Feel free to post your own user experiences or start a new thread as you wish. Questions that can be answered by owners are welcome. For arguing over different personal preferences use one of the other threads such as Samsung C32HG70 vs. AOC AG322QCX Which one will you choose?

The VA panel (except backlight) should be same as used in Samsung C32HG70 and Philips etc. review of those here (finally ages after release):
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/samsung_c32hg70.htm
http://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/samsung/chg70-curved-gaming-monitor
The response time reported by those is as bad as it's on this AOC, awful for black transitions, a lot of smearing.

Test applications/images:

AOC AG322QCX

https://www.aocgaming.com/en/products/ag322qcx
http://eu.aoc.com/en/gaming/products/ag322qcx

31.5" 2560x1440px 144Hz FreeSync VA 2000:1

FreeSync range taken from AMD:
Quote:

48-144Hz via DisplayPort; 48-75 via HDMI; 48-144 via HDMI 2.0, LFC YES

Click to expand...

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Until specified later otherwise all tests and photos are at factory reset settings tuned to this and no other monitor is connected to the GPU, single monitor and single input mode:
Quote:

contrast 50
brightness 50
gamma 1
ECO standard
DCR OFF

color USER 50/50/50
DCB OFF/OFF

Bright frame OFF

DP 1.2
timeout 120
volume 0

game mode OFF
shadow control 50
low input lag ON
game color 10
low blue light OFF
overdrive MEDIUM

input DP1
off time 00
DDC/CI NO
Reset NO
2560x1440px 144Hz

Click to expand...

All photos should have EXIF data as long as OCN keeps them too, pictures in series are all shot in manual mode using the same settings. Lens is 45mm in 35mm equiv. shot at 24MP downsized a lot as to not overload OCN and your download since source photos are 5-11MB each.
Photos for specific tests are done using the needed shutter speeds etc. as required.
Videos at 50fps with 180deg shutter = 1/100s shutter time, constant exposure, quite a fast shutter and any blur and artifacts in videos are worse to the eye than recorded. FPS in games kept at 100-140fps.

Packaging box is not overly huge considering it's a 31.5" monitor, the stand is split to fit in, 13.78Kg.



Included are, with cable length:

• CD/DVD... I don't use optical drives for a decade
• Audio cable 3.5mm
• DP, 167cm
• DVI, useless the monitor doesn't have DVI input
• USB3.0, 172cm
• HDMI
• power cord, 3 prong, 170cm
• controller, 143cm
• bottom part of stand, measures 27x49cm
• power brick, 117cm

The monitor itself with it's I/O and 100mm VESA mount. Only the main box was opened before by the shop to add documents, everything else was taped up and sealed, no sign of previous use.



Stand is fairly heavy especially the vertical part, all metal, sturdy, nice operation with enough force, smooth, quite good. Parts lock to each other using 3 hooks and a screw. Finish is bright silver, bottom has rubber feet. Handle is great unfortunately placed bad too far back and a handle on top of the monitor where the logo is would have been right where CG is, using the stand handle is cumbersome, not useful really, good handle just badly placed in relation to center of gravity. Stand is secured to monitor using 2 hooks and 4 screws with thread lock at 100mm VESA mount. Top edge of monitor is adjustable from 53 to 64cm height, width is 71.5cm



144Hz confirmed, you can see 14 and half lines captured in 100ms. No PWM detected at any brightness level, full range 0-100 PWM free.



This is what I call a wobblyjoy, it's usable but doesn't inspire confidence, the cabled controller is well what I used for the most part. Joystick is permanently blue lit and goes orange when in standby. Controller is a good idea just not executed well, it is too large like a small paddle for a boat, bottom feet are placed narrow and it's hard to press the buttons without wobbling the thing when put on a table and not held in hand. 1, 2, 3 are gamer profiles only and cannot be user modified and come with preset color changes only brightness/OD/... is adjustable = useless and they are so placed that when picking the large controller you are likely to press one of them randomly. All the arrow keys have quick access functions defined:

• up = input selection = useless to have on quick access
• down = shadow control = useless to have on quick access
• left = game mode = useless because the presets are not user modifiable, game presets are locked with everything even brightness and gamer 1, 2, 3 are limited in control and with preset unmodifiable color profiles
• right = LED lights = useless to have on quick access

And where is brightness on quick access? Nowhere. Presets not modifiable, can't use them for preset brightness levels either. There is no sharpness control at all, at least by default the sharpness seems neutral when tested, observed on black text with gray background there is no fringing.

