24” 1440p 165Hz Gaming Monitor – AOC Q24G2A Review

You read that right – this is a 24” 1440p gaming monitor. That’s a rather unique proposition, and features something I’ve heard plenty of people argue for recently – higher pixel density. This bad boy is rocking 123 pixels per inch, up from 109 PPI with a 27” 1440p display, or just 92 PPI with 24” at 1080p. Now a 27” 4K monitor is still higher at 163 PPI, but those are pretty common – 24” 1440p isn’t. As for the rest of the specs, this is a 165Hz IPS panel with a claimed 350 nit peak brightness, the usual 1000:1 contrast ratio, around 80% of the AdobeRGB and DCI P3 spectrums and adaptive sync. This is the AOC Q24G2A.

Naturally, that rather unique panel is where we’ll start. Rather obviously, this thing looks sharp AF. It’s crisp, and is a very marked improvement over a similarly sized 1080p panel. It’s visually sharper than a 27” 1440p monitor, and sits in the same sort of class as a 27” 4K panel to the eye. While the PPI isn’t quite the same, it feels very much like this is as much resolution as I’d need at this size, and of course I’m sure whatever graphics card you pair this with would like to agree. When you pair that density with really pretty decent colours, you get a beautiful experience. It really is a nice thing to watch content on.

Of course you care about gaming, and on that front it’s pretty decent too! The playing experience is good, although I must admit I’ve become accustomed to larger displays, so found playing on this a little small. It felt like I had to get a decent bit closer to see what I was doing – but of course that’d be the same on a 1080p 24” monitor so that isn’t a major concern, and my eyes are literally falling apart so that might be somewhat of a ‘factor’… Anyway, it felt pretty smooth, responsive and easy to game on. 

That’s backed up by the test results from my open source response time tool – available at OSRTT.com by the way – which said that even with no overdrive, it still averaged around a 7 millisecond response time. Now that’s equivalent to 136 Hz – that’s what the panel can do natively with no ghosting on average – but when you stick overdrive on “Medium”, what I think is the best overdrive mode and the one I’d recommend you use, that average drops to either 4.8 milliseconds or 6.15 milliseconds, depending on if you include the overshoot time on a weirdly small number of bad results. That’d be 208 Hz equivalent at 4.8 milliseconds, which is well above the 165 Hz refresh rate, so that’s great. If you’re interested though, here’s what the marketing overdrive mode looks like – a sea of overshoot, and really, really not worth using. Keep it on Medium. Input lag is also spot on, averaging 2.8 milliseconds, or well below one frame. That’s exactly what you want to see.

One interesting quirk for me is that the box lists this as a “GSYNC” monitor, as does the on screen menu, and a look at the rear IO would make you believe that too. You’ve only got one displayport and one HDMI port – most monitors like this normally have at least two HDMI ports, if not things like USB C inputs, but that’s missing here. But then if you go to the extras page in the on screen menu, you’ll see this is actually just a G-Sync Compatible display, and does work with AMD cards if you’d want. It’s just adaptive sync that’s been validated by NVIDIA, but it isn’t actually a “G-Sync” – or specifically a “G-Sync Ultimate” display, as in it has NVIDIA hardware inside and only works with NVIDIA GPUs. Bit strange, but I can confirm adaptive sync works fine, and syncs down to the usual 48 Hz before it’ll start duplicating frames. All good there.

Now I mentioned colours earlier, and my SpyderX reports that the Q24G2A mostly matches it’s claimed colour gamut coverage – close enough anyway – and actually exceeds the brightness measurement at 400 nits, although falls short on contrast with a maximum of 900:1, not quite the 1000:1 AOC claims. It’s still close enough and fine for an IPS panel. Colour accuracy is decent, with an average DeltaE of 1.3, although there were a couple of less than ideal results there. I think that’s mostly thanks to the whole kinda-naff contrast though, so I wouldn’t be overly worried. 

Physically, the monitor is AOCs usual style. Red accents on an otherwise dark plastic body. You do get a fully adjustable stand with all the usual movements, tilt, height, swivel and rotation for portrait mode, or you can stick the panel on a VESA mount if you’d prefer. The stand doesn’t take up too much space on your desk and is plenty stable, so no marks off there. I’ve already mentioned the… limited IO, there really isn’t much here. No USB hubs, although you do have two 2W speakers built in. Naturally these are pretty naff, but they exist if you want ‘em. The only other physical thing I wanted to mention was the on screen menu controls – they are the old school separated, downward facing buttons. While you don’t adjust monitor settings much, it is still annoying to have to twist your wrist over this much just to change something. The joystick style switch is definitely preferred. 

Otherwise, I’d say this is one hell of a monitor. It’s well specced, performs well, and it’s right around £200 as well, making it one of the cheapest 1440p 165Hz monitors on the market, let alone being in this 24” form factor. For those that want higher pixel density but don’t have the space for a larger display, or those that want an upgrade to the same size they’ve got, this is an incredible option. Obviously the GPU requirements go up compared to something like the 25G3ZM, but so does the image quality and sharpness, and for some I’m sure that’s more than worth it. This gets a solid recommendation from me – but I’d love to hear what you think about it in the comments below. Is this size better for you, or would you rather something larger? Let me know in the comments down below. I’ll also leave a global Amazon affiliate link to this in the description if you are interested in checking it out or picking one up yourself!