AOC AGON PRO AG276QZD2 Monitor Review

The AOC AGON PRO AG276QZD2 has a unique gamer aesthetic, with five-sided shapes present throughout the monitor's design. It has a unique design approach, even compared to other gaming monitors.

The build quality is good. The exterior plastic casing is solid, and the stand is steel and is well built.

The ergonomics are superb. It has all common adjustments, so it's easy to set it to your preferred position or share your screen with someone else. In addition to a loop for cable management, it also has a retractable headphone hook.

The five-sided stand holds the monitor well, and if someone bumps the display, there's minimal wobble. In fact, the display is held so firmly that if someone adjusts the monitor's tilt or swivel, it can cause the entire display, including the stand, to move around the table.

The AOC AG276QZD2 has a joystick that controls the on-screen display and turns the monitor on and off.

• DisplayPort cable
• HDMI cable
• Power cable
• USB-B cable
• VESA 100x100 adapter
• Philips head mini screwdriver
• 4 Philips head screws
• Documentation

The AOC AGON PRO AG276QZD2 has a near-infinite contrast ratio and displays perfect blacks next to bright highlights in a dark room. However, in brighter environments, black levels rise, and deep blacks appear slightly purple.

The AOC AGON PRO AG276QZD2 doesn't have a backlight, so it doesn't require a local dimming feature. However, with a near-infinite contrast ratio, there isn't any blooming around bright objects, which is the equivalent of a perfect local dimming feature. We still film these videos on the monitor so you can see how the screen performs and compare it with a monitor that has local dimming.

Settings

• Eco Mode: Standard (after calibration)
• Game Mode: Off
• Color Temperature: User
• Brightness: Max

The SDR brightness is adequate. Though it can't overcome glare if very bright light is shining on the screen, it's easily visible in a well-lit room. This monitor has consistent brightness across different content, which is helpful for tasks such as photo editing.

Settings

• HDR Mode: HDR Peak

The HDR brightness is okay. Only smaller highlights pop against the rest of the image, as larger ones are more muted. Additionally, it has a slow roll-off as it approaches peak brightness, so highlights don't get as bright as possible.

The 'DisplayHDR' HDR Mode significantly clamps wider color gamuts such as DCI-P3 and Rec. 2020. Though 'DisplayHDR' has slightly better EOTF tracking, it also has a lower Real Scene brightness of 373 cd/m². As a result, we used 'HDR Peak' whenever we tested HDR in this review.

The horizontal viewing angle is incredible. Although it technically isn't perfect, you visually won't see any inconsistencies when viewing from the sides or if you sit close to the screen.

The vertical viewing angle is fantastic. You won't notice any inconsistencies as you view the screen from the top or bottom.

The gray uniformity is amazing. There's very little dirty screen effect or variation in brightness across the display. Like any OLED, there are thin gray vertical lines in dark scenes. However, most people won't notice them unless they're looking for them.

The AOC AG276QZD2 has outstanding black uniformity, with a uniform black level across the screen.

The accuracy before calibration in the 'sRGB' Color Gamut mode is impressive. Its color accuracy is great, and its color temperature is close to the 6500K target. However, its white balance is only satisfactory. Additionally, it displays dark parts of scenes too darkly and bright parts of scenes too brightly.

Locked-out Settings

Using the sRGB mode locks out the following settings:

• Contrast
• Eco Mode
• Gamma
• HDR Mode
• Game Mode
• Shadow Control
• Game Color
• LowBlue Mode
• Color Temp
• Low Input Lag
• Dark Boost
• Red/Green/Blue

If you want to access these settings, you need to change the Color Space to 'Panel Native', though this has worse accuracy and oversaturated colors.

Settings

• Eco Mode: Standard
• Color Gamut: Panel Native

The accuracy after calibration is superb, and you won't notice any inaccuracies.

The SDR color gamut is superb. It displays the full range of colors in sRGB, though it only has mediocre coverage of Adobe RGB. Additionally, in Adobe RGB, green and cyan are undersaturated.

The HDR color gamut is passable but far lower than expected for a QD-OLED display. It has somewhat limited coverage of the commonly used DCI-P3 color space and quite limited coverage of Rec. 2020 compared to other OLEDs.

The 'HDR Peak' HDR Mode has the widest HDR gamut. Other HDR Mode settings cause the gamut to be even narrower, and all Picture Settings are locked when using HDR except for Adaptive Sync and Frame Counter.

The HDR color volume is good, but is significantly lower than expected for a QD-OLED display. Brighter colors aren't very saturated, though darker colors look good in a dark room. Additionally, in brighter rooms darker colors begin to desaturate.