Text wise it's not as sharp as it should be and the reason for that is the odd pixel structure choice made by Samsung who makes the CELL/panel. There is high vertical spacing where you can see the lines quite often from a usual working position of arms length 80cm away especially on gray tones used on webpages etc. Second each pixel is split between two lines = top part 1/3rd followed by thick black line and remaining bottom 2/3rds.This split pixel is quite bad for text clarity and also creates "holes" on corners of pixels as there is some bleed over between the top and bottom part of a pixel belonging to different corners of a diagonal pixel line. It's not awful and unreadable but it is worse than any other IPS and TN panel I've ever seen. I do not use any font smoothing when ever possible and cleartype is disabled as I dislike the color fringing and blur it causes as well as totally messing up good old fonts, cleartype only works well with new fonts designed for cleartype on very high PPI displays. This display though is 1440p at 31.5" and equals to about 1080p at 24" in pixel density, it is unimpressive. There is nothing you can do OSD wise to sharpen text and with all smoothing and blur disabled in OS and applications it's still blurry as pixel perfect text is displayed by the panel in split pixel fashion causing blurriness to all text and other pixel perfect shapes.

Monitor surface is light matte, it is quite light and comparable to older IPS Z24i, kind of semi glossy, I have no issue with the surface.



LED light has some dust or object in it on one side.



Minimum green LED, maximum brightness, all photos pitch black room and equal locked exposure settings:



Maximum LEDs with minimum vs maximum backlight brightness:

The rear LEDs shine through the top vents but it's hard to capture on a photo, you can see it with eyes though, lines shooting up on the background.



The rear LEDs.



The joystick blue LED, always ON, always blue. Second is some issue with packaging, the soft cover leaves marks on the panel that can be seen when light hits the monitor, I've noticed it in normal use in the evening when having dark image on the screen etc. As I'm going to return this monitor I did not attempt to clean it nor will, it is quite difficult to get any cleaner that is friendly to plastics and tint free, everything I have including 97% something isopropyl alcohol I know leaves colored marks because everything has some crap added in it except hard to get industrial alcohol from which you could make booze too that's why it's not sold to us mortals especially not without additives which prevent it from being turnable to booze. The LCD cleaner I once got is the worst of all and leaves crap ton of residue. I prefer to get monitors clean from the factory and never touch them except removing dust. I've seen many monitors and never have they been this messed up. You can also see where the labels were the black plastic changes tone.



UFO test at medium OD, quite poor result. Worse than IPS and TN. Dark shades especially have a large black smear and transition very slowly. You can also see medium OD overshoot in all three.



CoD test image at 144Hz 144fps, it is quite disastrous, not just this text part but the right side with railing and person smears a lot as well which has quite a bit brighter areas in it. Pretty much everything dark smears insanely compared to any IPS and TN I have ever used. They should call this as a permanent motion blur feature that's how bad it is. It needs strobing to be passable and that is something only the Samsung CHG70s offer. Doom is the same disaster, right when the game starts and player is given control in the first room I've immediately noticed a lot of smearing and red trails just by shooting the first three possessed.

