate. This offers true 8-bit colour per channel with a 4ms grey to grey response time specified. Some of the key ‘talking points’ have been highlighted in blue below.

Key talking points of the specifications are highlighted in blue below.





Screen size: 27 inches

Panel type: AU Optronics M270DAN02.3 AHVA (Advanced Hyper Viewing Angle) LCD

Native resolution: 2560 x 1440

Typical maximum brightness: 350 cd/m²

Colour support: 16.7 million (8-bits per subpixel without dithering)

Response time (G2G): 4ms

Refresh rate: 165Hz (variable, with G-SYNC)

Weight: 6.8kg

Contrast ratio: 1,000:1

Viewing angle: 178º horizontal, 178º vertical

Power consumption: 45W

Backlight: WLED (White Light Emitting Diode)

Typical RRP as reviewed: £580 ($750) USD

The monitor has a reasonably understated (but still interesting) look for a gaming monitor. The bezels cover the panel border pretty much entirely, in contrast with some modern designs that feature a reasonably prominent panel border and a very slender outer bezel. The bottom bezel has a brushed texture effect whereas the remaining bezels are plain matte. The included stand offers excellent stability and is quite heavy-duty, comprising powder-coated metal with a forked stand base. As explored later, the screen surface used here is light matte anti-glare.





The dark red of the AGON logo, central to the bottom bezel, is really the only splash of colour on the front of the monitor. Aside from in the image, when it’s turned on of course. Towards the bottom right of this bottom bezel you can see some painted OSD (On Screen Display) control button labels. The controls themselves are pressable rather than touch-sensitive buttons which face downwards. The video below runs through this OSD menu system.





From the side the screen is quite svelte – ~16.5mm (0.65 inches) at thinnest point, bulking out centrally. At the right side of the monitor there is a retractable headphone hook, which is a bit like an aerial that you can move down so that it sticks out at the side. There is also a 3.5mm microphone jack, 3.5mm audio output and 2 USB 3.0 ports (yellow supports fast-charging). The solid stand is also clearly visible from this orientation. There is a sliding scale to aid height adjustment (and preferred adjustment points) along the right side as well, with a small red plastic triangular marker. The stand offers full adjustability; tilt (3.5° forwards, 21.5° backwards), swivel (20° left, 20° right), height adjustment (130mm or 5.12 inches) and pivot (90° clockwise rotation into portrait). At lowest height the screen clears the desk by ~71mm (2.80 inches) with the top of the screen ~438mm (17.24 inches) above the desk surface. The total depth of the monitor including stand is ~235mm (9.25 inches).





The rear of the screen adds a splash of colour in the form of dark red brushed-effect matte plastic ‘wings’, which run through the central region of the monitor. The stand attaches centrally via 100 x 100mm VESA, with a special plate included to allow an alternative VESA 100 solution to be used instead. Note that the screws which are used to attach the stand to the stand are black, located in a small bag that should be stuck to the protective wrapping around the stand. 2W speakers are included for basic and fairly low-quality sound output, with a range of down-firing ports. To the left of the stand base, as viewed from the rear, there are 2 USB 3.0 ports (plus upstream) and a DC power input (external power brick). To the right of the stand base there is; DP 1.2a (supports G-SYNC), HDMI 1.4 and a 3.5mm microphone jack. There’s also a Kensington lock socket beneath this port area.





DP 1.2 must be used to access the full capabilities of the monitor, including 165Hz and Nvidia G-SYNC. The latter also requires a compatible Nvidia GPU to be used. The HDMI 1.4 port is simply there for compatibility with other devices such as games consoles. Standard accessories include the power cable, DP cable, HDMI cable, USB 3.0 cable and 3.5mm audio cable.





A light matte anti-glare screen surface is used on this monitor, with a smooth surface texture to keep the image free from obvious graininess. The low haze value (‘light’) element of this also aids the vibrancy potential of the monitor, whilst it still maintains good glare-handling characteristics to avoid the sorts of reflections you’d see on a glossy screen. Regardless of screen surface, it’s important to think about your lighting environment and avoid light hitting the screen directly, where possible, or very high levels of ambient light.







