Arguably the most desirable gaming monitors of the moment are the range of 34-inch, 21:9 aspect ratio, 100Hz, IPS displays typified by the hugely popular Asus ROG PG348Q and Acer Predator X34A. And, at first glance, the AOC AG352UCG, appears to be yet another in that roster. However, this monitor has two crucial differences.
The first is that it’s a whole inch wider! I know, breath-taking isn’t it. Perhaps more importantly, though, is that it uses a different LCD panel technology. Instead of IPS it uses VA (MVA to be precise), which brings with it the benefit of a much higher contrast ratio.
Whereas IPS displays manage around 1000:1 contrast, this display boasts double that. This is thanks to the inherently deeper black levels that VA panels can create. As a result, this display should be particularly good for watching movies, where deep, convincing black levels are so important for providing an absorbing viewing experience.
This also plays into the fact that this is a 21:9 aspect ratio display. This wider view isn’t always of much benefit for gaming but is perfectly suited to most blockbuster movies.
Panel size and type aside, the AG352UCG also boasts a resolution of 3,440 x 1,440, rather than the more limited 2,560 x 1,080 of some cheaper ultra-wide displays.
It also boasts G-Sync and can refresh at up to 100Hz, making it a nice upgrade for gaming, over most typical 60Hz screens. VA is the least suited panel type for gaming thanks to a slow response time but a 100Hz refresh rate with VA is still going to be preferable to any other panel type at 60Hz.
Such a large and feature-rich monitor doesn’t come cheap, with this display normally demanding around £800. That puts it on a par with, or just slightly below, the Asus PG348Q and Acer X34A, making for a direct battle between the three.
Specification:
- Screen size: 35-inch, 21:9 aspect
- Native resolution: 3,440 x 1,440
- Refresh rate: 100Hz
- Panel type: MVA
- Contrast ratio: 2,000:1
- Brightness: 300cd/m2
- Response time: 4ms grey-to-grey
- Display inputs: DisplayPort, HDMI
- USB hub: USB 3.0, two ports
- Tilt: Yes
- Raise: Yes
- Swivel: No
- Pivot: No
- Other: Speakers, headphone jack
- VESA: Yes
- Warranty: 3 years
Retail Price: £800 (inc. VAT)
AOC has clearly made an effort to create a premium-looking monitor in the AG352UCG. Its metal stand, in particular, looks great and has a reassuring heft to it.
The overall colour scheme works well too. Silver and black on the rear and just a touch of red from the AGON logo on the front bezel is a far cry from the slightly over the top styling of the Asus PG348Q.
However, AOC hasn’t quite stuck the landing. For a start, you miss out on the tiny bezels of its competitors. Instead, you get a conventional, and in fact slightly larger than usual, bezel that gives the whole display a dumpier feel.
It’s also utterly bizarre that despite using matt black plastic for the rear, AOC has used glossy plastic for the frame. This both looks cheaper than matt and causes distracting reflections. In fact, AOC has exacerbated this by adding a chamfer to the inside edge such that any lights above the display are reflected directly at you, as you can clearly see in our photos.
The drab, painted-on AGON logo also cheapens the look, while the addition of lights to the bottom bezel means it’s even chunkier than the rest. These lights consist of two strips that run along the front edge and can be set to either red, green or blue, and the brightness varied.
On a certain level, they’re quite nicely done, but ultimately it’s likely most people will find them a bit too distracting and want to turn them off. A more sensible approach would’ve been to add them as just underlighting, like on the Acer X34A.
In between the lights is the mini joystick that’s used for controlling the OSD. It’s a welcome upgrade over the separate buttons used on most AOC displays, though it’s far from perfect, as we’ll explain over the page.
As G-Sync is currently only able to manage one DisplayPort and one HDMI input, that’s all you get here for video inputs, but you do also get a USB hub and some audio connections.
There’s a headphone jack that’ll pipe out audio from the two video connections, plus a microphone pass-through that will allow you to connect a headset to the monitor then a further audio cable from the monitor to the microphone input of your computer.
The USB hub is an odd one, for a couple of reasons. The first is that AOC has chosen to use a micro USB 3.0 input rather than the more conventional USB 3.0 B connection. It’s likely to be of little real consequence, though the large connection type does seem like it would be more suited to this sort of application.
The other oddity is that we’re used to seeing AOC include a couple of USB ports on the side of its displays, where they’re easier to access. Here, though, you just get the two ports round the back. You do at least get AOC’s signature little flip-down headphone stand, though, which is always welcome.
