Author: Adam Simmons

Date published: February 20th 2017



We’ve seen a few UltraWide models with native 100Hz+ refresh rates, including the AOC C3583FQ and Acer Z35. Despite supporting high refresh rates, there are some obvious issues with pixel responsiveness. And the 2560 x 1080 resolution is somewhat limiting for a screen of that size. The AOC AG352UCG, of the AGON series, goes further than this by offering higher resolution of 3440 x 1440. A VA panel is again used – and as for responsiveness, that’s something we will be testing out in detail. We’ll also be taking a look at other aspects of image quality, such as contrast and colour reproduction.





This model features a 35” AU Optronics AMVA panel with 100Hz refresh rate and true 8-bit colour (no dithering). This is accompanied by a 3440 x 1440 resolution and specified 4ms grey to grey response time. 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: 35 inches

Panel type: AU Optronics M350QVR01 AMVA (Advanced Multi-Domain Vertical Alignment) LCD Panel

Native resolution: 3440 x 1440

Typical maximum brightness: 300 cd/m²

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

Response time (G2G): 4ms

Refresh rate: 100Hz (variable, with G-SYNC)

Weight: 11.8kg (including stand)

Contrast ratio: 2,000:1

Viewing angle: 178º horizontal, 178º vertical

Power consumption: 70W

Backlight: WLED (White Light Emitting Diode)

Typical price as reviewed: £799

From the front the monitor has reasonably slender glossy black bezels. These are; ~18mm (0.71 inches) at the top and sides and ~30mm (1.18 inches) at the bottom. This includes a sliver of panel border that’s not quite covered by the bezel and for the bottom bezel is measured centrally where the bezel is thickest. At the bottom edge of the bottom bezel, some additional colour is provided by LED strips which can be illuminated green, red or blue as demonstrated in the OSD (On Screen Display) video shortly. They can also be switched off or dimmed if preferred. The tripod-shaped stand is made from powder-coated metal, providing a solid base for the screen. There’s also a red ‘AGON’ logo to identify this as a member of the AOC AGON range of gaming monitors. The screen surface is light matte anti-glare, whilst the screen itself has a 2000R curvature. Both elements are explored later on.





In the middle of the bottom bezel, near the AGON logo, the OSD (On Screen Display) controls are located. There is one single joystick (JOG button) that controls the entire menu system and is pushed in to turn the monitor ‘off’. A faint power LED illuminates this joystick, but it’s only visible if you look from below. This glows dark blue during normal operation and amber if the monitor loses signal from the computer and goes into a low power state. The video below runs through this OSD menu system.





From the side the screen is ~24mm (0.94 inches) at thinnest point, bulking out centrally. At the right side of the monitor there is a silver-coloured retractable headphone hook, which is a bit like an aerial that you can move down so that it sticks out at the side. You can see the solid tripod-shaped stand quite clearly from the orientation. As well as offering a solid base and a reassuring heft to the monitor, the stand offers good ergonomic flexibility; tilt (5.5° forwards, 29° backwards), swivel (30° left, 30° right) and height adjustment (120mm or 4.72 inches). At lowest height the screen clears the desk by ~89mm (3.50 inches), with the top of the screen ~483mm (19.02 inches) clear of the desk surface. The total depth of the monitor including both the screen and stand is ~275mm (10.83 inches).





The rear of the screen features matte black plastic broken up by silver plastic ‘wings’. These wings feature two LED strips either side, which are lit alongside the strips on the bottom bezel using the same control in the OSD. The stand features a carrying handle at the top and a cable tidy area towards the bottom and attaches by 100 x 100mm VESA screws. It can be removed and an alternative stand or mount used instead. The ports are down-firing and located beneath one of the wings and behind the stand neck. Beneath one of the wings there is a 3.5mm microphone jack, 3.5mm headphone jack and 2 USB 3.0 ports (the first, coloured yellow, supports fast-charging) plus upstream. Behind the stand neck there are the remaining ports; DP 1.2 (supports G-SYNC), HDMI 1.4b, 3.5mm microphone jack and a DC power input (external power brick). There is also a K-slot beneath the port area and 2W speakers for basic sound output.





The full capabilities of the monitor, including G-SYNC and 100Hz operation at 3440 x 1440, require the use of DP 1.2. G-SYNC requires a compatible Nvidia GPU, although the refresh rate and resolution is supported on AMD GPUs via DP 1.2 as well. The HDMI 1.4b 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.





The monitor uses a light matte anti-glare screen surface with a smooth surface texture. This keeps the image free from obvious graininess and aids the vibrancy potential, whilst maintaining good glare-handling. Although glare handling is effective and you shouldn’t expect reflections as you’d get on a glossy screen surface, you should always be mindful of your lighting environment on any screen surface and avoid direct light striking the screen where possible.







The monitor uses an RGB (Red, Green and Blue) stripe subpixel layout, as shown above. This is the standard subpixel layout that modern operating systems such as Microsoft Windows and Apple’s MacOS are designed to deal with by default. Apple users needn’t worry about text fringing caused by less usual subpixel layouts and Windows users don’t necessarily need to run ClearType. They may still wish to run through this process simply to adjust according to preferences, though.