Any transition from black is ridiculously slow and unacceptable for a gaming oriented monitor.
Transitions from black or other dark shades to gray tend to have a violet tint in the black smear.
Transitions from black or other dark shades to beige colors tend to have a red smear.
Overdrive OFF makes image lose contrast when moving but smears are least noticeable because blacks do not transition into as deep blacks as they should.
Weak OD gives the best result of all, there is close to no overshoot, no loss of contrast in moving images and smearing is very apparent but not as bad as medium OD.
Medium OD gives the worst smearing of all as blacks transition a lot, there is also noticeable overshoot in some transitions, it is usable but you will notice overshoots/artifacts occasionally while also suffering the worst smearing of dark shades.
Strong OD is overshooting all the time even in very fast moving images the contrast is increased due to the overshoot above stationary contrast of the scene. Absolutely unusable.

I've used medium for the most part with weak later and also some OFF by accident, these three are all usable and I would recommend weak OD as it gives close to no overshoot and improves the slow transitions this panel suffers overall while not making smearing of blacks as bad as medium OD.


Motion clarity ratio is around 144 at least for this UFO test, quite normal for 144Hz panels of any type.



144Hz stable, no frame skipping, I've shot couple 11fps series of photos and none of the many had any skips or issues in them as per the test guidelines.



Moving vertical lines are skewed, quite normal for any LCD. The browser with UFO tests is running smooth with no issues.



Gamma curve is not that great, below mid point it's a little high and overall it's a touch bright. All test images have a bit of larger steps at some point. Most gray also have varying tint and by default it's set to warm with yellowish to reddish tint. In the first test image you can sort of see 3 distinct parts though the photo seems to be exaggerating it.
All levels are visible including 0 vs 1 red/green/blue and 255 vs 254 red/green/blue, as good as it can be. Certain dark shades are too bright IMHO and there is no way to correct it via OSD, only gamma 1 is usable, the other two give even more issues.



White uniformity is close to perfect if you use a probe that looks at the screen at ideal angle. Weird right when you look at the images below. That's because those images are taken with 45mm lens from about 1m away a little further than arm length and my seating position. Also minimum brightness is used or close to it which makes this issue even worse, it is annoying in the evening and night when web browsing or any static images/photos. At user distance the uniformity is bad because of the stupid curve. Panel is curved only cylindrically not spherically and even just that they didn't do right. There is no compensation available for curved displays in their OSD or applications. That aside the backlight is poor really poor from curve because the curve is not done properly and as far as I can tell there is some pressure at certain places on the VA panel which makes it go darker. Specifically my unit has a dark vertical top to bottom column right in the middle of the screen and then bottom right corner has a diagonal dark spot, all corners are darker a little right side is worse than left. The curve is also not done in the whole span of the display and 10cm from each side is flat and this eye observation has been verified with a flat ruler, 10cm on each side is flat as a pancake. Failed curve, terribly, ruins backlight and isn't even done right spherical nor at least in the whole span of the display. I bet all curved monitors are only cylindrical and suffer from some flat parts around the left right edges due to manufacturing. A proper edge to edge curve is harder to do let alone spherical would cost more. They simply bend a flat panel to a curved frame in cylindrical fashion instead of manufacturing cylindrical or spherical panel, that's my take on it. Curve, one can get used to it but it is not ideal and a pure useless FAD in it's current state.



I don't have any backlight bleed issue visible to the eye, the black level is OK but nothing impressive, when brightness is raised the whole black screen gets brighter, seems comparable to any other IPS/TN panel.



Bottom edge has backlight issue where about 1cm has dark vignette, it is most noticeable with Windows taskbar as the bottom bright indicator of opened apps is dark and icons are fading dark toward the bottom. I have never seen so messed up backlight around edges. Can be seen in all three photos.



Backlight is so deep behind the panel that from regular viewing position you will lose about 1 pixel on each side as it is not lit anymore to see it. It also creates a blue fringe on left edge and red fringe on right edge of the panel.


As far as viewing angles go. They are quite poor and not much if at all better than a TN. There is everything going wrong that really could and due to large size of the panel they do affect edges of the panel even at normal viewing position. You need to be about 1.8m away to get a view without angle defects.
There is a loss of contrast, gamma shift, color shift with gamma change, loss of saturation. VA glow is there but not as bad as IPS glow can be. Sorry for the wobbly footage, it's a pitch black room, nothing but the monitor gives light and I'm hand holding an unstabilized camera while moving blind around furniture on both sides.
You can clearly see that black is black only at ideal view angle such as a probe would do but from user view nice black is only a small center part, the rest all glows and turns bad with poor black level. The bad bottom right corner pressure/issue can also be seen.