It’s also a bit disappointing to see that this display doesn’t use an internal power supply, so you’ll have a hefty power brick to put somewhere.
As for this display’s stand, it’s very good. It offers, height, rotation and tilt adjustment and has a carry handle on the top, which makes a big difference when manhandling screens as large as this. The stand can also be removed and the same holes used to attach any standard 100x100mm VESA stand/mount.
The final physical feature of note are the 2x2W speakers. They’re nothing to write home about in terms of quality but are always useful to have just in case.
It was quite exciting to see AOC had added a mini joystick control for its OSD on this display, as AOC’s previous OSD controls haven’t been the best. However, the company still hasn’t managed to get things quite right.
Navigating most of the menus is fine. The controls follow the left/right for left/right and forward/back for up/down system as you’d expect, making it quick and easy to move around. However, once you get to adjusting a setting the controls and what’s shown on screen break sync.
For a setting such as brightness, what’s shown is a left-to-right bar such that you’d expect it to require a a left or right movement to adjust it. However, it’s hardwired in that you push back and forward to adjust any given setting, even if the onscreen graphic doesn’t marry up with that.
As such, it’s a slightly frustrating affair to make changes. It’s also not helped by the fact that if you tap the joystick to the side, rather than pressing in straight in, the system brings up alternative quick settings (volume, input, etc), rather than the main menu. Most are easy enough to just exit and try again but if you knock the joystick to the left it immediately changes the display’s input. A minor annoyance, but an annoyance nonetheless.
At least the selection of options is decent. It manages to balance being comprehensive without being needlessly bloated with pointless gamer presets and other extras.
The Luminance section offer the basics of brightness, contrast, gamma and the overdrive setting. Game color provides a way to adjust the saturation of the display – you shouldn’t ever need to touch this – while Shadow Control lets you boost the visibility of dark areas making it easier to see enemies lurking in dark areas in game.
Color Setup lets you choose the color temperature of the display, as well as activate the low blue light mode, which is supposed to help reduce eye strain when using a display late at night. The default Warm colour temperature is fine but if you have a colorimeter and are able to calibrate the display, opting for the User color temp lets you adjust things so the colour balance is perfect.
OSD setup just provides a load of settings for changing the appearance and language of the OSD, while Extras is where you can adjust the LEDs on the front bezel as well as turn on USB standby charging.
Right out of the box, it’s clear this is a good quality display. Most obvious is that colours look rich and deep yet accurate. This is a combination of both the genuinely accurate colour reproduction of the panel and its strong contrast.
Viewing angles are also impressive. VA panels tend to sit somewhere between cheaper TN panels and IPS ones when it comes to viewing angles. Move away from the centre and colours don’t change as they do with TN, and nor is there the really obvious change in brightness. However, sat at a normal viewing distance, what you do tend to get is a slight lightness to the bottom of the image, as shown in the picture below.
This effect is why I tend to recommend IPS over VA for most purposes. However, here it’s is less noticeable than usual, plus it does depend how you intend to use the screen. If you sit a bit further back – 1m as opposed to 0.5m away – then the effect lessens. Plus, if you intend to use the display to sit back and watch video then, again, the effect reduces as you move further away, and the high contrast makes up for it.
To further test just how accurate the colour performance of this display is, I fired up our display calibration software and a couple of different colorimeters. I use both the Spyder5 with Spyder’s own software, as well as the Xrite iDisplay Pro with DisplayCal software. This is because the Spyder 5 tends to underreport black levels, and thus contrast, but does a better job with reported Delta E (the ability of a display to distinguish between fine differences in colour).
Starting with that all important contrast figure and this display just about lives up to AOC’s claimed 2000:1 figure, with a figure of 1960:1. The Xrite and DisplayCal test also reports a plentiful maximum brightness of 361nits, accurate colour temperature of 6606K and 99% coverage of the sRGB colour space.
Moving onto the Sypder5’s tests and it backs up that this display can perfectly reproduce the full range of sRGB colours, with a 100% score. It will also reproduce 81% of the AdobeRGB space.
Next up is the tone response, or gamma, test. The gamma value affects how light or dark an image looks, with a higher value resulting in dark portions of an image looking darker. The computing standard is 2.2, and here we can see that this display matches this figure using its gamma3 setting. The default of the display is gamma1 so you’ll want to change this if colour accuracy is paramount.