The monitor includes a range of ‘Game Mode’ presets; ‘FPS’, ‘RTS’, ‘Racing’ and ‘Gamer’. These set the settings on the ‘Luminance’ menu to various values, so don’t achieve anything you couldn’t achieve through manual tweaking. We are more interested in some of these specific settings, such as the ‘Gamma’ settings and also the ‘Color Setup’ menu. The table below shows key readings (gamma and white point) taken using a Datacolor Spyder5ELITE colorimeter alongside general observations, using a range of settings on the monitor. Our test system used an Nvidia GTX 1070 connected via DisplayPort. The operating system used on this system was Windows 10, with no additional monitor drivers or ICC profiles loaded. Before the data in this table was collected, the monitor was left to run for over 2 hours. Aside from our ‘Test Settings’ where various adjustments are made, assume factory defaults are used. The exception to this was the refresh rate which was set to 100Hz in Windows – this did not impact image quality.

The image straight from the box was excessively bright and a bit faded in places, but was easy to improve using the OSD. Following this, the image was vivid and varied with good depth. As is usual for a VA model, particularly one this wide, there was some saturation lost towards the flanks and bottom of the screen. Nothing extreme, though, and even here the image did not appear ‘washed out’. The gamma tracking (shown below, for our ‘Test Settings’) deviated a bit from the ‘2.2’ curve at the mid-low end, averaging ‘2.1’. This counteracted some of the ‘black crush’ associated with such panels, as we explore later, whereby some detail in dark areas is lost. Meanwhile shades maintain good vibrancy due to the fact gamma is still fairly close to ’2.2’ overall and the colour gamut is quite generous for an sRGB monitor. We suspect the gamma profile was tuned with all of this in mind.



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. With this set to maximum and brightness reduced, this proved to be a useful setting for relaxing evening viewing. It would’ve been nice to have a quick and convenient way to toggle this on and off, rather than having to reduce the slider back down to ‘0’ to disable it. Even so, it is a nice setting to have and one which we used for our own evening viewing comfort (but not our testing). Also note that the setting is applied on top of other ‘Color Temp.’ settings, which is good in terms of flexibility but potentially a bit confusing. There is an ‘sRGB’ setting in the ‘Color Setup’ menu that we did not cover in the table. That is because it is simply the same as the factory defaults (‘Warm’) with no ability to adjust brightness, contrast, ‘Game Color’, ‘Shadow Control’ or ‘Gamma’.



Test Settings For our ‘Test Settings’ we massively reduced brightness, changed the ‘Gamma’ mode and made some adjustments to colour channels. As mentioned previously the gamma tracking on the monitor is fine for its intended uses and some users would actually find it preferable to absolute adherence to the ‘2.2’ curve. Given this, plus inter-unit variation and some of the drawbacks mentioned in this article we will not be providing any ICC profiles for this monitor. Anything not mentioned below was left at default, including contrast being left at ‘50’ (the default). We’ve included the ‘Overdrive’ setting used here and refresh rate, for reference.



Brightness= 33 (according to preferences and lighting) Brightness= 33 (according to preferences and lighting) Gamma = Gamma3 Color Temp. = User Red= 63 Green= 63 Blue= 65 Overdrive= Medium Refresh rate= 100Hz

Contrast and brightness Contrast ratios We used a BasICColor SQUID 3 (X-Rite i1Display Pro) to measure the luminance of black and white. From these readings, static contrast ratios could be calculated. This data is shown in the following table, with blue highlights indicating the results under our ‘Test Settings’ and black highlights indicating the peak white luminance, minimum black luminance and highest contrast ratio recorded. Aside from the exceptions mentioned in the calibration section, assume default settings were used. Monitor Settings White luminance (cd/m²) Black luminance (cd/m²) Contrast ratio (x:1) 100% brightness 371 0.17 2182 80% brightness (Factory Defaults) 318 0.15 2120 60% brightness 259 0.12 2158 40% brightness 194 0.09 2156 20% brightness 119 0.06 1983 0% brightness 34 <0.02 >1700 Factory Defaults (90% brightness) 345 0.16 2156 Gamma2 343 0.16 2144 Gamma3 343 0.16 2144 Color Temp. Normal 273 0.16 1706 Color Temp. User 209 0.16 1306 Low Blue Light = 20 331 0.16 2069 Test Settings 163 0.08 2038

The average contrast ratio with only brightness adjusted was 2120:1, slightly exceeding the specified 2000:1. This excludes the reading at ‘0’ brightness due to a lack of precision with the black luminance reading. Whilst this falls a little short of what some VA models can muster, it still provides a distinctive ‘VA’ contrast experience that other LCD panels types can’t match. Dark shades have good depth to them, including black text having a fairly solid and almost inky look against lighter backgrounds. The ‘User’ mode provided relatively weak contrast, but this is only due to the colour channels defaulting to ‘50’ rather than their neutral position of ‘65’ as explained earlier. Under our ‘Test Settings’, with minor adjustments from neutral to the red and green channels, a contrast ratio of 2038:1 was recorded which is good. Equally pleasing is that contrast remained similar (2069:1) even after applying the full ‘Low Blue Light’ setting. The peak luminance recorded in the table was a rather bright 371 cd/m², whilst the minimum white luminance recorded was a dim 34 cd/m². This provided a luminance adjustment range of 337 cd/m² without loss of contrast.





PWM (Pulse Width Modulation)

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





Luminance uniformity