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The AOC AG353UCG box looks reasonably exciting, although for the price of this monitor we might have expected some gold leaf.
Inside, you get the separate power brick and kettle lead cables for UK and European mains power. There's a USB upstream cable, plus HDMI and DisplayPort wiring. So all your connectivity bases are belong to us. Missing from our sample when we photographed it were a minijack cable for the microphone pass-through, and the Quick Switch puck, of which more later.
The AG353UCG is a serious-looking monitor, with a mostly black theme apart from the classy brushed-metal red of the stand base. This ties in nicely with the red of the AGON logo. The build feels really solid, too, as you would hope for a screen that costs this much.
Like any self-respecting gaming monitor, the AG353UCG sports some rear RGB lighting to add a bit of bling to your entertainment activities, which AOC calls Light FX.
Adjustments are decent, starting with the ability to swivel 32 degrees left or right on the stand. You can also raise and lower the panel by 120mm, and tilt 5 degrees forwards or 21.5 degrees backwards.
There's a handy headphone hook that pops out of the side of the screen. This image shows the right-hand side, but there's one on the left too.
The ports are ranged either side of the stand underneath. From the front, the left-hand side is home to the four-port USB 3.1 Gen1 hub, with one port supporting fast charging. The analog headphone and audio inputs are on this side too. Moving to what is the left-hand side from the front, the port that looks like another USB is for the external power input.
One of the DisplayPort 1.4 connections was taped up in our sample for some reason, with the second DisplayPort 1.4 the other side of the HDMI 2.0 connection. Then there is the Mini USB input for the Quick Switch puck and analog audio minijack for passing this through to your existing PC microphone input.
The menu is controlled by a joystick placed centrally behind the AGON logo. This is more convenient than some joystick placements, which force you to fumble and reach around the rear to find them. However, even more convenient is the external control puck that AOC calls Quick Switch. This provides access to almost all the same functions as the joystick, whilst adding discrete buttons for the three custom presets.
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