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The AOC I2781FH costs £199, a remarkably good price for a 27-inch IPS panel. In this price range, most competitors either use smaller screens or TN panels, making this screen comparatively good value for money.
So in our evaluation, we’re not going to be critical of its lack of high-end features like G-Sync, a 4K resolution or 100% Adobe RGB coverage for supreme colour accuracy. If you want them, you have to pay considerably more.
What about speakers though? It’s disappointing that some firms cut costs by removing on-board sound. You might not think you need it, since for PC gaming, most people use external sound systems, but in other scenarios, where the AOC I2781FH is used as a standalone display, the lack of sound will be noticeable. Although most hardcore PC gaming enthusiasts are likely to have a better sound system, on-board sound is useful for convenience.
Indeed, we envisage an affordable screen such as this being used for mid-range family PCs, where on-board sound means no external desktop speakers are needed. It could equally well serve as a cheap secondary display, or external monitor for a laptop. As it stands, if you want audio, you’ll need to connect a 3.5mm jack to the headphone output at the back.
But besides the lack of sound, we think the AOC I2781FH will work just fine in any of those scenarios. With an IPS screen, viewing angles are good, the picture looks bright, even if the results show it falling slightly behind alternative displays, and the colours are as rich as you’d expect from most IPS screens.
Actually, our results show it's better than that. 800:1 contrast at 100% brightness is an excellent result, the brightness uniformity is very even across the whole panel, and the colour accuracy hovers around a Delta E of just one. Great results. It worked just fine in games too, without noticeable ghosting, thanks to the fairly low 4ms response time.
Every time we review an AOC display, the single area we we find ourselves criticising is the OSD. It’s a similar one used here, and it's not great. AOC could do with stepping up its game in this respect. Other firms offer better looking menus and settings that offer more features, fewer useless gimmicks like Bright Frame and better navigation methods.
But nobody sane spends their time gawping at display settings for longer than needed, and while it’s not much to look at, the OSD at least contains the basic settings the vast majority of people will use. Navigation is fairly easy and it updates just about quickly enough to not become annoying. The external appearance gets a better thumbs up for its design, arguably a more important factor.
The thin bezel and slim depth of the screen itself look good, and the stand adds some style, differentiating the AOC I2781FH from other low-priced displays. Admittedly, it’s nothing particularly fancy, but at this end of the market, it’s enough to make the display stand out from the crowd.
With all this in mind, we think the AOC I2781FH is a good budget display and absolutely worth recommending if your budget cannot meet a more high-end model. You're certain to get a good picture, and that is, after all, what a monitor is meant for.
Pros:
- Good viewing angles, as expected from an IPS panel.
- Bright and crisp picture quality that even beats more expensive screens in testing.
- Thin bezel, slim screen, funky L-shaped stand.
Cons:
- No built-in speakers.
- Naff OSD design.
- Aside from tilting back and forth, screen position cannot be adjusted.
Kitguru Says: £199 for a 27-inch IPS screen means you won’t get every advanced feature going, but the AOC I2781FH is still perfectly adequate for a number of uses. It looks fairly stylish and the picture quality is excellent, even better than you might normally expect from an IPS panel.
