Author: Adam Simmons
Date published: December 15th 2013
Table of Contents
Introduction
There has been a massive push in recent times towards monitors with a 16:9 rather than 16:10 aspect ratio. But not all manufacturers have abandoned 16:10 models. The AOC i2460Pxqu makes use of a new 24” 16:10 IPS panel similar to that seen on the BenQ BL2411PT. We assess key aspects of the monitor’s image quality and motion handling characteristics by running our usual gauntlet of tests and applications.
Specifications
The panel uses 6-bit+ FRC (Frame Rate Control) dithering, which is normal for all but the more expensive IPS models and is of little consequence to most users. The 16:10 aspect ratio gives the 24.1” monitor a 1920 x 1200 resolution. The monitor has a specified 6ms grey to grey response time (a number you should take with a pinch of salt), a 300 cd/m2 brightness and 178/178 degree viewing angles. At time of review the monitor is not yet available to buy directly from major retailers, but will come in at an RRP of £230 initially.
The key ‘talking points’ of the specification have been highlighted in blue below.
Features and aesthetics
From the front the monitor doesn’t make any bold design statements. The bezel is composed of matte black plastic with a brushed metal effect. The bezel is a moderate thickness – 18mm (0.71 inches) at the top and sides and 30mm (1.18 inches) at the bottom. The screen surface is light matte anti-glare – not quite what we’d consider ‘semi glossy’ but imparting less graininess than many older IPS monitors like the Dell U2412M. The stand of the i2460Pxqu is fully adjustable. The base has a turntable mechanism allowing a 270° field of swivel. The screen can also be tilted 6.5° forwards and 23° backwards and have its height adjusted by 130mm (5.12 inches). At lowest height our unit cleared the desk by 52mm (2.04 inches). The monitor can also be pivoted into portrait as shown below. The OSD (On Screen Display) is controlled by tactile rather than touch-sensitive buttons on the underside of the bottom bezel, at the ride side. The buttons, from left to right are; ‘Input Select/Back’, ‘Clear Vision/Left’, Volume/Right’, ‘Menu/Enter’. The only illumination is provided by a small square power LED which glows green when the monitor is on and amber when on standby. The buttons are labelled by engraving, which isn’t particularly clear even in a fairly bright room. There are no on-screen labels, either, so navigating through the OSD in anything but a bright room can be frustrating until you get used to the button placement. Once on the main menu things are laid out across the screen quite clearly, in AOC’s usual style. You have control over important image adjustments such as brightness, contrast, gamma mode, overdrive and colour channels. You can also activate the ‘i-Care’ sensor which automatically adjusts the monitor brightness according to ambient lighting. We found the brightness levels it chose a little higher than we’d like in a bright room, reaching 300 cd/m2 with the main room light on at night. We feel this is a nice feature which works quite well in changeable but not overly bright conditions. It would be nice if you could set the maximum brightness or adjust the range for more comfortable viewing, however. The video below gives a run-through of the OSD. The monitor is relatively slender at the side, 19mm (0.75 inches) at thinnest point and ‘lumping out’ centrally. At the right side there are 2 USB 2.0 ports, one of which is coloured red to indicate rapid charging capability for connected devices. The rear of the monitor features a central 100 x 100mm VESA mount where the stand attaches. This stand can be removed and an alternative VESA-compatible stand or mount used. The area surrounding this is matte black plastic with the same brushed metal texture seen on the bezels. Elsewhere a more plain matte black plastic is used. Some simple low-powered stereo speakers can be found facing upwards just about the stand mount, underneath a plastic grill. These give a basic sound output with OK volume and a fairly tinny quality to it. They are fairly standard for integrated monitor speakers really. The ports are found below the VESA attachment, facing downwards. The ports are quite numerous; USB upstream, 2 further USB 2.0 downstream ports (4 in total), a power switch, AC power input, DisplayPort 1.2 input, HDMI (no MHL), DVI, VGA, 3.5mm audio input and 3.5mm headphone jack. There is also a K-Slot security socket to the right of the port area. In the box you will find an AC power cable, VGA cable, DVI cable and a 3.5mm audio cable. A USB upstream cable, which is required to use the USB ports, is not included. The AOC i2460Pxqu does not use traditional image presets, which are often less desirable in terms of image quality than any ‘Standard’ or user-configurable mode anyway. Instead we will simply be basing our observations on the ‘out of the box’ settings adjusting only the ‘Gamma’ mode and then making the adjustments