AOC Q27V4EA
Star of the big screen
PC monitor gets the tone right
PC MONITOR ❘ £206 from Amazon www.snipca.com/38992
You can’t adjust it much, but it has a stylish design and high-quality screen
The Q27V4EA is a great example of AOC’S uncanny ability to make high-quality monitors at fair prices. It packs a number of desirable characteristics into its slim design, and it’s a solid choice if you want an increase in screen size and resolution – perhaps over and above your current laptop. It has fewer features than some 27in monitors we’ve tested, but it has the ones that matter most.
The screen is mounted on a fairly basic stand with little scope for adjustment – just 21.5 degrees backwards tilt – and a relatively small selection of ports. On the rear, you’ll find an HDMI 2.0 port, a Displayport 1.4 and a 3.5mm headphone jack. These all face directly outwards, which makes them much more accessible than many monitor connections that face downwards.ds. AOC packs both HDMI and Displayporto rt cables in the box, along with the powerr supply cable. You’ll need room for a small a all power brick on or under your desk, e esk, but that’s not a big problem.
This is a very attractive monitor, o or, with three bezel-free edges and a slim profile (40mm at its thickest, st t, less than 20mm at its thinnest, pictured right). This makes it look o k much more expensive than it is. The stand looks good too, and with a footprint of 210x185mm, the base s e won’t eat into your desk space.
The screen itself is a 27in IPS panel with a resolution of 2560x1440 pixels. In our tests, the h he panel proved better than those on n many comparable budget monitors. In its dedicated
SRGB mode, the monitor accurately reproduced 88.7 per cent coverage of colours. That’s very respectable for an affordable monitor. This means what you see on screen will be close to what the original source intended, whether this is a photo or a website.
We measured peak brightness at just below the 250cd/ m² quoted by AOC, while contrast reached highs of 850:1 in the monitor’s default mode. These figures are, once again, impressive for a monitor at this price, although it’s worth noting that brightness is locked to around 170170cd/m² in SRGB mode. This is onn the dim side, but it’s fine for uuses in all but the most brightly lit roroomsoo and it proved to be a pleasureplle to work on.
Withw a 75Hz refresh rate, a low (4 milliseconds) response time and adaptived ad sync support that allows ththehe screen to adapt its frame rate too suit the output of your graphics hhardware,a it can even manage a bibitit of gaming too.
Ththere are a couple of caveats, hhowever.o One is that it suffers frfromro an unusual amount of ‘IPIPSP glow’, which is a common prproblemro with IPS monitors and mmamakes it look like there’s a bright liglightg shining off it at certain viewing angles. Here it happens only if you move away from the point directly in front, so isn’t a problem unless you have to move to one side for any reason, such as when taking part in a video chat with someone sat next to you.
The other small gripe is that the on-screen controls are just a cluster of buttons in the bottom-right corner. It’s hard to tell what each one does and takes a little getting used to.
SPECIFICATIONS
27in IPS screen • 2560x1440 pixels resolution • 75Hz refresh rate • 4ms response time • Adaptive sync
• 1x HDMI port • 1x Displayport • 462x614x187mm (HXWXD) • 4.65kg • Three-year warranty www.snipca.com/38992
A stylish 27in IPS monitor that provides good colour accuracy and decent brightness levels
VERDICT ALTERNATIVE
Iiyama Prolite XUB2792QSU-B1 £260 Spend a little extra for a more adjustable stand, with screen rotation and height adjustment