AOC Agon Pro AG276QZD review: The cheapest OLED gaming monitor

Our Verdict

The AOC Agon Pro AG276QZD is consistently one of the cheapest, proper OLED gaming monitors you can buy, if not the cheapest full stop. It doesn't compromise on features at all, and it's packed with little extras that, combined with its fantastic gaming performance, means it's a decent value option if you're after a pure gaming display. However, as with other displays that use LG WOLED panels, its text clarity isn't great and its max brightness isn't either, so it's not the best for work, especially in brighter rooms.

Reasons to buy

• Fantastic gaming performance
• Excellent overall image quality
• Lots of features for its price
• Lowest-price OLED you can buy

Reasons to avoid

• Text clarity is poor
• Colored fringing on high contrast areas
• Frustrating menu controls

OLED gaming monitors have steadily been getting more affordable, with 2024 seeing an explosion in options. However, most of them still cost closer to $1,000 than, say, $500. The AOC Agon Pro AG276QZD, then, is a breath of fresh air, as although its MSRP used to be a bit higher, it’s now regularly available for just $599.

This incredibly low price for this caliber of display means this AOC screen leaps onto our best gaming monitor guide as the clear go-to option for those seeking the stunning colors, contrast, and gaming speed of an OLED panel without the high cost. However, like the LG 27GR95QE, its poor text clarity means it’s not a great all-rounder display for work as well as play.

Specs

Features

The main feature of the AOC Agon Pro AG276QZD is, of course, its OLED panel, which is technically a 26.5-inch screen with a 2,560 x 1,440 resolution, making for a pixel density of 110 pixels per inch (ppi). Ordinarily, that’s an ideal pixel density for general use, being sharp enough to not look blocky and pixelated, but not so fine that you essentially waste screen space by having to use Windows Scale settings to stretch the image, as is the case with 4K screens of this size.

However, OLED panels have an Achilles heel, which is that they aren’t quite as sharp for any given pixel density as LCDs. This affects Samsung’s QD-OLED screens, such as the Samsung G95SC, but it’s even worse on the LG WOLED panel used in this display. We’ll talk more about how this affects this monitor in the image quality section of this review.

Where this monitor’s panel isn’t lacking at all is in its gaming specs, with it boasting a 240Hz refresh rate and a 0.03ms claimed response time (that’s roughly 100x faster than most LCDs). There are technically faster screens available, such as the 360Hz MSI MPG 271QRX, but for the vast majority of gamers, the performance you’ll get here is plenty.

The screen uses a matte finish, which helps limit the impact of reflections but can reduce the perceived contrast of a display when compared to glossy panels. Whether you prefer a matte or gloss finish will largely come down to personal preference, but we did find the matte finish had some downsides, as we’ll again discuss in the image quality section.

Elsewhere, the AG276QZD is packed with extras. As well as offering height, rotation, pivot, and tilt adjustment, the stand has a carry handle on the top, which is really useful for moving a high-value screen such as this one.

It also houses a flip-down headphone stand at the back, which is a handy addition, though depending on your setup and arm length, it’s not always in the most convenient spot to reach. Detach the stand and you can also affix an adapter that lets you mount the display on 100 x 100mm VESA mount-compatible monitor arms and stands – AOC even includes a little screwdriver to aid installation.

Round the back, you’ll also notice the RGB lighting, which consists of roughly 50 RGB lights in a ring. To the left of this (when facing the back of the panel) you’ll also find the single mini D-pad/joystick used to control the onscreen menus.

Meanwhile, the connections sit along the back bottom edge of the panel. These consist of two DisplayPort 1.4 inputs and two HDMI 2.0 ports, along with a USB 3.2 (Gen 1, so basically USB 3.0) hub with two downstream ports. There’s also a headphone jack, along with a pair of 5W speakers inside the monitor.

The speakers are a useful addition for those who haven’t yet managed to buy a pair of the best computer speakers, and they can get surprisingly loud. However, they’re thin and shrill sounding enough that we wouldn’t really want to use them for properly listening to music or gaming.

Internally, there aren’t too many extra features, such as the smart TV modes you get on the Samsung G95SC or the KVM features you find on some other displays. However, you get a picture-in-picture mode, plus this display supports Freesync Premium Pro, and it’s also G-Sync compatible, so it can synchronize its refresh rate with the frame rate output from your graphics card.

The usual little gaming extras are available too, such as an on-screen crosshair – useful for essentially cheating a little in FPS games where there’s no on-screen reticle. However, this crosshair doesn’t have a clever automatic color-shifting feature to ensure it’s always visible on any background, such as on the MSI MPG 271QRX. There’s also a “Sniper Zoom” mode, which zooms in on the central portion of the screen. We’ve never found much use for these modes, though.