necessary to formulate our ‘test settings’. The following table shows our observations made using familiar images alongside some key readings (gamma and white point) taken using a Spyder4Elite colorimeter. In our test system an Nvidia GTX 780 is used connected to the monitor using DisplayPort. The monitor comes with a DVI cable in the box, which gives very similar image performance and colour characteristics. Connection using either of these ports to a modern AMD GPU should also provide a similar image. The i2460Pxqu gave a pretty decent image out of the box without any huge glaring issues. As per usual brightness was too high, which is easily remedied. There was also a slight green tint which could be corrected by very careful and minute colour channel adjustments. When it comes to gamma performance, ‘Gamma3’ actually gave the closest match to the 2.2 curve that most users try to match. ‘Gamma1’, the default mode that we actually settled on for our ‘test settings’, deviated slightly more for mid-tones in particular. Unfortunately the green tint was very strong using ‘Gamma3’ on our unit. Lowering the green channel very slightly to combat this overpowering green seemed initially to improve overall balance, most notably on white areas. But this introduced problems elsewhere, rather peculiarly very light greys and pastel colours took on a noticeable green cast following a reduction in the green colour channel (which seems a bit counter-intuitive). As we explore in the subsequent section you have to be extremely careful making colour channel adjustments on this monitor, possibly something that will be adjusted in later revisions. Our test settings involved reducing brightness and changing ‘Color Temp.’ from the default ‘Warm’ to ‘User’. We then made the most minuscule adjustment to the green colour channel which removed the green tint instantly without any untoward consequences. We weren’t able to quite reach the ‘desired’ 6500K daylight white point target, but for our uses (general purpose, gaming, films) that doesn’t really matter and the optimal target would depend on the lighting in the room (time of day, ambient brightness etc.) Adjusting the colour channels was a frankly bizarre experience on this monitor with the tiniest changes having a significant impact on the image. If you try to lower the colour channel from the default of ‘50’ to ‘49’ you actually find it takes 2 presses of the down button to get there. One press of the down button will leave the OSD displaying ‘50’ but you will notice the image change. That is why we have referred to this value as ’49.5’ below – it is one notch down from the default, which is all it took on our unit. Without the aid or a colorimeter we would suggest sticking with the default colour temperature or making tiny adjustments like we have if you can detect a particular tint. Just go very easy on the adjustments as seemingly minor adjustments can make a significant difference to the image, sometimes in ways you don’t immediately realise. Check very light greys or pastel colours for unwanted cast for example. If you do notice an ‘issue’ when staring at isolated shades following your adjustments, but feel the adjustments are necessary for good overall balance, go with what looks best to you during ‘real world use’ instead. Contrast= 50 Gamma= Gamma1 Color Temp.= User Red= 50 Green= 49.5 (one notch down from default, will display as ’50’ – see above) Blue= 50 On monitors like this most users should find the out of the box settings absolutely fine, perhaps even better following tiny OSD adjustments. But because it was tricky to make the necessary adjustments on the OSD to reach desirable gamma and white point targets, and we know some users are particular about this sort of thing, we also profiled the monitor using our Spyder4Elite. For our review we used the test settings without any ICC profile applied, for reasons explored in our ICC article. We have included a calibrated ICC profile for you to download and try out below. Given how particular the monitor was with colour channel adjustments and the fact each individual unit can vary in this regard you may find the image worse on your unit after applying the ICC profile. If that’s the case, don’t use it! If you really need to use an ICC profile then you should create one tailored to your own system. To use our ICC profile, do the following. We used a Konica Minolta CS-200 to measure the luminance of white and black, from which static contrast ratios were calculated. The table below shows the results using various settings, including those detailed in the calibration section. Black highlights indicate the highest white luminance and lowest black luminance recorded as well as the highest contrast ratio calculated. Blue highlights show the results using our test settings and also the ICC profile. Assume default settings were used aside from the specific modifications mentioned in the table. With an average of 1162:1 (brightness only adjusted) static