AOC i2353ph – The affordable 23" IPS monitor
Introduction
The AOC brand might not be well known in forums in India, and would be generally brushed aside in favour of other brands like Dell, Viewsonic, Benq, etc. I came across AOC, when I recently went on a monitor search to replace my old Viewsonic monitor. I ended up buying the AOC due to lack of other good options in my budget and also because, the monitor of choice – Dell U2312HM didn't have an hdmi port. What i required most was a hdmi port to enjoy tv and movies from my hd stb and also to connect my pc to this. Thankfully, this monitor lived up and more to my expectations.
Here, I will try to give as detailed a review as possible, but it will fall short compared to other well known sites since I do not have any professional monitor calibration software with me.
Why IPS?
Most budget monitors (less than 14k) are usually TN panel monitors, which give a satisfactory display for general day use. They lack in colour reproduction and brightness and have inferior viewing angles. The viewing angles might not matter to most of us, since people generally tend to sit right in front of their monitor in a straight line which is where the picture looks the best.
If you want more, then you need to upgrade to an MVA panel or an IPS panel monitor. This is easier to type in this review than to find such good panel monitors on the market. Most of these monitors are not in stock or not kept in stock due to no demand or very less demand. Whatever the reason, there are only a handfull of IPS monitors currently available in stock in the whole country. Finding such a monitor below 15k is even harder.
My main usage of the monitor was to surf internet, watch tv and movies and enjoy anime. For this I required a monitor with vga, dvi and an hdmi input to connect my hd stb. The AOC does not have a dvi port, but makes up for the loss with 2 hdmi ports and a vga port. I would have preferred they put a dvi port instead of the vga port.
Specifications:
Whats in the box:
Monitor with stand attached, an hdmi cable, vga cable, a 10% off coupon on AOC range of led tv's, a microfiber cloth to wipe the screen and a cdrom containing the software and drivers.
Design:
The monitor is very attractive to look at. Anyone looking at this would go wow! This is because the monitor gets its power from an adapter now. So the only width you see is of the panel and the plastic frame which is an amazingly thin around 22mm at bottom and this further decreases to about 17mm at top of monitor.
The screen can be tilted as shown in diagram below.
The monitor base is like a D shape and is slightly elevated at back. It has led light in front which shows mode it itsin. During normal operation, it glows blue, while in standby its amber or orange. The base is made of plastic and aluminum. The base has the VESA mounting holes in it. So if you decide to mount the monitor to a wall it may not be a good idea, since the ports on the monitor will all be facing upwards instead of being at bottom.
The materials used are good quality and there is no noise heard from the monitor like creaking sounds in plastic, when the panel cools off after use. The monitor panel stays cool even after continuous usage of around 5-6 hours. The base stand and adpater do become warm though.
---------- Post added at 02:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:02 PM ----------
contd...
OSD Menu
The menu is accessed via the monitor buttons printed on the base. The buttons are so sensitive that just touching the print a bit will enable the osd.
Luminance
This menu option has settings for Contrast, Brightness, Gamma, DCR, and preset viewing modes like text, internet, game, movie, and sports. The Standard mode is the user setting in which you can change the contrast and brightness levels. In other modes, you cannot change these levels. You can use the gamma setting to choose bewteen 3 preset settings. The DCR (Dynamic contrast Ratio) setting allows you to turn it on or off. This does work but in a subtle way.
Image Setup
This menu option is enabled only if you use the analog vga port for input. Using hdmi port disables this option. It has settings to change horizontal and vertical clock frequency, sharpness, etc.
I used hdmi as input (using a male dvi - hdmi female adpater).
Colour Setup
This menu option has settings for choosing between defining a User colour mode and the preset Warm, Normal, Cool and sRGB modes. You can only change individual R,G,B colour values in the User mode. The DCB mode has preset tones for Full Enhance, Nature Skin, Green Field, Sky-Blue and Auto Detect. The DCB Demo (on or off) splits the monitor image vertically into two portions. The left half of the image shows the result of the currently selected DCB mode, while the right half shows the original unchanged image. The difference is very little in most modes and cant be noticed from more than a feet away.
Note: Its incorrectly labelled DCR instead of DCB. The difference between DCR and DCB is DCR adjusts contrast dynamically by itself according to the picture. I think it just bumps the contrast to the max, since when using it the C & B settings were inaccessible.
Picture Boost
This menu option has settings for frame size (14-100), brightness, contrast, horizontal and vertical position and a bright frame (on/off). This mode overlays a small white image or frame in the top left corner and increase its size according to your wish. I dont know what it can be used for.