Finally, there’s of course HDR support. The screen is only rated to the HDR10 standard, which ensures it can handle and deliver the 10-bit wide color range of HDR. However, the screen has no VESA DisplayHDR rating, which is surprising for an OLED panel.

Design

This is a very smart-looking monitor, other than one really strange addition. Can you spot it in the image below? Yes, it’s that stand. It has a perfectly fetching color, and we applaud AOC for making it compact and low-profile – it’s completely flat so you can put desk adornments on top of it – but its lopsided shape is just odd.  If you tend to end up with a messy desk, you probably won’t mind, as it’ll soon get covered up, but if you like to keep a clean space you may find it distracting.

In AOC’s defense, the idea here is the same as on the budget esports stand monitor it launched recently, the main feature of which was simply its small stand that leaves plenty of room for your mouse and keyboard to be close to the screen. AOC highlights the same feature on this display, and we think it’s a great concept, but would prefer a symmetrical version of the same general idea.

That aside, the AG276QZD really is elegantly appointed and well-made. The stand features lots of sturdy metal elements, with a silver paint finish that looks a little more interesting than plain black plastic without being too peculiar.

Likewise, the back of the panel has a little bit of flair to it, thanks to its angular shape, without being garish (assuming you turn off the rainbow LED effects). The edges of the OLED panel are very slim, which has been a concern with handling some larger OLED panels, but the stand’s handle saves you from having to pick up the display by these thin edges.

The lighting here is also well-integrated, so it’s mostly an invisible feature when it’s turned off completely, and it doesn’t look too silly when turned on. It’s also bright enough to provide a pleasing wash of lighting on the wall behind the panel, though it doesn’t have a mode that makes the lighting match the colors displayed on the screen, as with some of Philips’ new OLED monitors. As such, we just left it set to a warm white glow to provide a bit of backfill lighting.

Onscreen display menus

AOC has a poor track record when it comes to its onscreen menus, at least if you go back quite some time. The company has improved its menus more recently, but the usability of this one feels like a step back.

The problem is the way the mini d-pad is used to navigate the menus. There’s an inconsistency with what each direction does, depending on which part of the menu you’re using. Press on any direction button without the menu open, and you activate the quick functions assigned to those directions, and you also open the main menu by pressing the d-pad inwards. You can then navigate the main menu with the directions, and enter a menu section with another press of the d-pad, but from here the functions change.

Once you’re in a sub-menu, pressing right is now how you select a function, and pressing left is how you exit a function, except sometimes you also have to press in the d-pad. This can lead to confusing situations, such as when adjusting the volume or brightness setting, where you have to press right to activate it, press left or right to adjust the setting itself, then press in on the d-pad to exit the setting before pressing left to exit the sub-menu. It’s a mess.

Thankfully, the menus actually provide access to nearly every setting you will want or need to get the display setup how you like. This includes comprehensive color customization, with quick modes for switching to sRGB and DCI-P3 color spaces – with image quality that’s good enough to go right out of the box.

There are also several OLED care options, including a pixel orbiting mode that just slightly shifts which pixels are illuminated to reduce the onset of screen burn. There aren’t quite as many options as you find on some monitors, such as the rather useful AI-enhanced crosshair or other AI-enhanced static image anti-burn-in options on MSI’s latest screens, but there are ample options to just get the screen set up and get going.

Image quality

Let’s cut right to the chase. The LG WOLED panel in this monitor is not great when it comes to text clarity. It suffers from colored fringing appearing around the edges of high-contrast elements like text, which can lead to a fuzzy look that’s difficult to read.

You can see examples of this issue in the two images below, one of which shows a larger text, as you might find used for headlines, and the second of which shows the smaller text you usually find on standard news articles, emails, and so on. On the left is the AG276QZD, while on the right is a 27-inch LCD panel of the same size and resolution.

In these images, you’ll see that the left edges of the larger text on the left side of the image have red/green/blue colored dots/fringing all along them. This is because the display is struggling to work out which of the panel’s white, red, green, and blue sub-pixels to illuminate to achieve the smooth grey edges of the text. On the LCD on the right, the red, green, and blue sub-pixels are arranged in a more conventional way that copes better with these high-contrast edges.

The colored fringing can look a little distracting for larger text and other high-contrast edges but is downright disruptive to your ability to read text when it’s smaller. In the above image, you can see how the text takes on a really soft, smudgy appearance on the left but looks much sharper on the right.

All that said, the above images also show that text is still perfectly readable, so it’s not like this display and others like it are completely unusable. It’s more that if, like me, you spend all day working at a screen reading a lot of text, the lack of sharpness is a major negative. If you’re only reading the odd webpage here and there, or catching up on Discord and Twitch chat between gaming sessions, though, it’s far less of an issue.

