AOC’s AGON PRO AG326UD is a stunning all-rounder, with exceptionally good out-of-the-box performance
- Manufacturer: AGON by AOC
- Model: AGON PRO AG326UD
- Display Type: 32” QD-OLED Gaming Monitor
- Resolution: UHD 3840*2160 (16:9 2160p)
- Refresh rate: 165 Hz
- Price when reviewed: £738.97 Amazon UK (MSRP £799)
- Supplied by: AOC
AOC AGON PRO AG326UD Review
Overview
The AG326UD is a 32” 2160p QD-OLED monitor, with a native 10-bit panel, 165Hz refresh rate, super-fast response, low input lag, and superb HDR performance with DisplayHDR True Black 400 certification.
I’ve been waiting for AOC to make this monitor ever since I tested its first OLED, the AG276QZD. The 27” AG276QZD packed a 240Hz 1440p display into its slimline frame and undercut the competition at £849. Just 12 months later, we have this, the 32” 4K AG326UD, which launches for less than the 27” offering at just £799 (MSRP – cheaper deals are available), and again undercuts its main competitors without compromising on quality.
Now that I’ve finally had it on my desk, how does it fare? Short answer – it’s incredible.
AOC always allow us plenty of time to fully test monitors, which gives us lots of time to identify any niggles or shortcomings that you only notice with extended use. Still, I have had no issues with the AG326UD in over a month of use. From the moment I fired it up, the performance has been flawless. As you will see from our benchmarking and display analysis results, this monitor was perfectly set up straight out of the box. I tried all the different presets and modes, but the default settings are bang on, with excellent gamma tracking, sublime and accurate colour, outstanding uniformity results, and near-instantaneous response.
A special mention goes to the glare reduction on the glossy screen. I love a glossy display, as it helps improve the sharpness of images, but they can reflect unwanted light. The coating on the AG326UD, however, does a superb job of diffusing ambient light, preventing windows, lamps and ceiling lights from affecting the sumptuous display.
I can’t emphasise enough just how satisfying this display is to use. I used it for a full playthrough of the excellent Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and the AG326UD did a sterling job across all of the varied landscapes, especially with full path tracing enabled. Images were bright and colourful when they needed to be, but you also got lots of subtle nuances to tones and rich detail even in the darkest shadows of the environments.
Watching movies and TV shows was also exemplary, especially with RTX HDR and RTX VSR enabled. I revisited old favourites just to enjoy them on this stunning display. I’ve included a few photos, but they don’t do the AG326UD justice. It looks so much better in person, with rich colour, bright highlights and delightfully inky blacks that make it immensely enjoyable to watch.
The actual brightness measured 230 cd/m² on average at 100% brightness, but it looks far brighter than it is due to the infinite contrast afforded by the QD-OLED display. Running in my preferred HDR mode you lose the ability to adjust the brightness, but the AG326UD runs at a more than good enough 300 cd/m² average brightness, plus you get exceptionally bright small area highlights up to 1000 cd/m². OLED tech is still improving, and I’m sure we’ll see the average brightness get ramped up in future monitors, but I find the AG326UD to be perfectly suited to my environment and needs.
Colour fringing is often cited as a concern for those tempted by OLED displays, but unlike some 1440p OLED displays I’ve tested, there is no significant chromatic aberration. Text is sharp and clearly defined, with no jarring colour distortion around the edges of text at normal viewing distances. If you get very close to the display there is slight fringing, which is more noticeable with light text on a black background, but I had to zoom in with a macro lens to see it. Some people are more sensitive than others to OLED fringing, but in my experience, the AG326UD handles it exceptionally well.
There are a couple of “nice to have” features I would have liked to see included, such as USB-C connectivity and KVM switching for those of us who like the simplicity when connecting our laptops, and I wouldn’t complain if AOC integrated its excellent quick-switch puck or a remote. Neither of these things affects our recommendation, though. For the price, this monitor represents an incredible and attainable entry to top-tier image quality.
