AOC Agon AG275QXL review: "Quick, punchy, and accurate"

The hot new AOC Agon AG275QXL enters the busy market for high-refresh 27-inch 1440p gaming monitors with at least one unique selling proposition. It sports trick RGB lighting that can be programmed to respond to the in-game action while you play League of Legends.

In fact, the entire monitor is styled up with Hextech-inspired gold accents and a big, fat League of Legends logo on the base. If League of Legends ain’t your thing, well… Aesthetics aside, the AG275QXL punches pretty hard thanks to a 27-inch 1ms IPS panel that runs at up to 170Hz and offers a native resolution of 2,560 by 1,440 pixels. Add in HDR and adaptive sync support, and you have a pretty comprehensive overall package that could aim to be in the internet's best gaming monitor lists.

At around $460 in the US and £400 in the UK, it also compares fairly favourably in price. Indeed, it slightly undercuts some of the 27-inch 1440p high-refresh opposition, including LG 27GP850-B and Gigabyte M27Q-X, proving that the LoL extras don’t necessarily pump up the price. That said, the MSI Optix MAG274QRF-QD is typically a bit cheaper.

Design & Features

Hey dawg, we heard you like League of Legends. So, we put some League of Legends stuff on your screen so that when you’re actually looking at League of Legends playing on your screen, you’ve also got League of Legends stencilled on your screen.

That, very roughly, appears to be the design philosophy behind the AOC Agon AG275QXL. There’s a huge LoL logo on the base, which is a serious RGB light show powered by AOC’s Light FX tech. All kinds of effects can be chosen, some static, some animated. The really tricky bit is the ability to react to the on-screen action.

The rest of the chassis is also plastered in LoL-derived and Hextech-inspired gold accents. Sophisticated it ain’t. But heck, it’s fun and with both slim bezels on three sides of the panel and a fully adjustable stand that includes tilt, height, swivel, and even rotation into portrait mode, the functionality is certainly all there. There’s also a pull-out arm for hanging your headset, though it’s a cheap-feeling plastic item. In truth, the whole monitor does feel a tiny bit low rent in pure material terms.

As for the tech specs, the IPS 1440p panel is rated at 1ms for response and maxes out at 170Hz over the DisplayPort 1.4 socket. You also get a pair of HDMI 2.0 ports, a USB-A hub, and 3.5mm audio out, but no USB Type C connectivity, the latter not typically being a major gamer concern. Note that this monitor will do its native 2,560 by 1,440 resolution at 120Hz on the Microsoft Xbox Series S/X, but will only run at 1080p on the Playstation 5, so you're more likely to find this at home as an Xbox Series X monitor rather than a PS5 monitor.

As for the quality of the panel, there’s 10-bit color and an impressive 94 percent coverage of both the DCI-P3 and AdobeRGB gamuts. HDR support, however, is very much entry-level stuff courtesy of DisplayHDR 400 certification. That means no local dimming, but it does at least dictate the 400 nit panel brightness. Despite the impressive color accuracy, if you are thinking about multi-tasking this monitor, it’s also worth noting that it doesn’t come with any gamut presets. You’d have to calibrate manually to work in AdobeRGB, for instance.

Finally, AOC has included a small LED-lit wired control puck that offers quick access to the OSD menu. It’s not exactly a newsflash to reveal that this, too, is LoL branded.

Performance

As an SDR gaming panel, the AOC Agon AG275QXL pretty much rocks. It’s properly punchy, with zingy colors and decent contrast for an IPS panel. Granted, monitors with VA screens, let alone true HDR panels, offer significantly better contrast and black levels. What they often can’t match is the zippy response.

AOC has included three levels of user-configurable pixel overdrive in the OSD menu. Toggle ‘Strong’, the most aggressive setting, and some fairly obvious overshoot ensues. However, ‘Medium’ deals with the overshoot while maintaining speedy response. This side of an OLED monitor, this is about as good as pixel response gets.

Add in the 170Hz refresh and you have a very responsive screen for slickly leaping around your favourite MOBA maps. Indeed, it’s plenty fast enough for all kinds of online shooters and esports. Only serious pros would want to consider something quicker.

The 2,560 by 1,440 resolution likewise strikes a good balance between detail and performance. You don’t need a $1,000 GPU to actually access the full 170Hz refresh. The one possible snag is that upscaling techs like Nvidia’s DLSS and AMD’s FSR don’t generally work as well on a 1440p panel like this as they do on a 4K screen.

Anywho, for sheer visual spectacle, the AG275QXL does a pretty nice job in SDR mode. Deathloop’s punchy color palette really pops. It’s also pretty well-calibrated by default, only exhibiting a tiny bit of compression in black tones. Less impressive is the HDR performance in, say, Cyberpunk 2077 -this is not a true HDR monitor.

Overall - should you buy it?

For the most part, the AOC Agon AG275QXL doesn’t disappoint. A 170Hz 1ms IPS gaming panel comes with certain expectations, all of which are met. It’s quick, it’s punchy and it’s accurate.

How much value you place on the League of Legends accoutrements is obviously going to be subjective. Overall, the aesthetic and physical feel is arguably a bit chintzy. But it doesn’t detract from what really matters: the excellent gaming performance. As for the limited HDR support, that’s pretty much a given for this class of display. If you want true HDR capability, you’ll need to pay more. It’s that simple.

As an all-round monitor for gaming on PC and console, plus productivity, the AG275QXL does have minor limitations. But it’s certainly capable of some light content creation and there’s little that ought to be a deal-breaker provided your remit isn’t primarily professional. 

On a final note of context, for anyone who demands the absolute highest refresh, there are faster screens available for a bit more money, including the 240Hz Gigabyte M27Q-X.