AOC Q27G3XMN  Monitor Review

The AOC Q27G3XMN has a simple design with matte black plastic throughout and some red accents, particularly on the vents. It isn't heavy on the gamer aesthetic, so it fits into any environment.

The build quality is good. The plastic materials are well-made, as there's minimal flexing and no noticeable issues. Even the stand feels good, and using the ergonomic adjustments feels nice. There's a bit of wobble, but it quickly stabilizes itself when it does wobble.

The ergonomics are fantastic as you can easily adjust it in many different ways. There's also a cutout in the stand for cable management.

This monitor comes with a stand whose front legs are much longer than the back legs. They take up space on your desk, but there's still space between them to put your peripherals.

If you're looking for an even larger gaming monitor, check out the Dell Alienware AW3225DM.

The AOC Q27G3XMN has a power button and four control buttons to navigate the on-screen menu.

• DisplayPort cable
• HDMI cable
• Power cable
• User documentation

The AOC Q27G3XMN has an excellent contrast ratio. Its VA panel delivers an already-high native contrast ratio, and it gets better thanks to its full-array local dimming feature. This means it displays deep blacks next to bright highlights in dark rooms.

The local dimming feature performs well and has 336 small Mini LED dimming zones. The recommended Local Dimming setting is 'Medium' because the highest setting, 'Strong,' is too aggressive with more blooming and black crush. The 'Medium' setting still has black crush, but it's minimal, and only certain content loses some details, like in a starfield. There's also blooming that's most noticeable when browsing the web, particularly while using a dark mode, but it isn't as bad when watching content. Even subtitles look great, with almost no blooming. However, blooming is more visible when viewing from the sides, but that's the case with most monitors anyway.

The local dimming algorithm keeps up with fast-moving objects well, but sometimes they're slow to turn off after a bright object disappears from the screen, like with subtitles. That said, this is a good overall implementation of local dimming, and it helps improve the picture quality in dark scenes.

The SDR brightness is good. It gets bright enough to fight glare, but content with small highlights is dimmer than the rest. These results are from after calibration with Game Mode off, Eco Mode on 'Standard,' Color Temp. on 'User,' Brightness at its max, and Local Dimming on 'Medium.' It actually gets brighter with most content with Local Dimming disabled, which is useful if you're just browsing the web and need high peak brightness, and you can see the results for it below.

• Real Scene 387 cd/m²
• Peak 2% Window 377 cd/m²
• Peak 10% Window 376 cd/m²
• Peak 25% Window 375 cd/m²
• Peak 50% Window 374 cd/m²
• Peak 100% Window 373 cd/m²
• Sustained 2% Window 376 cd/m²
• Sustained 10% Window 375 cd/m²
• Sustained 25% Window 374 cd/m²
• Sustained 50% Window 373 cd/m²
• Sustained 100% Window 372 cd/m²
• Minimum Brightness 42 cd/m²

The AOC Q27G3XMN has excellent HDR peak brightness. It easily gets bright enough to make highlights stand out, but small highlights are dimmed a bit. The EOTF struggles to track the PQ EOTF curve well, as all scenes are darker than intended, but because there's a sharp cut-off at the peak brightness, the monitor lets highlights get the brightest they can.

These results are in the 'DisplayHDR' HDR Mode, which you can only select when sending an HDR signal to the monitor. Local Dimming was also set to 'Medium,' as 'Strong' has worse picture quality, and disabling local dimming results in a worse EOTF, as you can see here. We measured the Real Scene brightness differently than our regular methodology with a Blu-ray player, as the brightness was much lower with it. Instead, we used an HDFury Vertex Linker to force an HDR signal over HDMI from a PC, which resulted in a higher Real Scene brightness.

Using HDR on this monitor locks all gaming and picture settings, except for Overdrive, Adaptive Sync, and Overlay, which means you can still use HDR and VRR simultaneously.

The gray uniformity is decent. It does have noticeable issues, particularly along the edges and in the center with a dirty screen effect, but it isn't overly distracting either.

The black uniformity with local dimming is incredible. Blacks are deep and inky, and there's minimal blooming around bright objects. As expected, the uniformity is worse with local dimming disabled, with backlight bleed along the edges.

The AOC Q27G3XMN has fantastic accuracy in the sRGB mode before calibration. Setting Color Gamut to 'sRGB' limits colors very well to the sRGB color space, and it also results in minimal white balance and color inaccuracies. Even the color temperature is almost spot-on with the 6500K target, but gamma is too high, meaning most content is darker than intended.

Depending on which combination of settings you use, some settings are locked out. For example, when using the 'FPS,' 'RTS,' and 'Racing' Game Modes, all picture settings are locked out except HDR Mode. Switching to Gamer 1, Gamer 2, or Gamer 3 unlocks some picture settings like Brightness and Gamma, but Color Temp. and Color Gamut are still locked. So to use those settings, you need to disable Game Mode and select any Eco Mode setting, except for 'Grayscale,' which results in a black and white image and locks other settings. Using the sRGB mode does lock a few settings, but not the brightness, and outside of the sRGB mode, colors are oversaturated.

