AOC CU34G2X Monitor Review

The AOC CU34G2X has a gamer-oriented design with black plastic and red accents throughout. It has a fairly aggressive curve to help bring the edges within your field of vision. The stand and the screen itself have large footprints, so you'll need a big desk to place the monitor on.

The build quality is decent. It's made entirely out of solid plastic, and the stand feels stable when making ergonomic adjustments. However, the screen wobbles fairly easily on the stand, and the bottom bezel isn't properly attached to the screen throughout. The controls are really hard to press and even cause the screen to tilt a bit. Also, there are rubber grips at the bottom of the feet that come off easily.

The AOC CU34G2X has great ergonomics. You can easily adjust it, except you can't rotate it into portrait mode, but that's normal from an ultrawide monitor. Luckily, there's a cut-out in the stand for cable management.

The stand has a large footprint, and there's a fair amount of wobble from the screen. It looks like a tripod stand from the front, but there are two feet in the back.

There are five buttons below the right side of the monitor to control the on-screen display. However, they're hard to press.

• Power cable
• HDMI cable
• DisplayPort cable
• USB-A to USB-B cable
• User guides

The AOC CU34G2X has a good native contrast ratio that makes blacks look fairly deep. However, there's no local dimming feature to improve it. Keep in mind that contrast can vary between units.

The AOC CU34G2X 34 doesn't have a local dimming feature. The video is for reference only, so you can see how the backlight on this display performs and compare it to a similar product with local dimming.

The AOC CU34G2X has decent brightness. It's lower than the advertised 300 cd/m² and may not be enough to fight a ton of glare. We even measured the brightness before calibration and didn't reach the advertised brightness.

We measured the brightness after calibration in the 'Standard' Eco Mode with the Color Temperature set to 'User', and Brightness at its max.

The HDR brightness is disappointing. It doesn't get brighter than in SDR, and it's not enough to make highlights stand out the way the creator intended. We measured it in the 'Game' HDR Mode and the brightness was about the same with the 'Picture' and 'Movie' modes.

The AOC CU34G2X has narrow horizontal viewing angles. It's better than most VA panel monitors, so the edges of the screen won't look too washed out if you sit close, and the curved screen helps with this, too, but we don't factor it into the testing. It still may not good enough for sharing your screen with others, though.

Once again, the vertical viewing angles are disappointing. Although the colors don't shift much, there's still noticeable color washout, and the screen appears dimmer.

The AOC CU34G2X has excellent gray uniformity, but this can vary between units. Most of the screen looks fairly uniform, and there's almost no dirty screen effect in the center, which is great. Uniformity is better in near-dark scenes, but there's a bit of backlight bleed near the bottom.

The black uniformity is okay. There's significant backlight bleed along the top and bottom edges, but there's almost no blooming around the center cross. Keep in mind that uniformity can vary between units.

The accuracy before calibration is good. Most colors are only slightly inaccurate, but not enough for most people to tell, and the same can be said about the white balance. Color temperature is on the cool side, but it's still close to the 6500K target. Gamma also follows the target well, but it isn't perfect.

The accuracy after calibration is fantastic. Any remaining white balance and color inaccuracies are impossible to spot by the naked eye, and color temperature is extremely close to the 6500K target. Gamma is improved, but some dark and bright scenes are slightly over-brightened.

The SDR color gamut is fantastic. It has near-full coverage of the sRGB color space used in most web content and impressive coverage of the Adobe RGB color space used in photo editing.

The AOC CU34G2X has a remarkable SDR color volume. It can display colors at a wide range of luminance levels, except for extremely dark colors.

The AOC CU34G2X 34 has a decent HDR color gamut. It has impressive coverage of the commonly-used DCI P3 color space, but the wider Rec. 2020 is limited.

The HDR color gamut is okay. It's a limited by the okay color gamut, and even has trouble displaying very dark colors despite its high contrast. It can't display really bright blues either, but that's typical of LED displays.

The AOC CU34G2X 34 has decent reflection handling. It performs well in a room with a couple of lights around, but the glare from strong light sources can get distracting.

The text clarity is good. Enabling Windows ClearType (top photo) helps improve clarity on diagonal lines, but can make straight lines less bold.

The AOC CU34G2X 34 has excellent gradient handling, but it's worse than most 10-bit panels. There's clear banding in darker shades, especially with gray.

Both FreeSync and G-SYNC work at the full range over a DisplayPort connection, while only FreeSync works over HDMI up to 100Hz.

The AOC CU34G2X has a poor response time at its max refresh rate of 144Hz. Like most VA panel monitors, there's noticeable black smear due to the slower response time in darker transitions. We recommend using the 'Medium' Overdrive setting because it has less overshoot than 'Strong', leading to inverse ghosting.

The response time at 120Hz is poor. There's still black smearing due to the slow response time if you use the 'Medium' overdrive setting, but 'Strong' has too much ghosting.

The response time at 60Hz is bad. Once again, there's smearing due to the slow response time in darker transitions. Like at higher refresh rates, the recommended overdrive setting is still 'Medium', so you won't need to change the setting if the frame rate of your game drops. The 'Strong' setting has way too much overshoot.

The AOC CU34G2X 34 has an optional backlight strobing feature, also known as black frame insertion (BFI). It only works within a narrow range, but it's still a bit customizable. You can control the intensity of it by adjusting the MBR slider, or you can set Overdrive to 'Boost'. You can see photos of the different overdrive settings above.

The AOC CU34G2X has a flicker-free backlight at all backlight levels, which helps reduce eye strain.

The AOC CU34G2X 34 has extremely low input lag that results in a responsive gaming experience.

The large 34 inch screen allows you to open multiple windows side-by-side without them being too cramped together.

Unfortunately, this monitor doesn't work well with the PS5. Although it should work with a 120Hz signal, it doesn't work properly with the PS5 at any resolution at 120Hz. The variable refresh rate feature doesn't work, either. Finally, by default, the monitor stretches the image to fit its aspect ratio, even if the Image Ratio setting on the monitor is set to '1:1'. You have to set it to '27" 16:9' for the image to display properly without being stretched.

Like with the PS5, there are issues using this monitor with an Xbox Series S or X. Like with the PS5, it stretches the image to fill the 21:9 aspect ratio by default; you have to disable Adaptive-Sync on the monitor to change the aspect ratio to '27" 16:9'. 1440p @ 60Hz is only supported when you use the HDMI Override option on the Xbox.

You can use the USB-B upstream port to connect your peripherals to the USB ports on the AOC CU34G2X.

For the most part, this monitor works well with recent M1 Macbooks. The variable refresh rate feature works well, and windows return to their original position when waking from sleep. Like most monitors, windows don't return properly when closing the lid, though, and HDR is washed out and looks strange.

The AOC CU34G2X has a few extra features, including:

• LowBlue Mode: Removes blue light to help reduce eye strain.
• Crosshair: Adds a virtual crosshair on the screen for FPS gaming.
• Shadow Control: Adjusts the gamma to make it easier to see opponents in shadows.