The text clarity is decent. However, because of its triangular subpixel layout, it's not as good as 27-inch 1440p IPS or VA monitors. These photos are in Windows 10, and you can also see them in Windows 11 with ClearType on or off.

Due to the triangular subpixel layout, there's some color fringing around letters and at the edge of windows. Some people find it hard to see unless they look closely at the monitor, though others notice this more.

The reflection handling is superb, and it's extremely effective at reducing glare. However, if the room has considerable amounts of ambient light deep blacks look somewhat purple.

Our monitor has a few marks on the screen, which you can see in the photo. There are some dots and a line that goes across the screen, but it isn't a scratch and is most likely from the packaging film. However, this didn't affect our testing.

The gradient handling is fantastic, and you won't notice any banding.

While you can reach the monitor's max refresh rate over DisplayPort without using DSC, you have to use 8-bit color to do so. Because this monitor only has HDMI 2.0 bandwidth, the maximum refresh rate with HDMI is significantly slower.

The AOC AG276QZD2 has FreeSync and G-SYNC compatibility but doesn't support HDMI Forum VRR.

This monitor has fantastic motion handling across its VRR range. There's minimal blur, and any blur you see at low refresh rates is persistence blur.

Originally, we tested this monitor with firmware V109, and experienced frame skipping. We tried different things to fix this, including using different PCs and updating the monitor's firmware, but no update was available, and nothing stopped the frame skipping. This negatively impacted the appearance of motion, as fast-moving content didn't appear as smooth as it should. However, after we updated the AOC G-MENU program to software V3.28.0, the frame skipping issue stopped, even though it wasn't a firmware update for the monitor. The results in the Motion section have been updated to reflect this.

You can see examples of this frame skipping from videos we took at 60Hz, 120Hz, and 240Hz on Blur Buster's Frame Skipping Checker. If you experience the same thing, try updating the G-MENU software.

The refresh rate compliance is remarkable. It makes full-color transitions before the monitor draws the next frame at any refresh rate. However, it only has this near-perfect compliance after we updated the G-MENU software to stop the frame-skipping issue that we initially experienced during testing.

The CAD at the max refresh rate is remarkable. Motion looks sharp, without any inverse ghosting or blur.

The CAD at 120Hz is fantastic. Motion looks crisp, and any blur you see is persistence.

The CAD at 60Hz is incredible. Any blur you see is persistence blur.

The AOC AG276QZD2 doesn't have a black frame insertion feature to reduce persistence blur.

The AOC AGON PRO AG276QZD2 has noticeable VRR flicker with changing frame rates, particularly in darker parts of scenes, as you can see in the VRR flicker video.

The backlight isn't technically flicker-free because it has a slight dip in brightness that corresponds to the monitor's refresh rate.

The input lag at the monitor's max refresh rate is excellent. However, it's a lot higher at 60Hz and 120Hz.

However, if you enable VRR at 60Hz or 120Hz, the input lag is lower, as you can see below:

• 1440p @ 60Hz: 14.3 ms
• 1440p @ 120Hz: 5.9 ms

When HDR is enabled with the PS5 and PS5 Pro colors look desaturated, which is expected given this monitor's limited HDR gamut and volume performance.

This monitor has some compatibility issues with the Xbox Series X|S. You have to use the Xbox's HDMI override function for 1440p @ 60Hz to work, but that disables VRR.

Additionally, when HDR is enabled with the Xbox colors look desaturated, which is expected given this monitor's limited HDR gamut and volume performance.

As the Xbox only supports HDR with 4k signals, you can only get HDR with downscaled 4k signals with this monitor.

The AOC AGON PRO AG276QZD2 works well with macOS. VRR works well, and HDR looks okay. If you're using a MacBook and close the lid windows shift to the AOC's screen. Opening the lid or waking the laptop up from sleep moves windows back to their original position. 

The AOC AGON PRO AG276QZD2 has some extra features, such as:

• Speakers: This monitor has integrated speakers, though they don't sound good.
• RGB Lighting: The back of the monitor has RGB lighting you can adjust to a range of different colors.
• AOC G-MENU: Allows you to adjust monitor settings with your mouse.
• LowBlue: Decreases blue light to help reduce eye strain.

It also has some settings to reduce the risk of burn-in associated with OLEDs in the OLED Care/Extra section:

• Logo Protection: Dims the screen where logos are detected.
• Taskbar Dimmer: Dims the taskbar without noticeably changing the brightness elsewhere.
• Pixel Orbiting: Slightly shifts the displayed image once a second to reduce image retention.
• Pixel Refresh: Helps eliminate image retention refreshing the monitor's pixels. This takes approximately 10 minutes.

You can learn more about the monitor's settings in the user manual, accessible by clicking the "Manuals" tab at this monitor's Drivers & Software page.