There are reports of a red tint with this monitor. This happens when setting Color Temp. to 'User' with its default value of 50-50-50. You either need to select another Color Temp. setting or aggressively adjust the RGB values to reduce this red tint.

The accuracy after calibration is fantastic. It improves gamma, but the main advantage of calibrating it is to get access to all picture settings and also remove the red tint, as explained in Pre-Calibration. The RGB settings are calibrated aggressively because of this red tint issue.

The SDR color gamut is fantastic. It has near-perfect coverage of the common sRGB space, and while it displays a wide range of colors in the Adobe RGB color space, it undersaturates greens and cyans and oversaturates reds and blues.

The HDR color gamut is great. It displays a wide range of colors in the DCI-P3 and Rec. 2020 color spaces, but tone mapping is off with each, as most colors are inaccurate, which means some content doesn't look as realistic as it should.

The AOC Q27G3XMN has an impressive HDR color volume. It displays bright and dark colors well, but it's limited by its incomplete color gamut.

The horizontal viewing angle is disappointing. The image quickly washes out from the sides, which means it isn't ideal if you want to share your screen with someone else.

The text clarity is good. Enabling Windows ClearType (top photo) helps improve the text clarity with bolder lines. These photos are in Windows 10, and you can also see them in Windows 11 with ClearType on and with ClearType off.

This monitor has mediocre direct reflection handling. Though it spreads light out due to its matte coating, bright objects are still somewhat distinct.

The black levels are amazing in brighter environments, as this monitor retains its low black levels.

The monitor reflects back a lot of light that shines on the screen. In bright rooms, this creates a relatively strong haze across the screen, making it hard to see properly.

The gradient handling is exceptional, and you won't notice any issues with banding in scenes with shades of similar colors, like a sunset.

Due to bandwidth limitations over HDMI, you can only achieve the max refresh rate with a DisplayPort connection. It comes overclocked to 180Hz, but the manual states to set it back to 165Hz if there are any issues with the overclock.

The AOC Q27G3XMN has excellent motion handling across its entire refresh rate range with VRR enabled. The 'Medium' Overdrive setting performs consistently well and remains very low across the entire refresh rate range. Motion still looks sharp, and there isn't any inverse ghosting, but it has noticeable smearing, which is typical of VA panels, and this can get distracting in dark scenes.

The refresh rate compliance is excellent. The 'Medium' Overdrive setting has the consistently highest refresh rate compliance. Although its response time can't take full advantage of its max refresh rate, it improves at 120 fps and 60 fps, which is even better than most other LCD monitors. The data has a lot of noise due to the monitor's backlight flicker, but you can see the compliance with charts that smooth out the flicker below.

• 179 fps
• 165 fps
• 144 fps
• 120 fps
• 100 fps
• 80 fps
• 60 fps

The CAD at the max refresh rate is impressive. The recommended Overdrive setting of 'Medium' has less blur than 'Off' and 'Weak' and less inverse ghosting than 'Strong,' but all settings have noticeable smearing, which is distracting, especially if you play games with a lot of dark scenes.

The CAD at 120Hz is excellent. It's similar to its max refresh rate as all the Overdrive settings have smearing that's noticeable with dark colors, but 'Medium' has the lowest CAD and the least amount of motion blur.

The AOC Q27G3XMN has a great CAD at 60Hz. The 'Medium' Overdrive setting has lower CAD than both 'Off' and 'Weak,' resulting in better motion, and the 'Strong' is almost unusable due to the amount of inverse ghosting.

The AOC Q27G3XMN doesn't have an optional backlight strobing feature to reduce persistence blur.

The AOC Q27G3XMN has terrible VRR flicker. There's distracting flicker in most content with changing frame rate, and it's even noticeable in brighter scenes, which is disappointing.

This monitor dims its backlight at all brightness levels, but it's at such a high frequency that you won't notice it.

The AOC Q27G3XMN 27 has low input lag for a responsive feel while gaming, and it doesn't increase at low refresh rates.

The input lag is nearly the same even with Local Dimming on 'Medium,' as you can see below:

This monitor works as expected with PS5, but because it doesn't support HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, it can't take full advantage of the console. It downscales a 4k signal, which results in a more detailed image than native 1440p.

Besides not supporting 4k @ 120Hz, there aren't any compatibility issues with the Xbox Series X|S. It even downscales a 4k signal, which results in a more detailed image than native 1440p. Keep in mind that Xbox doesn't support HDR with 1080p and 1440p signals, so this isn't an issue with the monitor.

The AOC Q27G3XMN works well with macOS when using a DisplayPort to USB-C cable. It reaches its max refresh rate, and both VRR and HDR work without issues. However, over HDMI, VRR doesn't work at all, and it has a max refresh rate of 144Hz. With either DisplayPort or HDMI, if you're using a MacBook and close the lid, the monitor turns off, but windows return to their original position when reopening it.

The AOC Q27G3XMN has a few extra settings, including:

• Dial Point: This is the setting for the virtual crosshair, which is accessible with the buttons.
• Frame Counter: Displays the current frame rate, but it only works with AMD graphics cards.
• LowBlue Mode: Reduces blue light to help reduce eye strain.
• Picture Boost: Lets you adjust the brightness and contrast of a certain section of the display.