Gadgetory

welcome back to hard Rome box today we're looking at an affordable gaming monitor from AOC this c-27j one in Australia this is currently the cheapest 27-inch 144 Hertz display you can get at PC case get with the price of just 339 Aussie dollar e-news making it only slightly more expensive than the 24-inch equivalents it's also quite good value in the United States at $280 which is around the mark of other 27-inch high refresh monitors without being an I guess a standout value option but of course the price tag doesn't tell us anything about the quality of the monitor so let's take a look and see what you can get at this price point quick overview of the specs first as I mentioned it's a 27-inch 144 Hertz panel as you might have guessed for a budget display is just 1080p it's also curved with a 1700 hour curvature it uses VA technology and it supports free sync in terms of design AOC has gone with something quite basic the monitor is branded as a gaming monitor beside from a few red highlights around the place NC hasn't gone overboard with ugly gamer style elements most of the exterior construction uses basic cheapish plastic with the matte finish which keeps them on it is designed simple whether you're looking from the front or the back where Elsie has a leg up on the competition is in its 10th most budget monitors just give you tilt adjustment but the c-27j one has full height adjustment as well as swivel support at the base you can't rotate the monitor into a portrait orientation but that wouldn't make sense as the motor is curved the stand is also pretty sturdy and of course you also get visa mounting support aside from there being nothing overly special about the G once designed my only real complaint is the lack of a directional toggle for the on-screen display if you've watched any of my past monitor reviews this complaint keeps popping up and I think it's especially important for a monitor like this there are quite a lot of controls in the OSD and the four buttons along the bottom edge make it hard to navigate what else I guess in terms of input is all common stuff two HDMI ports display port VGA and 3.5 millimeter headphone jack the free sync range doesn't matter because every 144 Hertz fruit sync monitor supports low framerate compensation and as for the curve I prefer this monitor was flat that's a personal preference thing and depending on your region you might not find a flat equivalent that's as affordable let's move into talking about how the c-27j one performs starting with response times IOC is trying to fight their response time numbers on this monitors product page stating it is capable of a one millisecond MP RT smart response time MP RT is just a fancy acronym for black frame insertion which is a technique that artificially boosts the apparent clarity of the image through strobing the backlight it's a bit of a cheat or trick and due to the strobing backlight and brightness reduction most people choose to game with the MPR team mode disabled which is actually the default mode anyway the actual response time for a VA panel are much higher than one millisecond which is why companies tend to opt for dodgy metrics like MP RT to make their response time claims that seem more impressive as you can see from the charts here the reality is the c-27j one has a true response time of nine point six one milliseconds using a greater great average that's not exactly blazing fast but it is within a typical range for VI panels and considering this is on the budget end of the scale I think it's a respectable enough result I should note I'm using the medium overdrive setting here the high setting introduced overshoot so we opted not to use it I think AOC probably could have tweaked their algorithm to deliver around that 8 millisecond transition time we usually see from VA panels but we're not far off and the black white black transition time of 16 point one milliseconds is again very close to what we typically see from VA displays however of course the key things note here is the average transition time for this monitor falls outside the Refresh window this is a 144 Hertz panel so the image is updated every six point nine four milliseconds however transitions take nine point six one milliseconds on average with the fastest transitions around the 5 millisecond mark when transitions take longer than the Refresh window you're not getting a true 144 Hertz experience instead the level of smearing and overall clarity of this panel is going to be a bit closer to a 100 Hertz display that's a bit disappointing when many people will be buying this monitor for its 144 Hertz capabilities input lag is decent at around 11 milliseconds it's not the absolute fastest in this metric but other budget displays were tested like the Acer k g2 v 1q F and vo-tech NB 24c are slower the combined input lag and response time figure is pretty average though just to be expected of a $280 product the ARCC 2071 isn't the brightest monitor going around and a touch over 220 in its peak which won't make it suitable for those in super bright environments that need high brightness