OSD Setup
You can change H/V position, transparency, language and timeout of the osd in this.
Extra
Here you get the input select options (Auto, Analog, HDMI 1/2), auto config, off timer, image ratio, ddc-ci (enables talk between monitor and device connected to it via hdmi port for clock freq, supported modes etc), reset, and information.
Exit
No extra option is this. It just exits OSD.
Printed Button hotkeys:
Touching the < key will enable the Clear Vision setting which is by default off. Touch it once again to enable it to On mode which sharpens the image a bit. With every touch you can cycle between Strong/ Medium/ Weak/ Off preset modes. Leaving it off works best for pc. Weak is good for SD tv which is a bit blurry. Rest 2 modes are too strong and just make jagged edges on everything.
Setup:
Windows 7 automatically configures this including installing drivers for best performace. No net connection or cdrom drive required.
My old ATI Radeon card thought this was a tv and by default had underscan to around 15%. Make it 0% in scaling options to get full clear and crisp picture on monitor.
Optimal display setting is 1920x1080 @ 60Hz. 32 bit colour.
Extras:
The monitor did come with some applications like i-Menu for adjusting monitor settings (instead of the OSD) and e-Saver for reducing power consumption of the monitor. The i-Menu does everything in the OSD, while the e-Saver does everything inbuilt into windows power saving functions like setting timing for switching off the monitor in normal mode, sleep mode and screen saver.
The Screen+ software splits the monitor into different panes, each pane displaying a different window. Supports multiple displays according to the manual. I havent used it so cant comment.
SRS WoWHD software – WOW HD™ significantly improves the playback quality of audio, delivering a dynamic 3D entertainment experience with deep, rich bass and high frequency clarity for crisp detail, according to the manual. Havent used it.
Colour, Black Depth and Contrast:
According to TFT Central, the AOC uses an LG e-IPS display with 6bit +AFRC with white led backlighting. The screen covers 73% NTSC, 76% Adobe RGB and 96.9% sRGB colour space.
This is good enough for most people. Graphic design and more colour conscious people might require better panels which support upto more than 100% sRGB space. Such monitors are usually priced well above the 20k mark for 23" monitors with exception of Asus who has one monitor (Asus PA238Q) in the 19.5k range.
The default settings are very bright and the monitor really pleases the eye with its reproduction of colour compared to a lower panel monitor. What is noticeable is a bluish tint that even white objects have. What really bugs me is there is no way to minimize this tint in any gamma mode or by reducing the blue colour without harming the picture. Seems this is a limitation of the panels using 6 bits for colour table and having leds as backlight.
Since i do not have access to a calibration device, I opted to manually set the contrast and brightness settings. The defaults were too high at B=90, C=50, Gamma-1, and sRGB mode.
I used an Adobe Flash executable from FlatpanelsHD for the colour calibrations.
I have it set the C & B = 32, Warm mode (in colour setup) and Gamma-2. In this setting I get whites almost as white as possible. The icc profile i'm using is icc v4 sRGB profile.
Before calibration:
After Calibration:
The MSPaint window in each pic is the uncalibrated image. I read somewhere that MSPaint does not support icc profiles or any calibration in pics.
Viewing Angles:
Black Depth:
The monitor i got had almost no backlight bleed on it. It is an absolute delight to watch movies and tv on this. The colours are really good and natural and no calibration is required to adjust skin tone. The blacks on this are really good.
The monitor speakers support audio through hdmi. They do not have that high volume at 100% when sitting near, but the sound does fill the room and can be heard in a quite room. There is no bass in them and they sound a bit like an old transistor radio at full volume.
Gaming:
I cannot test for gaming and other such lag since i dont game. My graphics card is also quite old – an HD3450, so I use it just to watch movies. I cant comment or give any advice in this section as of now.
Conclusion:
To me this is a really good monitor to buy if you are on a strict budget. Its price is around 13.5k in stores and it comes with a 3 year warranty.
Introduction
The AOC brand might not be well known in forums in India, and would be generally brushed aside in favour of other brands like Dell, Viewsonic, Benq, etc. I came across AOC, when I recently went on a monitor search to replace my old Viewsonic monitor. I ended up buying the AOC due to lack of other good options in my budget and also because, the monitor of choice – Dell U2312HM didn't have an hdmi port. What i required most was a hdmi port to enjoy tv and movies from my hd stb and also to connect my pc to this. Thankfully, this monitor lived up and more to my expectations.