View angle photos at least with this simple Eizo test image on the screen don't seem to look as bad as videos above with a more complex image. If you stand up from your desk the whole screen goes grayish, loss of contrast and loss of saturation and these are to a certain degree noticeable even when using the monitor sitting at your desk 80cm away, the corners and left right edges look duller. Closer to TN in angles than to IPS from my experience. All angle photos are equal locked manual exposure with daylight color set on the camera, monitor is reset to default settings with only volume turned down to 0 to avoid a terrible dying pig squeal, 90% brightness and 50/50/50 warm color preset are default.



Incorrect, the exposure stops need to be as close as possible, IMHO it gave lower result than it should, so take it as worst case 2000:1, it should probably give the typical 2600:1 with stops being under 0.2 apart for black and white photo, lagom throws bad kind of warnings and the important one doesn't, found out today...:
Contrast is around 2000:1 as advertised, at 20% brightness:

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/contrast-view.php?id=10960
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/contrast-view.php?id=10959



This is an issue I found quite fast as my file manager has selection rectangle and other applications may also show it as well as simply having notepad open with a single colored background or slight variation background reveals the issue. I don't know if other samples have this issue as so far only 1 person replied that they do not have it on a Samsung I believe. Must be some inversion issue maybe? I don't know where to put it, it's bad and no monitor should behave this way. There is the test image in last picture. Any line or bright section above certain width extends as a dark or bright line/section to the rest of the panel. This is a defect and a return just for this alone.



Now comes one of the worst inversions I've ever seen. Stationary image first and how it should look. Followed by a moving image and a pursuit photo. This is at OD weak and varying OD has different result, all of them are bad. Last photo shows a pattern in the upper part, that is also captured on video below, as well as absolute colored checkerboard craziness. To make matters worse one can also see occasional shimmering lines in certain mid tones on photos or stationary in games caused by inversion and high vertical spacing.



First video shows lines at stationary positions better revealed above in photo. Second shows how inversion affects rest of the page, the background changes brightness as inversion image is scrolled in/out of view above certain threshold. Last one then shows the crazy checkboard inversion patterns. Worst inversion implementation I've seen to date. And did I almost forget? Inversion is audible, you can hear the monitor slightly.


Sound wise, unless volume is set to 0 there is noise coming from the monitor as it's feeding some noise crap to the internal speakers or something. The only noise I could hear from the monitor otherwise is from top vent when having my ear to it. And of course the inversion is audible from normal user position. Powerbrick is fairly silent, you gotta put your ear close to it to hear it, no complaints there, yet, you never know when these start to make noise a year later. Connecting via DP adds speakers in the system and sets them as default... disabled the whole device and set default output back to my soundcard output.

Panel defects:
1st dark dust spot center top near frame, 2nd dark dust spot center left near frame, dead red and blue subpixel on one spot just below the 2nd dark dust spot they are stuck black but there is also some glow coming out of it when viewed on a black screen, the dust spots are worst.

Pixperan gamma about 2.25, 20-40ms response time using the 3 presets, text readability 7 (quite poor for a 144Hz as my old IPS did more than this at 60Hz), response time picture comparison 6ms by the eye.

Reasonable colors are achieved on my unit using these settings, removes most of the red tint in all greys though the white uniformity still has a touch of red on the right side and green in the middle. It also brings skin color of people back to normal from the red craziness which is the main motivation for adjusting colors as people look bad on photos and in movies otherwise. I've done this twice and always end up with the same result.
Quote:

reasonable colors:
contrast 50
brightness to preference
gamma 1
ECO standard
DCR OFF

color USER 40/45/50
DCB OFF/OFF

Bright frame OFF

DP 1.2
timeout 120
volume 0

game mode OFF
shadow control 50
low input lag ON
game color 10
low blue light OFF
overdrive WEAK

input DP1
off time 00
DDC/CI NO
Reset NO
2560x1440px 144Hz

Click to expand...

