AOC Agon Pro AG276QZD review: An affordable 240Hz OLED gaming monitor

The appearance of AOC’s Agon Pro AG276QZD OLED gaming monitor on UK shelves has been a long time coming. This may have something to do with the lukewarm response it received when released in the USA last summer; in the UK we’ve had to wait for a firmware update before getting our hands on the display. 

Still, comparing my test results to those reported by American reviewers, it looks like the issues that afflicted the first batch have been fixed. That makes the new Agon Pro a good deal: £867 is a competitive price for a 27in, 2,560 x 1,440, 240Hz OLED monitor, putting it into competition with the Asus ROG Swift PG27AQDM and the LG UltraGear 27GR95QE.

AOC Agon Pro AG276QZD review: What do you get for your money?

The basic specification of the AG276QZD is much the same as the aforementioned Asus and LG monitors. That’s hardly surprising, as all three use the same LG-made panel.

The Agon Pro, however, has a look all of its own: in a bold move, AOC has gone with a highly asymmetrical design. Yes, it’s a rectangle from the front, but the rear of the cabinet is an interestingly angular off-centre affair, from both behind and above. Even the polygonal LED striplight on the rear and the OSD toggle are deliberately off-centre.

The asymmetry continues to the base of the stand, a surprisingly and impressively compact affair that sticks out further on the right side than the left. The design takes up much less desk space than those that support the LG and Asus ROG monitors, but is no less stable. The asymmetry does, however, make placing it squarely on your desk harder than usual, until you learn to use the back edge of the stand as your guide.

None of this deliberate wonkiness has much of an impact beyond the aesthetic, but it’s certainly a change from the nondescript black boxes that typify modern monitor design. The stand also has plenty of adjustment, with a 90-degree pivot to both left and right, 30-degree swivel, 130mm of height adjustment, and tilt between -4 and 21.5 degrees.

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AOC Agon Pro AG276QZD review: What connections does it have?

The Agon Pro’s I/O ports are all grouped together on a downward-facing panel on the cabinet’s underside. They comprise two HDMI 2.0 ports and two DisplayPort 1.4 video ports – an advantage over the Asus and LG models, which both have twin HDMI inputs but only a single DisplayPort input for video.

There’s a catch, though: while the Agon Pro’s DisplayPort inputs can handle the monitor’s 1440p resolution at its maximum refresh rate of 240Hz, the HDMI 2.0 ports are limited to 144Hz at native resolution. By contrast, the LG has HDMI 2.1 ports that support Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) on the latest gaming consoles.

Alongside the display connectors you’ll find the USB ports, a 3.5mm audio jack and the input for the external power supply. The USB hub is limited to two 5Gbits/sec Type-A downstream and one Type-B upstream connector, which is enough to connect your mouse and keyboard to the monitor. With no Type-C video input you won’t be getting any sort of KVM functionality, but that’s par for the course with 27in gaming monitors. You do at least get PiP and PbP display options.

As with most monitors, the placing of the I/O ports doesn’t lend itself to convenient access, but the fact that the Agon is lighter than the competition (at just 6.4kg including the stand) does make it easier to access.

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AOC Agon Pro AG276QZD review: How good is the image quality?

The first US units of the AG276QZD were criticised for lacklustre brightness, but my review model hit 380cd/m² in SDR mode and 810cd/m² from a small screen area (<10%) in HDR mode. That’s on a par with the best of the OLED competition.

The Agon displayed impressive uniformity of brightness, too. Dividing the screen into 25 swatches, I found all landed within the recommended tolerance range. Things proved a little more wayward when it came to ISO 14861:2015, with the swatches in the upper and lower bands falling just outside of the recommended tolerance, but you’d need a colorimeter to notice.

Out of the box, the monitor’s default gamma was bang on at 2.21, and the colour temperature was equally on the ball with a reading of 6,542K –  near enough to the ideal 6,500K to make absolutely no difference.

Colour gamut volumes are broad, too, at 135% sRGB, 95.3% DCI-P3 and 92.7% Adobe RGB. Industry-standard sRGB and DCI-P3 colour profiles are built in; with the former enabled I recorded a Delta E variance of 1.12, while the latter yielded 1.6 – both perfectly acceptable even for colour-critical undertakings.

The Agon Pro AG276QZD lacks a Vesa TrueBlack HDR certificate, making do with basic HDR10, but the LG and Asus ROG rivals aren’t certified either. In practice, those wide gamuts and high brightness levels, allied to the infinite contrast ratio inherent in OLED technology, ensure that HDR content looks mighty impressive on this display.

One aspect that might divide opinion is that the AG276QZD has a matte finish panel. A full-gloss finish can make OLED colours “pop” more, but the matte finish keeps reflections at bay. It didn’t cause me any issues, and did a tremendously good job of keeping reflections from bright light sources in check.

Finally, motion fidelity is near perfect, as you would expect from a screen with a 0.03ms GtG response time and a 240Hz refresh rate. I saw no ghosting, smearing or blurring in any test scenario, and official support for Nvidia’s G-Sync adaptive sync system ensures that screen tearing is never an issue.

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AOC Agon Pro AG276QZD review: Are there any other features I should know about?

The wonky-shaped, five-sided LED lighting system on the back of the cabinet is called LightFX, and it offers a wide range of effects and colour options. Some of these can be set to match the monitor’s audio output, though not the video display. 

The glow looks pleasing against a back wall, but even at its strongest setting the LED effects are subtle at best. It’s fine for playing in a dark room, but Philips’ Ambiglow system still leads the field when it comes to this sort of thing.

The pair of 5W speakers buried inside the cabinet throw out an impressive amount of volume – 81dBA as measured against a pink noise source at a 1m distance – but they do get rather raucous above the 80% mark, and there’s not a whole lot of bass available. Since the LG and Asus ROG competitors don’t have speakers at all, it’s a one-sided competition, but the larger 34in Philips Evnia 34M2C8600 has the Agon well beaten in this arena.

And while Agon’s OSD menu may not be the prettiest in the world, it’s very easy to navigate and is home to all the gaming refinements you would expect, including shadow boost, a frame-rate counter and sniper mode. There’s also a 20-level Game Color (sic) setting that lets you adjust the colour saturation – handy if you like a supranatural amount of colour in your games.

AOC Agon Pro AG276QZD review: Should I buy it?

The Agon Pro AG276QZD is a strong challenger to existing options from Asus and LG. In terms of price the RRP of the new Agon Pro is £867, while Asus is now selling the PG27AQDM for £999, and the LG UltraGear 27GR95QE has dropped from £899 to £788. 

There’s little to distinguish the three in terms of performance. All have the same LG-made W-OLED panel, and all offer a very high-quality visual experience, whether you’re gaming or watching video.

Where the new Agon wins out is with its more interesting design. Its stand also has by far the smallest footprint, and it’s the only one of the three to have a pair of speakers. Granted, they’re not the world’s best monitor speakers, but they do the job. 

In my review of the LG UltraGear 27GR95QE I said that, given a choice between that monitor and the Asus ROG Swift PG27AQDM, you should buy whichever is cheaper. Add the Agon Pro AG276QZD into the mix and that still holds, but it’s a close-run thing so follow your wallet.