contrast was impressive on the AOC i2460Pxqu. This strong performance was maintained across all gamma modes, dipping only slightly when using ‘Gamma3’ due to a very slightly elevated black point. Following the adjustments made to our test settings we saw a pleasing contrast ratio of 1138:1. This dropped slightly to 1075:1 after the ICC profile was applied – still beyond the specified 1000:1. The peak luminance recorded was bang on the specified 300 cd/m2 whilst the minimum was a fairly low 67 cd/m2. Overall performance here was very similar to the BenQ BL2411PT with a slightly lower minimum luminance. The similarities shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise given that both screens use the same panel. The AOC has a ‘DCR’ (Dynamic Contrast Ratio) mode which allows the backlight brightness to self-adjust in accordance with the contents on the screen. Given that the entire backlight adjusts as one ‘unit’, as is currently the case with all LCD monitors, this isn’t always ideal. The Dynamic Contrast mode reacts at a moderate pace and tends towards high brightness even during mixed scenes with plenty of dark elements. Where scenes are clearly biased towards being dark rather than light the backlight dims quite considerably, which is good. You also still have access to the (fiddly) colour channel adjustments, but you have no control over brightness, contrast or gamma setting. The image looks very decent using this mode (excessive brightness in parts aside) and overall it’s a pretty good Dynamic Contrast implementation. The i2460Pxqu does not use PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) to control its backlight brightness, using a DC (Direct Current) control method instead. This monitor there has a ‘flicker free’ backlight which is good for users who suffer adverse effects such as eyestrain and headaches from monitors that do use PWM. Whilst observing a black screen in darkened room we observed slight backlight bleed along the right edge, towards the bottom right corner. There was also some very minor clouding elsewhere as shown below. We also observed ‘IPS glow’, a silvery sheen that becomes most apparent if you move your head. This can also be observed towards the corners of the screen from a normal viewing position, the effects of which are discussed deeper into the review. You can not see IPS glow in the image above because the image was taken far enough back to eliminate this and reveal only backlight bleed and clouding. The IPS glow actually covered the area of backlight bleed quite readily from a normal viewing position. A Spyder4Elite was used to analyse the luminance uniformity across the screen by assessing 9 white quadrants running from top left to bottom right. Weaknesses here are indicative of potential issues that can affect colours other than white, too. Values are shown in the table below alongside the percentage deviation between a given quadrant and the brightest quadrant. The screen’s luminance uniformity was quite decent overall. The brightest point was ‘quadrant 5’ in the centre of the screen (182.2 cd/m2). The greatest deviation from this was 12%, which occurred at ‘quadrant 1’ at the top left and ‘quadrant 4’ just under that (159.9 cd/m2). There was also an 11% deviation at ‘quadrant 7’ at the bottom left of the screen (163 cd/m2). Elsewhere deviation was in the single digits, between 2% and 9%. Below is a contour map giving a visualisation of these results, including recorded and extrapolated values. Darker greys in this image indicate greater deviation from the brightest point. It is also worth considering the variation in colour temperature at different parts of the screen, not just brightness. Below is a contour map which is generated using the same 9 white quadrants. This time the map shows deviations in white point from the quadrant closest to the 6500K (D65) target. The numbers are DeltaE values where higher values represent greater deviation – anything above a DeltaE of 3 here is generally considered significant deviation that some users will notice ‘by eye’. As shown on the scale, darker colours represent higher deviations than lighter colours. Deviations here are quite reasonable. ‘Quadrant 6’ to the right of centre was closest to 6500K with the central point showing 1.1 DeltaE of deviation from this. As noted in our calibration section we did not quite reach our 6500K central calibration target just using OSD adjustments due to the temperamental colour channel adjustments. The greatest deviation here occurred at ‘quadrant 7’ at the bottom right of the screen, a DeltaE of 3.9. You could see that this region appears slightly warmer but not worryingly so. Elsewhere DeltaE values were 3 or below which is good. As with all uniformity issues, such as those assessed above, there can be variation between individual units of the same model. What we saw on our unit was quite reasonable really and shouldn’t worry the majority users. We would also like to quickly mention that we did