Disadvantages

• slow transitions especially for dark shades and blacks, black smearing with a hint of violet tint sometimes red depending on transition source and destination color
• curve does not extend all the way to the edges of the panel leaving about 10cm on each side flat (confirmed it with a flat ruler placed on the panel, 10cm on each side flat as a pancake), overall curve is causing backlight uniformity issues from user viewing position in the center and corners of the panel, curve is only cylindrical and not spherical, no built in image correction for the curved display to show flat content correctly (would be useful in games since none offer this compensation yet or with photos, text not so much since such compensation would cause interpolation = blur)
• gamma and colors are off and there is no way to get them right without an ICC profile, the extra color space for red and green is useless when blue has no such extension, gamma 3 best perceived contrast but inaccurate, darker darks mostly and a little brighter bright shades, gamma 2 brighter everything, inaccurate again, stick with gamma 1
• lowering colors in OSD below 50 reduces perceived contrast, going above 50 is useless oversaturation, the scale should have been 0 to 100 instead of usable 0 to 50 with 50 to 100 being useless.
• audio buzz with anything but zero volume in OSD
• power brick inaudible buzz unless very very very close but you never know if it will not get worse a year later with constant use, I don't fancy power bricks and other manage to put the PSU into the monitor chassis, with such a large monitor there should be no silly brick
• text is a little bit fuzzy, blurry a tiny bit, split pixel structure, higher vertical spacing
• "scanlining shimmer" is noticeable in movies and on websites when sitting at the desk and not far away 1.5m+ especially on mid tones in photos, movies, backgrounds, webpages, even some games
• even movies look like garbage at first and that's because at this size 1080p source is not enough if you want to sit at your desk and not on a couch far away, you need 1440p or 4k source shot with a modern high quality camera, another thing is the 31.5" size when sitting at your desk it is too big for watching most movies as they are not shot wide angle enough, people appear too big and takes some time to get used to depending on movie, the colors and gamma issues are nothing impressive for movies either
• no ON/OFF button
• low input lag setting in OSD resets overdrive setting
• sRGB preset resets saturation = game color, sRGB is beyond useless and artifacts badly, the curve is all messed up, you can't even mess up this much by yourself when tuning gamma and colors, especially dark shades are overblown and there was a loss of saturation overall, it looks horrifying used with anything
• heavy OSD color correction needed to get decent colors and remove tint
• reddish right side and greenish middle with left being spot on is as close as it can get without ICC, color uniformity of the white is a little off
• viewing angles are poor, closer to TN than anywhere near IPS, loss of contrast, loss of saturation even from normal viewing position, gamma shift, color shift with gamma, black level raising with VA glow, have to view from 1.8m to get a decent picture on the whole panel, overall it looks as if Samsung took TV VA technology and started selling it on monitors, it would be fine for a TV but for a monitor viewed at 80cm it is not
• shadow control is useless with 10 step = 20% is very high, black point movement only not curve adjustment
• contrast = white point adjustment only not curve adjustment
• looks best in complete darkness so your eyes have no reference as to how colors and gamma should really be, then set gamma in OSD to 3 (works for high contrast source but not for nature etc. anything realistic nope stick to gamma 1 for better accuracy) for extra contrast with low brightness in a pitch black room, then it's usable for multimedia, angles still poorer, blacks are gray even at 10 brightness if you go fullscreen with some very dark movie or game, the contrast is lacking IMHO I was pushing contrast anywhere possible to max without clipping, desperately needs local dimming with hundreds of zones or just a better panel overall as 2000:1 is nothing impressive over IPS 1200:1
• during the day, the errors in color, backlight when working with text etc. are all obvious, grays look way better on an old crap TN, no tint, evenly spaced out with better gamma curve
• the OSD rendering speed with it's silly animations is dependent on refresh rate, at 144Hz it's usable at 60Hz you will want to grab a cup of coffee and chillout because it is annoyingly slow to operate, even at 100Hz it's snail like accordingly
• skin tones are very hard to tune in, impossible via OSD to get colors right as it cannot adjust color curves in a more complex way via OSD, it would need an ICC profile
• missing edge pixels due to deep backlight that doesn't extend enough beyond panel edges to provide background illumination when viewed at an angle, effectively it's 2558x1440px with a bottom edge vignette
• at low brightness there is dark column in the middle and then a diagonal large spot around lower right corner
• low PPI comparable to 24" 1080p
• no level adjustment in the stand
• bottom LED strips are shining to the face not just down, had to turn them off otherwise they can be useful
• joystick blue LED cannot be disabled or color controlled
• controller leaves much to be desired, it's too large even for my large hands
• comes with DVI cable that isn't needed
• I don't even want to test the D-SUB on this
• poor quality control, dust in panel, dead subpixels on a new product, ...
• nothing impressive overall, no wow factor except physical size
• odd lines extending over whole screen with certain combinations of contrast images and uniform backgrounds
• crazy inversion and it's audible faintly as well
• carrying handle not above center of gravity
• I may have forgotten some as there are so many I had to start writing it down the 2nd day

