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Some overdrive artifacts (overshoot) even using the ‘Weak’ setting – relatively mild but still there The AOC i2369Vm is in many ways an impressive monitor, not least for the image quality on offer at such a low price. The monitor provided a rich and fairly well balanced image straight from the box with excellent gamma performance. There was a slight colour imbalance (green tint) on our unit but the flexible and well-laid out OSD allowed this to be easily rectified. The variety and consistency of colours made for a rich and rewarding gaming and movie experience. The matte screen surface didn’t provide quite the same vibrant punch as a glossy (or semi glossy) one, but the image was far from being bland or washed out. Battlefield 3 looked very much as it should. Colours were displayed with good richness and variety with some particularly impressive earthy browns and crisp golden greens. Some of the deeper colour, such as strong oranges and dark reds, also had appropriate fullness without appearing the wrong shade. The ‘neon’ in game markers and bright elements such as fires and flares didn’t have the sort of ‘pop’ you might see on a glossy screen but still looked fairly vibrant. The greyscale gradient was very smooth without any banding. There was some slight dithering on some of the medium greys but this was quite well masked.
AOC i2369Vm review - Tech Advisor
For our testing (below) we set overdrive to ‘Weak’ as we felt this offered the best balance. Users should feel free to experiment with the other settings to see what works best for them. The contrast performance very good by many measures and essentially up there with many of the stronger IPS panels we’ve seen. There was the usual IPS glow to contend with but this is just one of those trade-offs that applies to all IPS and PLS panels on the market today. The image was clearer and less grainy than some of the older IPS models (such as the Dell U2312HM), which is good to see. We do feel LG could have gone a bit further here, reducing the haze value a bit more and essentially making the matte surface even lighter. The image was not as ‘clean’ as that provided by some of the higher end AH-IPS panels such as the 27” WQHD models or indeed Samsung’s ‘semi glossy’ PLS surface. Still, that’s something for LG to consider and isn’t something AOC themselves are in control of. Slightly reduced tint but light shades appear overly bright in relation to darker shades which appear a bit ‘underdone’. With overdrive disabled (‘Off’) you can see a bold primary trail and faint secondary trail. The ‘Weak’ setting actually provides a good degree of acceleration to many pixel transitions. In this example the secondary trail becomes pretty much invisible whilst the primary trail is weakened. Looking at a broader range of pixel transitions, as we do shortly, you can actually see a significant improvement over the ‘Off’ setting. Despite its name the overdrive is quite strong and effective – there is a degree of overshoot (inverse trailing) in some instances, but this is reasonably light. The ‘Medium’ setting is the monitor default and provides even greater acceleration. In this snapshot you can see a sharpening and brightening of the trail – indications of moderate overshoot. Essentially the mild overshoot using the ‘Weak’ option now becomes somewhat stronger and more widespread. The ‘Strong’ setting gives significant overshoot and as demonstrated by PixPerAn is not a suitable setting to use really. The matte screen surface gives a slightly grainy appearance to light colours – it’s lighter (lower haze value) than some older IPS models but not quite ‘semi glossy’
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The Lagom text appeared a well-blended grey without any obvious red or green tints. This indicates a low level of viewing angle dependency to the monitor’s gamma curve, which is a positive attribute of IPS monitors. Image is very bright, rich and nicely varied with decent vibrancy. A slight cool green tint to the image but no issues with over (or under) saturation or crushed shades. A very good static contrast performance putting it up there with some of the best IPS models out there
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Contrast performance on Battlefield 3 was respectable overall. Visibility in dark areas was good with even some fairly minor details visible. Towards the corners of the screen, and to a lesser extent the central flanks, PS glow drowned out some this detail. The high end hand plenty of brightness and good distinctions of closely matched shades. Light and light textures had a bit of a grainy look to them from the screen surface, though. Stand offers only tilt adjustment and is fairly wobbly if you touch the monitor (to adjust the OSD settings, for example) AOC are not as well-known as many other monitor manufacturers, but they certainly know how to achieve that crucial combination of style, performance and affordability. The AOC i2369Vm is the latest monitor in the company’s ‘Value’ line. Despite it setting itself firmly as a budget option it uses the latest ‘AH-IPS’ technology to give slender bezels and a competent colour performance. It all seems very promising ‘on paper’, but how does it all hold together in practice? That is what we will find out. Our main system used for this review uses an AMD Radeon 7950 which was connected using the HDMI cable AOC supplied for us. There are a few tweaks you will need to make when using HDMI, which isn’t a fault of this monitor, specifically, but a problem with the graphics driver defaults. The graphics card essentially recognises anything connected via HDMI as a TV rather than a monitor which means that a suboptimal signal is sent out. On our AMD GPU we were able to increase contrast slightly and eliminate an annoying dithering effect on whites by changing the ‘Pixel Format’ to RGB instead of the default of YCbCr. Open Catalyst Control Centre and navigate to ‘My Digital Flat-Panels –> Pixel Format’. You then change from the default ‘YCbCr 4:4:4 Pixel Format’ to ‘RGB 4:4:4 Pixel Format PC Standard (Full RGB)’. This setting is shown in the image below. If you want to avoid having to do these little tweaks in the graphics driver then make use of the monitor’s DisplayPort. We tested this and found everything set up optimally by default, as you’d expect from a PC-only connection. The table below gives readings for white point, average central gamma and some general observations for each ‘Gamma’ setting. To reiterate, ‘DPS’ was disabled but everything else was kept at default. The table also shows the results from our ‘test settings’ which are described subsequently.