Here, I will try to give as detailed a review as possible, but it will fall short compared to other well known sites since I do not have any professional monitor calibration software with me.
Why IPS?
Most budget monitors (less than 14k) are usually TN panel monitors, which give a satisfactory display for general day use. They lack in colour reproduction and brightness and have inferior viewing angles. The viewing angles might not matter to most of us, since people generally tend to sit right in front of their monitor in a straight line which is where the picture looks the best.
If you want more, then you need to upgrade to an MVA panel or an IPS panel monitor. This is easier to type in this review than to find such good panel monitors on the market. Most of these monitors are not in stock or not kept in stock due to no demand or very less demand. Whatever the reason, there are only a handfull of IPS monitors currently available in stock in the whole country. Finding such a monitor below 15k is even harder.
My main usage of the monitor was to surf internet, watch tv and movies and enjoy anime. For this I required a monitor with vga, dvi and an hdmi input to connect my hd stb. The AOC does not have a dvi port, but makes up for the loss with 2 hdmi ports and a vga port. I would have preferred they put a dvi port instead of the vga port.
Specifications:
| Size: | 23" wide (58.42cm diagonal) |
| Aspect Ratio: | 16:9 |
| Resolution: | Full HD 1920x1080 |
| Panel Type: | e-IPS, 6bit + AFRC, 16.7 million colours |
| Viewing Angles: | 178h, 178v |
| Response Time: | 5ms G2G |
| Pixel Pitch: | 0.265mm |
| Backlight: | W-LED |
| Contrast: | 1000:1 |
| A/V Interfaces: | 2x HDMI (v1.3) supports hdcp, 1 VGA, 1 Audio in 3.5mm |
| Tilt: | -4deg to 14deg |
| Power Consumption: | Active < 35W, standby < 0.5W |
| Weight: | 2.85Kg monitor only. |
| Other: | 100mm VESA mount support, inbuilt 2x 2W speakers, very slim design with metallic finish, touch sensitive monitor buttons. |
Whats in the box:
Monitor with stand attached, an hdmi cable, vga cable, a 10% off coupon on AOC range of led tv's, a microfiber cloth to wipe the screen and a cdrom containing the software and drivers.
Design:
The monitor is very attractive to look at. Anyone looking at this would go wow! This is because the monitor gets its power from an adapter now. So the only width you see is of the panel and the plastic frame which is an amazingly thin around 22mm at bottom and this further decreases to about 17mm at top of monitor.
The screen can be tilted as shown in diagram below.
The monitor base is like a D shape and is slightly elevated at back. It has led light in front which shows mode it itsin. During normal operation, it glows blue, while in standby its amber or orange. The base is made of plastic and aluminum. The base has the VESA mounting holes in it. So if you decide to mount the monitor to a wall it may not be a good idea, since the ports on the monitor will all be facing upwards instead of being at bottom.
The materials used are good quality and there is no noise heard from the monitor like creaking sounds in plastic, when the panel cools off after use. The monitor panel stays cool even after continuous usage of around 5-6 hours. The base stand and adpater do become warm though.
---------- Post added at 02:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:02 PM ----------
contd...
OSD Menu
The menu is accessed via the monitor buttons printed on the base. The buttons are so sensitive that just touching the print a bit will enable the osd.
Luminance
This menu option has settings for Contrast, Brightness, Gamma, DCR, and preset viewing modes like text, internet, game, movie, and sports. The Standard mode is the user setting in which you can change the contrast and brightness levels. In other modes, you cannot change these levels. You can use the gamma setting to choose bewteen 3 preset settings. The DCR (Dynamic contrast Ratio) setting allows you to turn it on or off. This does work but in a subtle way.
Image Setup
This menu option is enabled only if you use the analog vga port for input. Using hdmi port disables this option. It has settings to change horizontal and vertical clock frequency, sharpness, etc.
I used hdmi as input (using a male dvi - hdmi female adpater).
Colour Setup
This menu option has settings for choosing between defining a User colour mode and the preset Warm, Normal, Cool and sRGB modes. You can only change individual R,G,B colour values in the User mode. The DCB mode has preset tones for Full Enhance, Nature Skin, Green Field, Sky-Blue and Auto Detect. The DCB Demo (on or off) splits the monitor image vertically into two portions. The left half of the image shows the result of the currently selected DCB mode, while the right half shows the original unchanged image. The difference is very little in most modes and cant be noticed from more than a feet away.
