Product Review – 725 Words
This piece is a review of a computer monitor. It was published on a now defunct independent gaming blog in 2014.
About a month ago my main desktop display decided to take a dump on my heart and die. So, I set out to find a new one. My history with purchasing electronics can only be summed up as “hasty”. I was bound and determined to make an informed decision this time around and set out to my nearest big box electronics store. What I ultimately ended up with was an AOC brand 23″ IPS panel monitor. This is the largest monitor I have owned to date, and the first one that has a 16:9 aspect ratio. My strategy for this purchase is a pure value proposition: what is the best monitor for my needs for the least amount of money?
I play a lot of games so:
- refresh rate
- response time
- contrast ratio
are very important for my main use of the monitor. This panel marked high in those three categories was the least expensive option. So, I pulled the trigger.
Setup
Setup is a breeze. The stand slips into place easily with no need for tools.
Out of the box and powered on the images the monitor produced were such a huge upgrade to my old monitor. I didn’t even have to tinker with brightness or contrast settings, something I’ve done for every monitor purchased in the past.
Use
I was initially struck by the narrow bezel. I wrote off the feature as a gimmick, but it really does make you feel more immersed whether you’re watching a movie or playing a game. Despite being thin, the monitor still feels solid in its construction. It doesn’t take much pressure to adjust the tilt either, which is nice since you don’t have to man-handle it.
Text is crisp, colors pop, and games look great. I’ve never had a monitor that made games look this good. HD content looks great. The viewing angle is very good as well; you can look at this monitor at pretty much any angle, even when some nasty evening sun comes through my doorway. Light bleeding (a pet-peeve of mine) is minimal as well.
One of my favorite features is that once you set an application to run in 4:3 mode it remembers to automatically switch from 16:9 to 4:3 on the fly whenever you load it up.
My only nitpicks with the monitor are just that, nitpicks. I’m not a huge fan of the way the panel locks onto the stand or the placement/size of the menu buttons. The stand feels a little flimsy and the button that releases the the monitor from the stand is hard to manipulate. The buttons are on the back of the monitor and quite small, and due to the small bezel there aren’t any icons or indicators as to which buttons do which. Ultimately though these are almost non-issues since the monitor works great out of the box.
The only time I’ve actually gone into the settings was to switch to 4:3 mode and you only need to do that once per application. One other weird thing to note was that the monitor comes with a power supply instead of using a regular cable. The cord connecting the monitor to the power supply is thin but not long enough to have the power supply lying on the ground behind my desk so now it’s just sitting behind my speakers, adding a little bit of clutter.
Wrap-up
Summary and Score
It’s hard to argue with the price to performance/feature set of this monitor. Games and movies look great, reading text is great, and not having to fiddle with things out of the box was really great. If you’re on a budget and looking for a new monitor then I heartily recommend this one.
Pros
- Awesome picture
- Convenient features
- Thin bezel keeps you immersed in content
- No fiddling in menus on set up
Cons
- Small and poorly placed buttons make accessing menus a slight hassle
- Hard to manipulate stand release
Technical Specifications
- Model Number: 12367F
- Viewable Image Size: 23″ (16:9)
- Brightness (typical): 250 cd/m2
- Contrast Ratio: 50000000:1
- Response Time: 5ms
- Optimum Resolution: 1920 x 1080 @ 60Hz
- Colors Supported: Over 16 Million
- Analog Input: RGB D-Sub
- Digital Input: DVI-HDCP
- ENERGY STAR: Yes
- EPEAT Rated: Yes
- Regulation: FCC