levels however for gamers in typical indoor environments it should be fine a contrast ratio of around 3000 won is also spot-on with what a OC claims and what's normal for a VA display however out of the box color calibration is very strange to put it nicely default white balance is way off the mark at a very warm 52 47 K which gives their display a noticeable orange tone the average CCT graph shows just how crazy the color temperature is across the grayscale range which leads to a poor Delta e of 5.45 gamma is also on the low side it's a shame that the C 27g one comes configured like this because as you can see in the saturation chart this monitor has near full srgb coverage and quite good saturation sweeps except everything is just skewed due to incorrect white balance which leads to an average Delta II of four point six four it's also a similar story with color checker I really have no idea why the c-27j one ships like this whether it was an error with my panel or something else that's gone wrong however I can say there with a few simple OSD tweaks particularly to the user color sliders it's pretty easy to fix in fact all you need to do at least for my unit was to bring down the red slider a few notches this simple adjustment basically fixes the issue and completely transforms how the monitor performs with this change the c-27j one is much better than its factory state it's still not perfect but Delta is have reduced to a 1.41 average and the CCT average curve is far better unfortunately there was no easy fix to the low gamma despite the USD including a gamma setting but will be able to fix that through a full calibration and with a largely corrected white balance the c-27j one produces a saturation Delta a average blow to pointer and a color checker Delta a average just above 2.0 again I wouldn't say these results are completely suitable for professional work but a gaming display with adult eight around or below 2.0 is pretty much what I'm after how does the diss My Fair was a full calibration using spectra cows cow man five pretty well as expected with a perfect gamma and CC T curve along with a grayscale Delta e below 0.3 which is fantastic saturation and color checker results again aren't perfect but still decent enough for most users when calibrated overall this is a good result from a budget display and I should mention as well that calibrating this panel actually improves contrast to thirty three twenty five to one so I guess it ships in such a bad state that nearly everything is fixed with a few small tweaks in terms of uniformity this is usually an area where curve display struggle however the c-27j one is actually decent in this regard with most of the screen delivering a Delta II deviants under 2.0 relative to the center sure some parts particularly top corners are a little off this sort of performance is common for flat panels so to get it from a curve display gives me hope that uniformity is improving with newer curved models alright so that's all the testing done for the OCC 27 g1 the question now is whether you should buy this monitor I guess I'm assuming here that most people don't want to display like this interested in the 27-inch size specifically because if you just want something high refresh I'd recommend spending as little as $200 on a 24 inch monitor instead but at 27 inches specifically the only monitors you'll find cheaper than this flat tee and equivalents and depending on your region they may not even be cheaper anyway in the US the ASA that kg 271 is around $25 cheaper but in Australia it's more expensive and of course then we're looking at the difference between ATM monitor and VA and I suspect most people who prefer the VA due to its much better color quality even if it's curved but I do have a few concerns with the AOC c-27j one that prevent it from being an instant recommendation response times aren't amazing that keeps the budget panel from delivering true 144 Hertz you'll still get a decent enough high refresh experience but a quicker TN does provide more clarity out of the box calibration is also very poor it can be fixed through some simple tweaks but the default settings are a bit bizarre after you fix the color issues though the c-27j one does have some great things going for it in particular its height adjustable stand that many budget monitors don't offer and a very good uniformity for a curved display contrast ratio and color coil also quite good after you fix the initial issues and that fix is pretty simple of course the price is also very attract as well children $80 is a good amount to pay for our US viewers but in Australia and I believe Europe as well AOC is once again delivering excellent value with this monitor it won't blow your socks off but considering the price I think it's a good buy for gamers that are after a 27-inch high refresh monitor without breaking the bank that's it for this oh C Mon ative review I've got a few other monitors to test in the next few weeks so stay tuned for that consider supporting us on our patreon to get access to our exclusive discord chat and I'll catch you in the next one