Note: Its incorrectly labelled DCR instead of DCB. The difference between DCR and DCB is DCR adjusts contrast dynamically by itself according to the picture. I think it just bumps the contrast to the max, since when using it the C & B settings were inaccessible.
Picture Boost
This menu option has settings for frame size (14-100), brightness, contrast, horizontal and vertical position and a bright frame (on/off). This mode overlays a small white image or frame in the top left corner and increase its size according to your wish. I dont know what it can be used for.
OSD Setup
You can change H/V position, transparency, language and timeout of the osd in this.
Extra
Here you get the input select options (Auto, Analog, HDMI 1/2), auto config, off timer, image ratio, ddc-ci (enables talk between monitor and device connected to it via hdmi port for clock freq, supported modes etc), reset, and information.
Exit
No extra option is this. It just exits OSD.
Printed Button hotkeys:
Touching the < key will enable the Clear Vision setting which is by default off. Touch it once again to enable it to On mode which sharpens the image a bit. With every touch you can cycle between Strong/ Medium/ Weak/ Off preset modes. Leaving it off works best for pc. Weak is good for SD tv which is a bit blurry. Rest 2 modes are too strong and just make jagged edges on everything.
Setup:
Windows 7 automatically configures this including installing drivers for best performace. No net connection or cdrom drive required.
My old ATI Radeon card thought this was a tv and by default had underscan to around 15%. Make it 0% in scaling options to get full clear and crisp picture on monitor.
Optimal display setting is 1920x1080 @ 60Hz. 32 bit colour.
Extras:
The monitor did come with some applications like i-Menu for adjusting monitor settings (instead of the OSD) and e-Saver for reducing power consumption of the monitor. The i-Menu does everything in the OSD, while the e-Saver does everything inbuilt into windows power saving functions like setting timing for switching off the monitor in normal mode, sleep mode and screen saver.
The Screen+ software splits the monitor into different panes, each pane displaying a different window. Supports multiple displays according to the manual. I havent used it so cant comment.
SRS WoWHD software – WOW HD™ significantly improves the playback quality of audio, delivering a dynamic 3D entertainment experience with deep, rich bass and high frequency clarity for crisp detail, according to the manual. Havent used it.
Colour, Black Depth and Contrast:
According to TFT Central, the AOC uses an LG e-IPS display with 6bit +AFRC with white led backlighting. The screen covers 73% NTSC, 76% Adobe RGB and 96.9% sRGB colour space.
This is good enough for most people. Graphic design and more colour conscious people might require better panels which support upto more than 100% sRGB space. Such monitors are usually priced well above the 20k mark for 23" monitors with exception of Asus who has one monitor (Asus PA238Q) in the 19.5k range.
The default settings are very bright and the monitor really pleases the eye with its reproduction of colour compared to a lower panel monitor. What is noticeable is a bluish tint that even white objects have. What really bugs me is there is no way to minimize this tint in any gamma mode or by reducing the blue colour without harming the picture. Seems this is a limitation of the panels using 6 bits for colour table and having leds as backlight.
Since i do not have access to a calibration device, I opted to manually set the contrast and brightness settings. The defaults were too high at B=90, C=50, Gamma-1, and sRGB mode.
I used an Adobe Flash executable from FlatpanelsHD for the colour calibrations.
I have it set the C & B = 32, Warm mode (in colour setup) and Gamma-2. In this setting I get whites almost as white as possible. The icc profile i'm using is icc v4 sRGB profile.
Before calibration:
After Calibration:
The MSPaint window in each pic is the uncalibrated image. I read somewhere that MSPaint does not support icc profiles or any calibration in pics.
Viewing Angles:
Black Depth:
The monitor i got had almost no backlight bleed on it. It is an absolute delight to watch movies and tv on this. The colours are really good and natural and no calibration is required to adjust skin tone. The blacks on this are really good.
The monitor speakers support audio through hdmi. They do not have that high volume at 100% when sitting near, but the sound does fill the room and can be heard in a quite room. There is no bass in them and they sound a bit like an old transistor radio at full volume.
Gaming:
I cannot test for gaming and other such lag since i dont game. My graphics card is also quite old – an HD3450, so I use it just to watch movies. I cant comment or give any advice in this section as of now.
| Pros: |
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| Cons: |
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Conclusion:
To me this is a really good monitor to buy if you are on a strict budget. Its price is around 13.5k in stores and it comes with a 3 year warranty.
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