AOC m2752Pqu review

The AOC m2752Pqu is a 27in VA panel with a fully rotatable display and a height-adjustable stand. This makes it great for editing long text documents, as you can rotate it into portrait mode for easy reading. The base of the monitor’s stand is a little chunky, so you have to tilt the screen outwards so you miss the base when you change the screen to portrait mode, but the rotation mechanism feels very sturdy and the corners of the screen don’t leave any marks on the stand if you accidentally knock it while turning the monitor.

The monitor’s wide range of inputs is equally versatile. There are VGA, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort inputs, as well as a four-port USB hub with two ports on the back and two on the side of the monitor, a 3.5mm audio line in and a headphone jack.

Unfortunately, all this doesn’t make up for the m2752Pqu’s below-average image quality. We’ve seen great colour reproduction from VA panels, but after the near-100% scores of BenQ’s award-winning VA-based BL2410PT, we were disappointed to see that our colour calibrator only measured the m2752Pqu as covering 84.6% of the sRGB colour gamut out of the box. The monitor’s image extended well past the sRGB green and blue limits, but its reds were very short, leading to colours feeling quite cool. After calibration the monitor managed 87.8% accuracy, but this is still a poor score and doesn’t bode well if you’re planning on using this screen for colour-sensitive work.

Even the panel’s black levels, one of VA’s supposed strengths, were decidedly average. Our colour calibrator recorded a black level of 0.51cd/m² at the screen’s default settings, which is quite high compared to other VA panels we’ve tested.

Similarly, we only managed to record a contrast ratio of 436:1 – again, a long way short of what we’ve seen on many VA and IPS panels. This showed in our subjective photo tests; we could see plenty of detail in darker areas of our high-contrast test photos, but colours lacked vibrancy. Solid blacks and whites were also quite grey, particularly toward the bottom of the screen. Solid blocks of red, blue and green were better. The screen’s matt finish didn’t make these primary colours quite as bright and vivid as on screens with glossy displays, but they were all lit uniformly across the screen. A big advantage of matt screens is that they don’t suffer so badly as glossy screens from overhead reflections, so are better for use in offices.

The monitor’s viewing angles were not particularly wide. We didn’t have to move very far to either side to notice a considerable shift in contrast, and viewing the screen from an elevated angle produced similar results. The screen’s horizontal viewing angles in portrait mode were even narrower, but we had to stand up before we saw any change in contrast in the portrait mode’s vertical viewing angles.

The AOC m2752Pqu has all the makings of a great monitor, but it’s let down by sub-par image quality. The BenQ BL2410PT may be smaller, but it’s a vastly superior rotatable VA panel.