The subpixel layout of the monitor is the standard RGB (Red, Green and Blue) stripe, shown in the image above. This is the most common layout and the one which modern operating systems including Microsoft Windows and Apple’s MacOS are configured to handle properly by default. As a Windows user there is no need to run through the ClearType wizard, although you may still wish to do so according to preferences. And as a Mac user you needn’t worry about text fringing issues caused by less usual subpixel layouts.





As we explored in the previous section, the monitor offers quite a cut-down OSD. This is quite typical for G-SYNC monitors and was certainly the case with the AOC G2460PG. As such there are no presets included, but there are a few adjustments that can made in terms of colour temperature (and colour channels) as well as the usual 3 gamma settings. In the table below we provide key readings (gamma and white point) and observations using a range of different settings. The readings were taken using a Datacolor Spyder5ELITE colorimeter. Our test system used an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 G-SYNC compatible GPU, connected via DisplayPort. Windows 10 is used on this system with the monitor connected to the PC without additional drivers or ICC profiles loaded. The monitor was left to run for over 2 hours before readings were taken. Aside from for our ‘Test Settings’ assume any setting not mentioned was left at default. The exception to this is that the refresh rate was set to 165Hz (where ULMB was disabled) as this was used for most of our testing. Unlike on some monitors, increased refresh rates did not impair image quality. For testing with ULMB active, brightness was increased from the default ‘90’ to ‘100’.

Out of the box the monitor was very bright but quite well balanced overall – the image appearing far more vibrant than it did washed out. The consistent shades that you’d hope for from an IPS-type panel were also apparent, without the obvious gamma and saturation level shifts occurring when viewing different sections of the screen. There was a slightly cool-green bias to the image but nothing severe and easy enough to correct with colour channel adjustments. Although gamma did not track perfectly as ‘2.2’ under any setting, the default gamma mode provided decent gamma performance with a little sagging to ‘2.3’ for some mid-shades. This gamma setup is certainly good enough for the intended uses of the monitor and in fact some users would appreciate the little bit of extra depth and vibrancy to some shades. The image below shows the gamma tracking under our ‘Test Settings’.



Gamma 'Test Settings' The monitor also includes a ‘Low Blue Light’ slider which can be set between ‘0’ (off) and ‘20’ (maximum effect) in single unit increments. At maximum level in particular, and especially when coupled with reduced brightness, this proved effective and we do appreciate having this sort of setting for relaxing evening viewing. We would have liked an easy way to toggle this setting. This is something which some other manufacturers, such as BenQ, have mastered by integrating the setting into presets that can be easily enabled and disabled without even entering the main OSD. It is also applied on top of other ‘Color Temp.’ settings, which is good in terms of flexibility but potentially a bit confusing. It is especially confusing if you use the ‘User’ setting, as activating ‘Low Blue Light’ knocks down the blue colour slider a bit, but this change is only visible after re-entering the menu. The setting provides a much stronger effect than simply manually setting the blue colour channel to this value, though, so it seems to just be a quirk in the system. If you want to preserve any customisations made to the ‘User’ settings, we’d advise switching to the ‘Warm’ setting and then changing the slider for ‘Low Blue Light’. We are also aware that some users will be curious about the ‘sRGB’ setting for colour temperature which was not mentioned in the table. This was not featured as it is identical to the factory defaults but with far less flexibility in what the user can control (including locked and high brightness levels).



Test Settings Our test settings involved significant reductions to brightness and some adjustments to colour channel to better balance things for 6500K without noticeable green bias. As noted earlier the gamma tracking on the monitor is perfectly adequate and in some respects quite attractive for the intended purposes of the monitor. Given this, inter-unit variation and some of the drawbacks mentioned in this article we will not be providing any ICC profiles for this monitor. For colour-critical work where absolute gamma precision is preferred there’s really no substitute for calibrating your own individual unit with a colorimeter or similar device – and downloading somebody else’s ICC profile can simply be counterproductive. Anything not mentioned here was left at default, including contrast which is set to ‘50’ by default (or ‘45’ with ULMB active. We’ve included the ‘Overdrive’ setting here just for reference, even though the default setting was used.



