AOC AG326UD Review – Budget 4K 165Hz QD-OLED 

If you’ve been looking for the ultimate 4K display, look no further. This is the AOC AG326UD, a 4K 32 inch 165Hz QD-OLED, and it is just beautiful. Physically it follows AOC’s recent design language, that includes a fully controllable RGB ring on the back, an incredibly thin metal panel mounted to a plastic backer, and the honestly kind of annoying two screw mount that holds the panel to the stand. The stand itself is nice and stable, and has all the adjustment. Tilt, height, swivel, and even rotation to portrait mode for the two people in the world who’ll use this as a secondary display – although they’d still probably use the included VESA adapter that comes in the box to mount it to an arm instead anyway. The on screen menu is controller with a little joystick on the back, and is AOC’s most recent design. It’s pretty small on this display, but has all the options you could want, including the OLED care settings. These include pixel orbiting where the image is shifted a few pixels – making use of the extra pixels these panels include – or various dimming effects, including “screen saver” which dims the whole display after no activity, and a bunch of other more selective dimming features, plus thermal protection, all to make sure the panel stands the test of time.

On that note, the biggest fear most people have with OLEDs is burn in, but I can reassure you that, at least with QD-OLEDs, you are pretty safe. I’ve been using a very similar QD-OLED panel for over a year now, and that still has not done a full refresh, nor does it show even the slightest hint of burn in, despite all day every day use. These QD panels feel truly next gen compared to W-OLED panels, and burn-in genuinely feels like a bygone problem. 

So, now let’s talk about the panel itself. Like I said this is a 32 inch 4K panel, running at a maximum of 250 nits, which doesn’t sound like much, but as I’ve said in my other QD-OLED reviews, that doesn’t matter much because the real world experience of using this is bright, vibrant, and rich. I have to crank my camera’s exposure down just to film this thing – this is where I’d expose it normally, and you can see just how blown-out the display looks. This doesn’t feel like a 250 nit display. Colours wise, it’s rich and vibrant to the eye. Colours pop, and makes for an excellent viewing experience. To back that up, the SpyderX2 reported 98% coverage of the DCI P3 spectrum, and 81% of the Rec2020 colour space. That’s pretty great, as is the staggeringly accurate 0.66 average DeltaE result, which makes for a vibrant and accurate display. The SypderX2 did also confirm the 250 nit peak, although another advantage QD-OLEDs have over their W-OLED counterparts is the lack of an adaptive brightness limiter – a feature that lets the display ramp to a very bright level, then slowly draws it back down to a stable level. This is most obvious on full screen content, and shows up as a difference in brightness between fullscreen and partial screen brightness tests – but here both the fullscreen and part screen tests report the same results. Again, that’s a tick from me. Honestly these QD panels just feel like regular LCDs, but way, way better. There’s no quirks or need to baby it, it just works, and that’s high praise for an autist like me.

For gaming though, corrrrrr. OLEDs have functionally instant response times – honestly my open source response time tool just can’t keep up, so while you do get sub 1 millisecond results, the actual OLEDs here change functionally instantly, which means motion looks beautifully smooth. Well there’s the refresh rate at 165Hz which isn’t quite as fast as it could be, but honestly for the vast majority of games and gamers, this is perfect. Whether it’s fast paced FPS games, or smooth and fluid racing games, or stunning visual storytelling games, anything looks just amazing on this thing. It’s fast, responsive, low latency – yes I checked – and just an excellent time. I’m not very good at explaining my feelings, but suffice to say I’m impressed. While I personally prefer the 1440p ultrawide I usually use, I can’t argue that this 32 inch 4K panel isn’t an amazing experience. It’s immersive, and the sharpness is really hard to ignore. It’s crisp while still being smooth and responsive. I really like this, if you can’t tell. 

Of course, the catch with these OLEDs – and QD-OLEDs in particular – is that any other QD-OLED you find with the same specs is almost certainly using the same panel from the same manufacturer, so there isn’t normally much to differentiate the various models – especially now things like overdrive tuning aren’t involved. AOC have taken a pretty nice approach here though. First, this is a well built, factory calibrated monitor that usually comes with a factory calibration certificate in the box, and second, they price the thing like they’re going out of business (although clearly they aren’t with how many of these things they sell…). This bad boy will set you back just £740 – which yes is a hell of a lot of money, it’s more money than a lot of people spend on their PCs full stop, but for a 4K high refresh rate QD-OLED, it’s a damn steal. And for a point of comparison, MSI’s MAG 321UP which I’m fairly confident uses the same panel costs a staggering £950 – FOR THE SAME DISPLAY! So yeah, if you have the cash, and I appreciate it’s a lot of it, save yourself over £200 and get this one over, well, all the other options. It’s solid, and an excellent experience. If 4K 165Hz is for you, rather than 3440×1440 ultrawides, this is the one to get. If ultrawide is your preference, check out the AG346UCD I reviewed recently in the cards above!