experience some mild festive image retention on this monitor. A Christmas letter was being edited and the monitor left on displaying the letter, which included some photographs, for half an hour. Upon returning to the monitor you could see an outline of one of the images cast against various background colours as demonstrated on a medium blue background below. This sorted itself out after using the monitor normally for a further half an hour and isn’t a unique trait of this monitor, but was worth mentioning. The contrast performance was good overall on Battlefield 4. There was some loss of detail in dark areas peripherally, due mainly to IPS glow. This was particularly apparent towards the bottom corners of the screen from a ‘normal’ viewing position. Elsewhere the level of detail was good. Bright elements such as lights in the dark and the bloom effect in bright areas of the great outdoors contrasted well with the surrounding darkness. These elements lacked the same smoothness and purity you’d see on a glossy screen but were not overly grainy. They were free from the ‘smeary’ look of older IPS monitors such as the Dell U2412M. The contrast performance was pretty good overall on Dirt 3. There was again a degree of detail loss towards the two bottom corners in particular due to IPS glow. Some subtle details, such as vegetation structure and shadow detail, didn’t have the same distinction and highlights as on a good VA panel but did not appear flooded either. Bright elements contrast well and didn’t show and bleaching of closely matched bright shades. There was again a lack of glossy ‘pop’ but also a lack of strong matte grain to such elements. On the Blu-ray movie Skyfall there were no major issues with contrast and the screen gave quite a pleasing performance overall. Detail levels in dark scenes were generally good with all major details and most minor details visible. There was some slight detail loss towards the bottom corners of the screen where IPS glow took hold. Bright elements such as lamps, candles and neon lights in the dark stood out well and didn’t look overly grainy as they would on some matte surfaces. We used the Lagom contrast tests to help identify any specific weaknesses in contrast performance. The following observations were made. The AOC i2460Pxqu provided good coverage of the sRGB colour space using our test settings. There is the slightest under-coverage in the blue area on this diagram and some over-coverage in the green and to a lesser extent red area. This provides a touch of extra richness and saturation which is attractive for general use but less so if colour accuracy is vital. The deviations here are quite small and can easily be ‘calibrated out’ which is a recommended step for colour critical work anyway. Battlefield 4 had a rich look with plenty of shade depth and variety. Some of the maps (such as ‘Zavod 311’) had some particularly lush greens intertwined with accurately represented duller, dustier and more muted shades. Earthy browns and khaki colours were also impressive. Some of the more vibrant shades in the game were also handled nicely; rich orange fires, deep blues and reds on flags and dashing yellow road markings. The bright red and light blue in-game markers looked fairly neon but didn’t have the sort of ‘pop’ you’d see on a decent glossy monitor in particular. The monitor put in another pleasing colour performance on Dirt 3. The environments had a very natural look to them with appropriate saturation and an excellent variety of shades. The countless subtle variations of green and brown shades in the Finnish forests were particularly impressive. The painted bodywork of the cars also had a good deep and lively quality to them with an appropriately vibrant look without obvious oversaturation. Deep blues and reds, highlighter yellows and bright oranges were particularly eye-catching. The Skyfall Blu-ray film showed appropriate shade saturation and excellent shade variety. Some vibrant elements within the film, such as glowing orange flames and blue neon lights, stood out nicely. There were some quite striking reds as well, for example on one of Eve Moneypenny’s dresses. The Blu-ray of Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder showed off the colour reproduction strengths of the i2460Pxqu very nicely. There were some strong, deep and vivid shades alongside an excellent variety of subtle pastel shades. The strong colour consistency of the AH-IPS panel was highlighted particularly well. Shades remained consistent regardless of the position on the screen. This allowed even the slightest shade variations, for example different character skin tones, to come through. Lagom’s tests for viewing angle were also used to assess colour consistency. The following observations were made. We measured input lag using the method described in our review of the AOC g2460Pqu. We measured around 4ms (1/4 of a frame) of input lag. This means the signal delay of the monitor is very low and won’t inhibit