Next up is the brightness and contrast test. We’ll ignore the contrast figures but you can see that there’s a nice variance in brightness as you change the OSD settings and you can see that the white point (i.e. colour temperature) remains reasonably close to the ideal of 6500K. You could easily get away with doing nothing else to this display other than lowering its brightness and changing its gamma to the third setting.
Next up we test the different colour temperature settings according to the OSD. You get the choice of Warm, Normal, Cool, sRGB and User and we can see that the default Warm setting is very close to what we want, and certainly close enough that most users should feel little need to mess around with any colour settings.
For such a big and curved display, it’s a particular challenge to ensure the display remains consistent-looking across its whole surface, but in the Sypder5’s uniformity test, it proved to be just that. Drops in brightness of 15% and 13% in the top left and right corners show it’s certainly not perfect but these figures still aren’t too bad, and on average the screen only varies by 6.5%.
Slightly more of a concern is that colour varies by as much as 4.4% from the right to the left of the screen. This is all but imperceptible to the eye but is still a little higher than we’d like to see.
Also slightly higher than we’d hope is the colour accuraty of the display, with the Spyder5 reporting a Delta E average of over three. Normally we’d hope to see closer to one. Nonetheless, this is still an okay figure that shows this display can pick out fine differences in colour.
All told, this display may not be absolutely perfect right out of the box but largely its failings are academic, as they’re small enough to be imperceptible and it’s mostly on par with its competitors.
However, if you’re in the position to calibrate your screen then even better results can be eeked out of the AG352UCG. Switch to the User colour temperature and adjust the RGB values from 65x65x65 to 65x63x62 (your mileage may vary) and colour accuracy is near perfect.
In the brightness and contrast test we can see that it’s nearly a clean sweep of perfect 6500K results, while the colour accuracy test now shows an average of 1.12. You can’t get much better than that.
Gaming
The two big downsides of VA LCD panels are the slightly worse viewing angles outlined above and a slower response time than IPS. So sluggish can the pixels of these displays be that some 100Hz+ VA models have been all but pointless because of the sheer amount of blur introduced.
However, the AG352UCG doesn’t suffer this fate. Fire up the BlurBusters motion blur test and it’s plane to see that this display does produce long ghosting trails (left) but in-game it didn’t feel as mushy as the AOC C3583FQ, for instance. You can also reduce the blur by upping the overdrive setting, though as ever this can introduce a strong corona effect (right).
The upshot is that for hardcore gamers this isn’t the obvious choice of display but it still provides a nice bump in responsiveness over 60Hz models. The IPS-based PG348Q and X34A have a slight edge in terms of pixel response but it’s close enough not to be an absolute deciding factor.
Meanwhile, G-Sync works as well as ever and in fact the combination of the ultra-wide aspect ratio, the curve, the sheer screen size, high resolution, smooth performance of G-Sync and the high contrast makes for a fantastic experience in games where you just want to get lost in the virtual world.
The AOC AG352UCG is a seriously impressive monitor. The size and shape of its screen combined with excellent overall image quality makes it a joy to use, whether you’re working, watching or playing.
Its high contrast, in particular, makes it suited to the sort of setup where you often sit back and enjoy watching video, while the 100Hz refresh rate and G-Sync make it a great gaming screen too. It doesn’t quite have the performance for the very most elite of players but is a nice upgrade over 60Hz screens. The 3,440 x 1,440 resolution, adjustable stand, headphone stand and USB hub make it a practical monitor too.
AOC has also priced the AG352UCG competitively, with it slightly undercutting most of its main rivals, even if it is only by £30-£50.
It’s not perfect, though. Its design lacks the sleek feel of its rivals and the lights in its frame are all but pointless. Its use of a VA panel also means it doesn’t have quite as good gaming performance as its IPS-equipped rivals.
It’s also worth remembering that any G-Sync display costs more than Freesync equivalents. There are no direct equivalents of this display but there are a few 75Hz, 34-inch, 3,440 x 1,440, IPS models for under £700.
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Pros:
- Fantastic image quality.
- Decent 100Hz gaming.
- Plenty of features.
- 2000:1 contrast.
Cons:
- Stand doesn’t pivot.
- Gaming not as good as IPS rivals.
- Expensive.
Kiguru Says: High contrast makes this a fantastic screen for watching video. It can hold its own for gaming too, though hardcore clan gamers may want to shortlist other monitors.