What’s more, while it’s not amazing for text, this display is excellent at most other tasks. The inherent ability of OLED displays to produce true inky blacks means you get amazing contrast, especially when viewing the screen in a darker environment.

In lighter rooms, the matte coating of the screen can make black tones look a little grey, but this is largely eliminated in the dark. Meanwhile, the matte finish does a great job of reducing the impact of bright reflections compared to glossy screens. On balance, I still prefer the glossy finish of most of the QD-OLED panels I’ve reviewed recently, but the matte finish here still looks great.

Colors are also really punchy and vibrant, enabling this display to show HDR content with all the vividness you’d hope for. That said, the overall brightness level here, and thus the impact of HDR, is not all that high. On average it can only hit 280nits brightness when at its maximum, which compares to typically around 400nits for a basic LCD screen. Most QD-OLED displays I’ve tested also go a little higher, though this screen is notably brighter than the LG 27GR95QE, which uses a similar LG WOILD panel. That model topped out at just 200nits in normal non-HDR modes.

In HDR, this panel’s brightness can boost even higher but again not as high as QD-OLEDs. What’s more, non-white peak brightness is much lower than on QD-OLEDs so very bright, vivid colors lack a little punch compared to this screen’s rival OLED technology from Samsung.

Another key factor to note when it comes to overall image quality is that, by default, the screen comes with an OLED care mode that constantly varies the brightness of the screen, depending on what it’s showing at the time. All OLED screens do it to a degree, but this panel – and that of the LG 27GR95QE – is particularly aggressive. This can be quite distracting but thankfully there’s a fix, which is to engage the Uniform Brightness mode. This could in theory reduce the life of the panel slightly, but we found the screen was basically unusable without it.

Gaming performance

Where this screen’s OLED panel really shines is when it comes to gaming performance. The combination of its 240Hz refresh rate with a ridiculously fast 0.03ms response time makes for incredibly crisp and fast-feeling motion in games. In our tests, the response time actually averaged at just over 1ms, but that’s still far faster than any LCD panel in real-world tests.

With adaptive sync taking care of screen tearing and stuttering, you also get a really smooth image. The versatility of a 1440p resolution at this screen size and overall speed is also ideal. It means this display can turn its hand to delivering blistering frame rates and response times in CS2 or Apex Legends, then deliver stunning visuals in more cinematic titles, with which 1080p screens with faster refresh rates struggle to compete.

It’s not the absolute last word in peak gaming performance, as screens that hit 360Hz and even 540Hz do inevitably faster still – especially those with backlight strobing blur reduction modes – but it’s still enough performance for all but elite level competitive gamers.

Price

Although it launched at a slightly higher price, the AG276QZD is now sold at $599.99 in every shop we could find. That makes it either the cheapest mainstream-brand OLED panel of its type, or the joint cheapest with the LG 27GR95QE, depending on whether the LG screen has been discounted. As such, even though there are some aspects of its performance that aren’t best-in-class, it’s a great value option if you just want to get in on the OLED fun without spending over the odds.

Alternatives

MSI MPG 271QRX

If you’re looking to get an OLED screen but want slightly better text quality, even punchier colors, and an even higher refresh rate, the MSI MPG 271QRX is a great buy. It’s more expensive than the AOC, at around $800, and has fewer extra features but it’s a better screen overall.

Asus TUF Gaming VG27AQML1A

For a great all-rounder screen that’s considerably more affordable than the AOC Agon Pro AG276QZD, the Asus TUF Gaming VG27AQML1A is a great option. It uses an IPS LCD panel, so it can’t reach quite the same ultra-fast response time and high contrast of an OLED, but it still has a 260Hz refresh rate, 1440p resolution, and G-Sync compatibility, all for just under $400.

Verdict

The AOC Agon Pro AG276QZD doesn’t excel in every possible way. Its biggest Achilles heel is its text quality, which looks a little rough compared to an LCD panel with the same size and resolution, as well as QD-OLED displays. It’s also lacking a little in peak brightness which, along with its matte coating, slightly dulls the depth of its black levels in brighter environments, and means it doesn’t have quite the HDR punch of some QD-OLED screens or miniLED displays.

However, in every other way, the AG276QZD is a great buy. It’s packed with features, including speakers, a USB hub, and a headphone stand, and it offers fantastic gaming performance. Its response time is blazing fast and its 240Hz refresh rate is very nippy too.

As such, the AOC Agon Pro AG276QZD comes highly recommended as a pure gaming display, balancing performance, image quality, and value to perfection. For more of an all-rounder display for work – or anything else where a lot of looking at text is required – though, there are better choices available elsewhere.