AOC i2353Fh review

IPS LCD panels, with their amazing viewing angles and better colours, have traditionally been the preserve of high-end business and design monitors, so we were delighted when we saw the AOC i2353Fh. Despite costing around £150, this 23in Full HD (1,920×1,080) has an IPS panel.

The monitor also has a novel design and its stand can be folded back and used as a wall mount, and the screen itself is incredibly thin at just 11mm. A silver brushed-metal bezel and stand make the i2353Fh stand out from the crowd. With DVI, VGA and two HDMI inputs, it’s incredibly flexible in the ways you can use it. Plus all those ports are situated in the base of the monitor for neater cabling.

Touch-sensitive menu controls sit at the base of the stand flanking the power button, but they don’t stand out very well and their icons aren’t immediately recognisable. AOC’s menu pops up from the bottom of the screen, and it’s unnecessarily complicated, with delays navigating between options.

As well as brightness and contrast, you get a choice of Eco modes, which are preset brightness levels, as well as three gamma levels and a dynamic contrast option. The latter doesn’t seem to cause dramatic changes in brightness as some do, but we felt it darkened the image too much and left it disabled.

Colour temperature can be set to Cool, sRGB, User, Warm or Normal, and we found that the sRGB setting was very similar to the Warm setting, so we stuck with it. There’s also a dynamic colour boost option, which has settings for particular colours such as “Nature Skin” and “Green Field”, as well as Auto and Full Enhance settings. We found it over-emphasised colours, and left it turned off.

While having all these options may sound like a good thing, in fact the i2353Fh’s natural image quality is fine and doesn’t benefit from being messed around with. The i2353Fh stood out from displays with older technology thanks to its rich colours, deep contrast and excellent viewing angles. Its LED backlight was bright and even, although it produced a slightly cold light, which might explain why some reds seemed a bit too dark, but otherwise colours were natural. In our gaming tests, we didn’t notice excessive ghosting despite IPS panels’ reputation for slow response times.

The i2353Fh is incredible value for an IPS monitor and has stunning image quality; however, LG’s IPS-based IPS235V is cheaper still and has a wealth of colour options, so it pips the i2353Fh to an award.