Advantages

• 9mm bezels
• light matte surface, semi glossy
• large size and good space for text
• solid stand with good height adjustment and rotation
• advertised contrast 2000:1 in most of it's brightness range except very low night time like brightness levels
• it didn't seem to matter whether GPU was set to full range or limited range output, image seemed to have the same contrast, full range set and used throughout my testing of the monitor
• controller is a good thing just not executed the best
• plenty of I/O, dual DP plus dual HDMI, USB3.0 hub with supposedly higher amperage output for I guess devices that support it, audio in/out but a little confusing (would not use due to audio quality concerns)
• brightness adjustment has nice range, low minimum and high enough maximum
• 60, 100, 120, 144Hz
• decently low input lag
• FreeSync (cannot test or find range)
• reasonable price if it was major issues free
• no burn in on my unit
• PWM free in whole 0-100 brightness range as advertised

Recommendation

• buy only for watching movies or TV instead of an actual TV, movies look fine on it if you sit more far away, the contrast isn't impressive but fine, colors are probably on the level of TVs and far from a good monitor, panel is fast enough for movies and that's about it
• do not buy for text work, has a bit of fuzzy blurry text due to pixel structure and substructure, it's OK for general use but I definitely wouldn't buy it as a work monitor for coding
• cannot recommend for anything but casual gaming as the panel is very slow and will not keep up with 144Hz, I've finished Doom (100-120fps) with this monitor in 2 days, after the end of it I've replayed part of the last mission at 60Hz only and it seemed to be clearer and easier to locate targets even at this lower refresh due to better clarity and less smearing as things do not appear on the monitor 5 times blurred all over but only 2 times, 144Hz is smoother yes but the panel fails to keep up with this refresh rate, it's more of a 60Hz kind of panel. Several hours of racing game it seemed smoother because of 144Hz but I did not notice any competitive advantage in this use case and I can do very consistent lap times in sims, 144Hz preferred yes, again the panel cannot keep up but it's not so obvious as in FPS games

Overall it's a multimedia monitor usable for movies and other slow paced interactive use, anything fast doesn't go well with it, color and gamma accuracy is not great but can be tweaked to usable levels. Would not call it a gaming monitor, more of a downsized TV.

Returning due to defects and not trying another one. Price w/o tax was 428EUR, $499.

This is my user experience with my preferences, yours can be different, it's always a lottery and user preferences differ wildly. I've used this monitor for about a week, finished one game and spent hours in another, watched several movies, browsed photos and endless amount of webpages, etc. and of course ran about every monitor test image I know to check for known issues, recorded and photographed.