The Cutting Edge of 4K Art. That pretty much sums up the new AOC Agon PD32M monitor. This monitor is quite capable, though it may need to be qualified "as an LCD panel"; the PD32M is as good as current LCD technology in many ways, but it is not an OLED monitor like the Alienware AW3423DW (open in new tab).

Hold that thought while we peruse what this AOC beast most definitely is. First, it has a 32-inch IPS panel with full 4K, or 3,840 x 2,160 pixels. It operates at a refresh frequency of up to 144 Hz and has a 1 ms response time. Impressive.

What is truly impressive, however, is the HDR support. This is a mini-LED monitor with full array local dimming and 1,152 zones. In addition to full panel brightness of 600 nits, this mini-LED backlight also offers 1,600 nits peak local brightness and DisplayHDR 1400 certification. Ouch.

As if this wasn't enough, AOC also makes very solid claims about color accuracy, covering 97% of the AdobeRGB color gamut. This is on par with the best monitors we've seen, even if super-accurate color isn't essential for gaming. Still, it doesn't hurt. [The AOC Agon PD32M is capable of delivering DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.1, and USB Type-C (the latter can provide 90W of power and can be connected to a laptop with a single cable; both HDMI and USB Type-C deliver 120Hz; the latter can be connected to a laptop with a single cable; both HDMI and USB Type-C deliver 120Hz). However, even 90W of power is not enough to keep powering a truly rugged gaming portable PC.

Oh, did we mention that the "PD" in PD32M refers to Porsche Design, the industrial design subsidiary of the automaker of the same name? The result is a gorgeous aluminum stand that can be adjusted in any direction, including rotation into portrait mode, and slim bezels on three sides of the panel. There is also RGB lighting on the back, a logo projected by LEDs on the bottom of the stand, and a hook for hanging a gaming headset.

Styling is subjective, but there is no doubt that the chassis and stand are well designed. In these respects, this is a premium gaming panel by almost all hypothetical metrics. But is it actually suitable for gaming?

Certainly, it is punchy and bright when run in the old SDR mode. Surprisingly, however, the color accuracy set to default is not very high. Instead, saturation is too high and there are signs of compression in the darker tones; certainly, it is much better when the PD32M is set to sRGB mode. However, brightness is not adjustable in sRGB mode, and since it is set for content production, it is not very practical for gaming.

Response The AOC includes three user-configurable levels of pixel overdrive in a tile-based OSD menu that looks a bit odd. When set to the highest level, one can smell overshoot. But otherwise, the response is very nimble; add 144 Hz refresh and you have a master class in gaming.

Yes, unfortunately not. Let's look at a game like Cyberpunk 2077. In SDR mode on this panel, the 4K resolution, nimble response, and high refresh rate look very appealing. And recall that Cyberpunk looks especially great in HDR mode. So I went back to the Windows desktop and enabled HDR, and lo and behold.

Despite having 1,152 zones, this is an awkward local dimming setup. Moving windows and other items on the screen makes it easy to turn zones on and off. The Samsung Neo G9 (opens in new tab) has the same problem. In reality, 1,152 dimming zones sounds like a lot, but given that the screen has over 8 million pixels, it is actually very low resolution. Put another way, every 7,200 pixels is one zone.

Now, in the actual game, the inconvenience of local dimming is not so obvious. And in games that properly support HDR, this screen pops. However, problems do occasionally manifest themselves, and when they do, one cannot help but compare this screen to the Alienware OLED and its perfect pixel-by-pixel illumination.

The problem with this type of local dimming is not just the relatively limited number of zones. It is the fact that it requires entirely new and complex layers and algorithms, which can and does cause visual oddities and strangeness. In this respect, the AOC Agon PD32M is not particularly bad. All full-array dimming LCD monitors to date have these limitations to some degree. The problem is that at this high price, it is difficult to forgive such obvious problems.

Anyway, in the end, one would not want to run this monitor in HDR mode all the time. In other words, a lot of the time, this monitor, while quite good, is not a special 4K monitor in terms of image quality. When you actually use the HDR capability it can be stunning. However, like most HDR monitors, it remains a bit of a drawback.