gaming performance. We used PixPerAn (Pixel Persistence Analyser) and a highly sensitive camera to capture trailing (ghosting) on the monitor which results from the pixel response behaviour of the monitor. The images below show the different ‘Overdrive settings; ‘Off’, ‘Weak’, ‘Medium’ and ‘Strong’, respectively. We used the fastest movement speed (tempo) on PixPerAn to help really highlight differences in the different ‘Overdrive’ settings’. With overdrive ‘Off’ you can see a bold primary trail and faint secondary trail in this screen capture. Using the ‘Weak’ setting makes the primary trail slightly fainter and eliminates the secondary trail. The default setting, ‘Medium’, shows a bit of inverse ghosting (overshoot) which is an artifact resulting from the pixel overdrive being slightly too ‘aggressive’ using this setting. Using the ‘Strong’ setting, as the name implies, provides strong acceleration. Too strong to be useful in fact, with really obvious inverse ghosting that jumps out at you immediately when using the monitor. In practice we felt the ‘Weak’ setting gave the best experience in our game and movie test titles, so we used this for our testing. The default ‘Medium’ setting produced some inverse ghosting in places that was more obvious than represented in the PixPerAn shot above. We suggest users experiment with both the ‘Weak’ and ‘Medium’ settings and see which they prefer. For the most part the level of blur on Battlefield 4 was moderate and comparable to what you’d see on the fastest 60Hz monitors. The movement of your eyes as you follow the on-screen action was the dominant source of motion blur here. There was a very slight degree of additional blur (trailing) resulting from some pixel transitions being just slightly slower in places than is ideal even for a 60Hz monitor. This was barely noticeable even during a side by side comparison with a fast low-artifact TN panel at 60Hz (Samsung S27A750D). If you take issue with the pixel responsiveness on the AOC then it’s almost certain that 60Hz LCDs aren’t for you. There were no observable artifacts from overly aggressive grey to grey acceleration, either. On Dirt 3 there was a moderate amount of blur during the race game moves, especially when cornering. This is typical even for the fastest 60Hz monitors. During the dizzying spins of Gymkhana the blur intensified, but not beyond what you’d see on even the snappiest 60Hz LCDs. During some of the slower spins there was a degree of extra trailing where dark objects (black) were placed in in front of a lighter background but this was only very slight. We also used our Blu-ray movie titles to see if there were any issues attributable to the monitors’ pixel response performance. The overriding fluidity was limited by the low frame rate at which the films run. There was no additional trailing or inverse ghosting caused by a poor pixel overdrive implementation. The AOC i2460Pxqu is quite a refreshing product given that new 16:10 monitors with 1920 x 1200 resolutions are relatively scarce. Having recently reviewed the rather impressive BenQ BL2411PT which uses the same panel we had quite high expectations for the AOC. Overall our expectations were met, but there were some slight hiccups along the way that we didn’t experience on the BenQ. We can’t help but highlight once again how strange we found the OSD tweaking process on this monitor. The tiniest adjustments to colour channels had a fairly dramatic impact on the image – adjustments so tiny that they didn’t even count as ‘1’ on the slider. The out of the box performance was actually quite well balanced and would likely please many users anyway, but could be improved on our unit by this tiny adjustment. Despite this the overall colour performance of the monitor was very impressive with excellent sRGB coverage and a pleasing rich and varied look to the image. Contrast performance was also strong with some of the highest static contrast ratios you’ll see on a non-VA LCD panel. IPS glow was there doing its thing, but this isn’t a fault with the monitor itself. We also experienced a bit of mild image retention, but this cleared up rather quickly on its own and is also not unique to this monitor. We were quite impressed by the responsiveness of the monitor after knocking down its overdrive setting to ‘Low’. There was just the tiniest hint of trailing in places that wouldn’t appear on the fastest 60Hz monitors but even in a side by side comparison this was very minor and difficult to notice. Input lag was also impressively low, which is good news for gamers. Essentially the monitor ticks a lot of boxes and offers an interesting alternative to recent comparable models such as the BenQ BL2411PT. Some nice additions for some users that were not found on the BenQ but do feature on the AOC include USB 2.0 ports and HDMI. Overall this is definitely a monitor to consider if you are partial to the 1920 x 1200 resolution – but if you do buy it, remember to go easy on those colour channels!