Brightness= 32 (according to preferences and lighting) Brightness= 32 (according to preferences and lighting) Color Temp. = User Red= 65 Green= 61 Blue= 61 Overdrive= Medium Refresh rate= 165Hz

Contrast and brightness Contrast ratios We used a BasICColor SQUID 3 (X-Rite i1Display Pro) to measure the luminance of black and white, from which static contrast ratios were calculated. This data is presented in the table below, with the settings featured in the calibration section explored alongside different brightness levels. Aside from the exceptions mentioned in the calibration section, assume things were left at default. Blue highlights in this table show the results under our ‘Test Settings’. Black highlights on the table indicate the highest white luminance, lowest black luminance and peak contrast ratio recorded. Monitor Settings White luminance (cd/m²) Black luminance (cd/m²) Contrast ratio (x:1) 100% brightness 384 0.32 1200 80% brightness (Factory Defaults) 331 0.28 1187 60% brightness 273 0.23 1187 40% brightness 207 0.17 1218 20% brightness 131 0.11 1191 0% brightness 42 0.04 1050 Factory Defaults (90% brightness) 358 0.30 1193 Gamma2 360 0.30 1200 Gamma3 358 0.30 1193 Color Temp. Normal 314 0.30 1047 Color Temp. User 207 0.30 690 Low Blue Light = 20 348 0.30 1160 ULMB @ 120Hz 129 0.12 1075 ULMB @ 100Hz 140 0.13 1077 ULMB @ 85Hz 174 0.17 1024 Test Settings 163 0.15 1087

The average contrast ratio with only brightness adjusted was 1171:1, which is pleasing for a non-VA LCD panel. Under our ‘Test Settings’ static contrast remained respectable at 1087:1, with similar values recorded using factory defaults and ULMB active. Impressively, even with the strongest ‘Low Blue Light’ setting contrast remained strong at 1160:1. The lowest contrast recorded was using the ‘User’ setting (690:1), which as explained in the calibration table was due to it using ’50’ for each channel rather than the neutral ‘65’. The peak luminance recorded in the table was an impressive 384 cd/m² and the minimum white luminance a relatively dim 42 cd/m². This provided a luminance adjustment range of 342 cd/m² without loss of contrast.





PWM (Pulse Width Modulation)

This monitor does not use PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) at any brightness level. DC (Direct Current) is instead used for backlight brightness regulation at all brightness settings. The backlight is therefore flicker-free at all brightness levels, which will come as welcome news to those worried about side-effects associated with PWM usage.





Luminance uniformity

We observed a black background in a dark room and could see some backlight bleed, particularly as a sort of ‘spotlighting’ towards the bottom right corner. As is usual for IPS-type panels (including AHVA as used here), there is also a silverish or slightly yellow ‘glow’ that varies depending on viewing angle. This can be seen from a normal viewing position towards the bottom corners of the screen in particular. Unlike backlight bleed, it is not something that varies between individual units. It ‘blooms out’ more noticeably from a variety of viewing angles and its effects are explored later on in the review. There’s also a video showing how this glow is perceived from a variety of viewing angles. The photograph below was taken from a few metres back and perfectly central so that this ‘AHVA glow’ was not captured, instead offering an accurate reflection of how the backlight uniformity excluding this glow appeared for dark content.







We’d again like to stress that backlight bleed varies between individual units, although models using this panel seem somewhat more susceptible than average to moderate backlight bleed. We’d also advise caution when trying to assess or compare ‘backlight bleed’ of our unit to others on the internet. Users tend to post hugely over-exposed photographs, often taken relatively close to the screen and therefore capturing ‘AHVA glow’ as well as any backlight bleed. These do not accurately represent ‘backlight bleed’ or overall dark uniformity as the eye sees it.