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This review first appeared in issue 357 of PC Pro.
We were hoping to review the AOC 27B3CF2 in this Labs, as you can buy it for a similar price to the 27B3CA2 and they’re identical but for one factor: the stand. Where the version with A2 at the end has a lightweight plastic stand that keeps the monitor at a fixed position, with the bottom roughly 110mm above your desk, the F2 offers 110mm of height adjustment.
Both monitors offer the tantalizing prospect of a 27in USB-C docking monitor for around £150, and to hit that price point AOC has had to make some compromises. Let’s start with the features: you only get two USB-A ports (5Gbits/sec), and nothing in the way of extras, unless you count the 3.5mm headphone socket. Aside from this, only an HDMI port graces the rear.
Nor do you get hedonistic features such as a stand with swiveling capabilities, but as this unit weighs a mere 4.4kg it’s easy to maneuver and to carry round an office. At least you get some tilting action, with 5° forward and 23° back.
Naturally, this is a Full HD monitor rather than 1440p. As with all its Full HD 27in rivals, you lose sharpness around text edges, and there simply isn’t as much room for details, which makes it less useful for workers who like to view two documents side by side, especially if one of those documents is a detail-packed spreadsheet. However, whites look fine, so we were happy to use it for day-to-day tasks, and with 65W power delivery over USB-C it could be rolled out in offices where workers bring in their own laptops.
You shouldn’t expect bags of color; next to the Acer Vero B277 Ebmiprzxv, there’s only one winner. It covers a reasonable 92% of the sRGB gamut, though, and an average Delta E of 1.35 suggests respectable color accuracy. The one area of our testing where it fell down was brightness and contrast uniformity: out of 24 test areas, DisplayCal only gave one the green light.
We would love to end on a complimentary word about speaker or OSD quality, but sadly, no. In “Englishmen in New York”, Sting sounds like he’s singing down a phone line from the 1970s, and AOC’s OSD is looking increasingly dated compared to rivals. It’s okay once you get used to it, but there’s an unnecessary learning curve.
All of which means that there really is only one reason to buy this screen: that you’re desperate for USB-C docking and only have £150 to spend. In which case we recommend you seek out its 27B3CF2 sibling with an adjustable height stand.
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