4K technology at its best. That’s about it for the new AOC Agon PD32M monitor. This thing is loaded, but it should probably be qualified with ‘for an LCD panel’. While the PD32M is an excellent LCD display in many aspects, it is not an OLED monitor like the Alienware AW3423DW (opens in new tab).
Hold that thinking till we investigate what this AOC beast truly is. The process begins with a 32-inch IPS screen with the full 4K pixel count, or 3,840 by 2,160. It has a refresh rate of up to 144Hz and a reported reaction time of 1ms. Impressive.
The really cool feature, however, is HDR support. This is a mini-LED monitor with 1,152 zones and full-array local dimming.
This mini-LED backlight also provides 600 units of full-panel brightness, 1,600 units of peak localized brightness, and Displayed 1400 certification. Ouch.
As if that wasn’t enough, AOC also claims 97 percent coverage of the AdobeRGB gamut when it comes to color accuracy.
That’s up there with the best monitors we’ve seen, even if color accuracy isn’t crucial for gaming. They don’t harm, though.
On a more practical note, the AOC Agon PD32M supports DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.1, and USB Type-C connectivity, the latter providing 90W of power delivery enabling smooth and simple single-cable access to laptops. It supports 120Hz through HDMI and USB Type-C.
Just bear in mind that even 90W of electricity won’t keep a very beefy gaming portable charged.
Oh, and did we mention that the ‘PD’ in PD32M stands for Porsche Design, the industrial design division of the same-named carmaker?
The end result is a luxurious aluminum stand that adjusts in every direction, including rotating into portrait mode, as well as tiny bezels on three sides of the monitor. There’s also some RGB lighting on the back, a cool LED-projected branding on the bottom of the stand, and a pop-out hook for hanging your gaming headset.
While appearance is subjective, the chassis and stand are undeniably well-engineered.
By pretty much every possible metric, this is a premium gaming panel.
Is it, however, suitable for gaming?
It’s certainly punchy and brilliant, even in standard SDR mode. Surprisingly, it’s not very color correct when set to defaults.
Instead, it’s oversaturated and has compression in the darker tones. When set to sRGB mode, the PD32M performs noticeably better.
However, the brightness is not changeable in sRGB mode and has been tuned for content creation, making it unsuitable for gaming.
What was the reaction? In the slightly odd-looking tile-based OSD menu, AOC has introduced three degrees of user-configurable pixel overdrive. There’s a hint of overshoot when set to the highest levels. However, the response is quite quick.
With the 144Hz refresh rate, you’ve got the makings of a gaming masterclass, right?
Yes and, regrettably, no. Consider the game Cyberpunk 2077. With its 4K resolution, quick reaction, and fast refresh rate, it looks fantastic in SDR mode on this panel. Then you recall that Cyberpunk is especially hot in HDR mode.
So you return to the Windows desktop and enable HDR, and oh dear.
Despite the 1,152 zones, this is a clumsy local dimming configuration. As you move windows and other items around the screen, it’s all too easy to notice the zones turning on and off. The Samsung Neo G9 (opens in new tab) suffers from the same issue.
The reality is that, while 1,152 dimming zones sounds like a lot, it’s actually a relatively poor resolution when you realise the panel contains over eight million pixels. In other words, one zone for every 7,200 pixels.
In-game, the clunkiness of the local dimming is significantly less noticeable. And my, does this screen pop in games that support HDR properly? However, glitches do arise from time to time, and when they do, you can’t help but compare this screen to the Alienware OLED and its immaculate per-pixel lighting.
The issue with this type of local dimming isn’t just the small number of zones.
It’s the fact that it necessitates a whole new level of sophistication and algorithms, which can and do produce visual abnormalities and weirdness’s. In that aspect, the AOC Agon PD32M isn’t very awful. So far, every full-array dimming LCD monitor has some of these restrictions. The difficulty is that at such a high price, it’s difficult to overlook such glaring flaws.
Anyway, the bottom line is that you should only use this monitor in HDR mode when playing a game or viewing a movie.
This implies that most of the time, this is a decent but not remarkable 4K monitor in terms of image quality.
It may be amazing when you use the HDR capabilities.
However, it is, like most HDR monitors, not without flaws.
