AOC i2352Vh review

The AOC i2352Vh is a 1080p IPS panel with VGA, DVI and HDMI inputs. Its design is far more staid than AOC’s previous IPS monitor, the rather good AOC i2353Fh. Its smooth, matt finish and the gently curved bezel makes it look smart and businesslike.

The i2352Vh has a matt finish on the screen which dulls colours somewhat, and blacks aren’t as deep as they could be, but you won’t suffer from overhead reflections as much as on a screen with a reflective surface. Colours are accurate, though.

AOC’s menu system runs along the bottom of the screen and is laggy enough to be annoying, but it does offer plenty of options. You get a choice of three colour temperatures plus sRGB, a selection of three gamma levels, and options for Dynamic Contrast and Dynamic Colour Boost (DCB). We found Gamma 1 to be the best of the three settings, the others either providing too little or too much extra contrast.

We found AOC’s dynamic contrast a bit weak – it didn’t really have much of an effect at all. Dynamic Colour Boost is quite powerful, though. You can set it to boost certain colours or use Full Enhance, which is actually far more subtle, boosting each colour to a much smaller degree. This is great if you want to display an image with faded colours, but for photographic work we’d advise leaving it turned off, for more accurate colours.

The Auto-Detect option is one to avoid; it seems to work like dynamic contrast, causing distracting changes in luminosity, but in dark scenes it goes haywire. In the night scenes at the start of Crysis, it acted like night vision goggles, ramping up the brightness and banishing shadows – unless we turned to face a shadow, in which case it would darken the entire scene.

Although not as stylish as the earlier i2353Fh, the i2352Vh is quite thin and can be wall-mounted thanks to VESA mounting points on the rear of the case – although all the ports face backwards rather than down, so you’ll need to leave some room to compensate. There’s a set of internal speakers, but they’re not loud and sound tinny. As well as a good choice of video inputs, you also get a 3.5mm audio input – in case you want to use the speakers while plugged in via VGA or DVI – and a 3.5mm headphone output.

The i2352Vh’s main competition is the older i2353Fh, which is still available and whose price has fallen to about the same level as that of the i2352Vh. We preferred the new model’s more minimal design and DVI as well as HDMI and VGA inputs. It also comes with a three-year, repair-or-replace warranty, which is hard to beat. It wins our Best Buy award.