AOC e2795vh

If you were looking for a single word to describe the AOC e2795Vh, that word would be unobtrusive. Blending into the background is quite a trick for a 27-inch monitor, but the AOC manages it. You get the sense that this is a monitor designed to display images, rather than itself, and that’s just as it should be.

Despite being all business in front, there’s a bit of a party at the rear. You can connect using VGA, DVI or HDMI, and there’s also built-in speakers and audio line-in. Want USB? How does four ports sound? There are two at the rear and two at the side, as well as a USB input.

The party comes to a halt only when it comes to adjustibility – you have to cut corners somewhere to keep the price down. You can tilt the monitor forwards or back with a total of around 15 degrees movement, but there’s no other adjustment possible.

Fear not: cutting corners on the design means there’s no expense spared on the panel itself. The 1920 x 1280 screen is MVA (multi-domain vertical alignment), a compromise technology between the excellent-but-expensive IPS panels and cheap TN panels. Typically, these monitors have issues with high contrast transitions, but for office situations that shouldn’t matter.

When it comes to image quality, the AOC e2795Vh is, in general, excellent. Contrast is fantastic, and colour accuracy for photos and video is excellent. The matte coating reduces glare and had no effect on the overall colour accuracy or vividness of the screen. The 300cd/m2 brightness means that the panel is crisp and punchy even on half luminance. Also pleasing is that there’s no evidence of backlight brightness variation across the panel.

While watching live sport, colours seemed slightly muted, but we were able to adjust the colour temperature to produce good results.

On the lagom.nl tests, we noticed only minor banding in the gradient test, but nothing worth docking marks for. In the sharpness test the monitor came out low, and we couldn’t find a way to adjust this in the on-screen display. It wasn’t noticeable during work with images or text, however. The Gamma of the screen was low by default, but we were able to correct it easily with some basic calibration.

While the response time is quoted as 2ms grey to grey, we saw a small amount of ghosting and ‘pixel walk’. The response time quoted seems a little high, based on our results – we’d put it closer to 5ms, and while it should be fine for gaming, you may notice some artifacts in fast-moving games. Given that this isn’t a monitor designed primarily for gaming, that’s still acceptable. You may find that darker shadows pose the most difficulty for the monitor.

For business users, the e2795Vh is certified EPEAT gold – the highest eco-certification from the EPA. MVA panels use slightly more power than TN, but not enough to effect the overall bottom line.

These days, 21.5-inch and 23.5-inch monitors are the sweet spot when it comes to performance at a tasty price, but as we saw last month in our monitor test, it can be worth considering a 27-inch monitor if the price is right. Given that we found the AOC e2795Vh retailing for as little as $435, it’s definitely worth considering if you’re in the market right now.