Textured bezels
Screen pivots into portrait
USB 2.0 ports at the side
The back
The rear ports
Calibration
Testing the presets
Preset Mode
Gamma (central average)
White point (kelvins) Notes Factory default. ‘Gamma1’
2.1 6348K Image very bright but fairly well balanced aside from a slight green tint. Some shades appeared somewhat brighter than they should, giving a mildly oversaturated look in places. A vivid look overall with pleasing variety, however. ‘Gamma2′
1.8 6547K Green tint becomes more noticeable and image looks quite washed out in places lacking appropriate depth.
‘Gamma3′ 2.2 6547K Similar to ‘Gamma1’ but the green tint is far more noticeable and some of the overly bright shades look a bit better. Test Settings (modified as below)
2.1 6413K Brightness is more comfortable and the green tint has been removed. Good balance overall, nice vivid-looking shades with a few shades looking just a touch brighter than they should.
Gamma curve 'Gamma3'
Gamma curve Test Settings
Test Settings
Brightness= 48 (according to preferences and lighting)
ICC profile
2) Set the monitor up using our test settings. Brightness can be adjusted if necessary to suit your preferences and lighting. Using ‘48’ brightness as per our test settings gave 172 cd/m2 on our unit following application of the ICC profile.
3) Refer to this article for instructions on installing the ICC profile correctly and some limitations to be aware of, particularly for gaming. We would also advise may also like to download the ‘Display Profile’ utility mentioned in the article which gives a simple way to toggle the ICC profile on or off.
Contrast and brightness
Contrast ratios
Monitor Profile White luminance (cd/m2) Black luminance (cd/m2)) Contrast ratio (x:1) 100% brightness 300 0.25 1200 80% brightness 255 0.22 1159 60% brightness 211 0.18 1172 40% brightness 163 0.14 1164 20% brightness 116 0.10 1160 0% brightness 67 0.06 1117 Test settings 182 0.16 1138 ICC profile 172 0.16 1075 ‘Gamma2’ 275 0.23 1196 ‘Gamma3’ 172 0.24 1146
PWM (Pulse Width Modulation)
Luminance uniformity
Monitor displaying black in dark room
Luminance uniformity table
Luminance uniformity map
Colour temperature uniformity map
Mild image retention
Contrast in games and movies
Lagom contrast tests
Colour reproduction
Colour gamut
Colour gamut test settings
Colour in games and movies
Viewing angles
The video below looks at how the Lagom text test, a mixed desktop background and dark desktop background appear from various viewing angles. The shifts in colour and contrast are fairly minor, especially compared to models with weaker viewing angles (TN panels in particular). You can observe ‘IPS glow’ in the final section of the video where the dark desktop background is used.
Responsiveness
Input lag
Pixel responsiveness
Trailing Overdrive 'Off'
Trailing Overdrive 'Weak'
Trailing Overdrive 'Medium'
Trailing Overdrive 'Strong'
Responsiveness in games and movies
Conclusion
Positives Negatives Excellent colour reproduction with pleasing sRGB coverage, strong shade variety and a rich look overall with a relatively light matte screen surface
Gamma fell just short of the target unless ‘Gamma3’ was used which introduced a strong green tint. The image could be improved with a bit of OSD tweaking, but the colour balance adjustments were overly sensitive and fiddly to use
Strong static contrast and reduced graininess to the image compared to older IPS models such as the Dell U2412M As usual for an IPS panel, IPS glow was present. The screen surface could have been lighter and still retained good anti-glare characteristics (i.e. semi glossy) Good responsiveness overall with low input lag and good grey to grey acceleration without overshoot (using the ‘Low’ setting)
Some users would prefer a higher refresh rate than 60Hz for extra fluidity
Good design overall with a nice selection of ports, bezels that aren’t finger print magnets and good stand adjustability
Some modern trends such as USB 3.0 and super-slim bezels were not embraced – but you can’t have everything