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On Dirt 3 low-end (dark) detail was again good in most cases with all important details visible. There was some loss in peripheral sections (particularly corners) due to IPS glow but nothing game breaking. The slightly grainy look at the high-end prevented lights looking ‘pure’ but there was plenty of brightness. A nice design overall with very slender bezels, touches of fingerprint-resistant matte silver (plastic), VESA mounting capability and a DisplayPort input On Battlefield 3 a moderately low degree of trailing was observed whilst running about on foot. The trails were short and sharp rather than extended and smeary. It was clear that effective overdrive was being used. There were instances of fairly weak overdrive trailing, mostly manifesting itself as a sort of partially transparent glow around certain contrasting colours. A dark grey building set against a bright blue sky, for example. Ramping up the pace of action by zipping about in a vehicle increased apparent trailing, as you might expect. At this fast pace the degree of sharpness maintained was about as good as you would see on a 60Hz LCD. The refresh rate and perceived blur became overriding limitations rather than the pixel response times. Overall, then, a competent performance from the AOC on this title.
I2369VM | AOC Monitors I2369VM | AOC Monitors
On the AOC i2369Vm we measured under 4ms (less than quarter of a frame) of input lag, which is excellent. Although felt responsiveness is determined by other factors as well (such as refresh rate) that’s certainly one less thing for gamers to worry about. At the side the monitor is fairly slender. It is 14mm at thinnest point and 17mm at the bottom (including the bottom bezel ‘lip’). It lumps out in the middle to around 43mm.
Disappointing colour accuracy for an IPS panel, but this budget monitor looks great and has a wide range of inputs
We also briefly tested the monitor using an Nvidia GTX 670 just to see if there were any obvious colour differences. As usual the Nvidia card sent out completely the wrong colour signal to the monitor, washing out colours and hugely reducing contrast. To rectify this and make everything look as it should for PC use the following steps should be taken in Nvidia Control Panel. The i2369Vm is part of AOC’s value range of monitors, but this 23in monitor looks anything but budget. The i2369Vm’s slim IPS panel is just 14mm deep and its slim matt silver stand and lower bezel look smart with its frameless display.
AOC I2369V 23 inch monitor | AOC Monitors | AOC Monitors AOC I2369V 23 inch monitor | AOC Monitors | AOC Monitors
We also tested our Blu-ray film titles. Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder is a particularly good test for colour reproduction as it features large areas of solid colour and a dazzling variety of shades. The AOC displayed these shades very well, displaying deep shades and bright neon shades with a good vivid look. Pastel shades looked appropriately muted by comparison and again showed strong variety. The consistency of shades was also excellent; individual shades appeared as they should regardless of their position on the screen.
Dirt 3’s environments looked rich, natural and very much as they should. Greens had good depth and richness with some impressive golden brown tones in the mix. This richness was also reflected by the car paint jobs and advertising around the courses. Deep reds and orangs were particularly impressive. Deep blues were also good, although some blue shades could have been a touch deeper. Neon pinks, greens and cyans didn’t ‘pop’ as much as they sometimes do nor did they have that smooth painted on look. This is again down to the screen surface. Such observations aside, the colours were certainly not washed out and the AOC presented colours well on this title. The AOC i2369Vm gave a good static contrast performance, averaging 1058:1 across all the brightness settings tested for ‘Gamma1’. Switching gamma mode had no detrimental impact here with 1055:1 recorded under ‘Gamma2’ and 1064:1 using ‘Gamma3’. Our test settings involved some colour channel adjustments, reducing contrast slightly to 956:1 which is still good. The maximum luminance recorded was spot on the 250 cd/m2 specified whilst the minimum white luminance recorded was 76 cd/m2. This gives a comfortable adjustment luminance range to play with of 174 cd/m2 with sensible values available for both bright and dimly lit rooms. Very low input lag and highly configurable pixel overdrive with some good strong acceleration even using the not-so-aptly named ‘Weak’ overdrive setting We used a modified ‘camera and stopwatch’ type method to gauge an estimation of the level of input lag on the monitor. The basic method involves a camera at high shutter speed capturing a running on-screen stopwatch (with millisecond accuracy). The stopwatch is displayed simultaneously on the monitor being tested and a monitor of known input lag. Traditionally the monitor of known input lag is a CRT display that does no image processing and can be considered input lag free. To help improve the accuracy of this test we take an average from over 120 readings and compare with multiple monitors of known signal processing delay. This gives a greater number of milestones to work from and helps narrow down the input lag more reliably. We used the MHL feature with an HTC One X+, which has a 1,280×720 resolution. The phone’s display defaulted to a horizontal position that filled most of the screen, but the overall image looked jagged and pixelated. Even so, the MHL feature is a handy way of showing photos to your family and friends on a large screen.
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