Design and build
The AGON PRO AG326UD maintains the sleek modern styling of its newer monitors, including the unique asymmetric pentagon design that shapes the base of the stand, as well as the offset angular centre piece at the rear that houses the RGB lights and heat dissipating grills. From the front it’s a simplified look, with a printed AGON logo on the chin bezel and super slim edging around the rest of the bezels, giving the AG326UD a slick look.
From the rear, sharp angles and contrasting blacks and greys give the panel an interesting look and unique visual flair, especially with the LightFX RGB switched on. Although I’d have liked a Quick Switch (AOC’s wired remote control puck that can sit on your desk) to be included for convenience, the control joystick is easy to reach and responsive, making it a breeze to navigate the UI. The AG326UD still uses the slightly dated looking AGON menu system, but after years of using it, I appreciate the simplicity and sensibly organised sub-categories that make it easy to quickly find the setting you need.
There was a trend for a while where OLED panels, which are naturally thin, were kept wafer-thin across the back, but AOC has sensibly given the AG326UD a more substantial component housing. This should enable the monitor to move heat away from the panel, which should in turn help mitigate the risk of OLED burn in. It has also allowed the AG326UD to fit in a comprehensive selection of ports, including a useful USB hub. You’ll be happy to know that you don’t need a power brick, too, as the power adapter is integrated into the monitor.
I’m still a huge fan of the newer style stands that AOC uses in their AGON PRO range. The flat base plate remains sturdy but unobtrusive, and I can comfortably fit my keyboard over it. The chunky upright section contains a useful cable management clip, though you may struggle to fit all your cables in if you’re using all of the available ports. Although it’s more compact than the older tripod style stands, it extends back significantly. For reference, it measures 215 mm from the front of the panel to the furthest back part of the stand. Not a huge amount by any means, just something to think about if you’re planning a desk upgrade.
Ergonomically, the AG326UD has an impressive amount of adjustability. You can tilt the display -5/+25 degrees, swivel +/- 16 degrees, and adjust the height by 150 mm. Additionally, you can also pivot the monitor into portrait orientation, which is ideal for multi-monitor setups.
This is all rounded off by AOC’s excellent build quality, with good quality plastics bolstered by sturdy metal reinforcement.
Connectivity and Supported Resolutions
The AGON PRO AG326UD has an excellent selection of ports, with two HDMI 2.1 and a DisplayPort 1.4 for display connections. The RTX 50-series and newer AMD GPUs support DP 2.1, which would allow the AG326UD to reach its maximum 165 Hz refresh without using DSC, so there is a slight lack of future proofing here (assuming you can find or afford these overpriced monsters).
Additionally, there is a headphone/speaker 3.5mm analogue port, and a three-port USB 3.2 hub, comprising a USB-B upstream port, two USB-A 3.2 downstream and an additional USB-A 3.2 + fast-charging (yellow) port. As we’ve mentioned, there is no USB-C port, so it’s not geared up for KVM connections of laptops, for example, but that’s a niche market and not something we’d mark down for on a gaming-focused monitor.
The AGON AG326UD supports the following optimum resolutions:
- HDMI 2.1: 3840*2160 @ 165 Hz
- DisplayPort 1.4: 3840*2160 @ 165 Hz
- Console: 3840*2160 @ 120 Hz PS5/Series X – 2560*1440 @ 120 Hz Series S
The AG326UD supports adaptive sync, and is both FreeSync Premium and G-Sync compatible, making it well-suited to current gaming consoles and PCs. The adaptive sync window spans 48-165 Hz via DP and HDMI (48-120 Hz on consoles) – in our testing, both FreeSync and G-Sync were detected and activated as expected, with no visible tearing or stutters when within the specified range.
Display quality
The baseline performance of the OLEDs I’ve tested is very high, so the main differentiators of image quality are the calibration and additional features like HDR. In this regard, the AG326UD is one of the best displays I’ve tested, with an outstanding factory calibration and setup needing no adjustment. It produces vibrant and nuanced tones with superb colour accuracy, it has exceptional uniformity in brightness and colour, and has insanely fast pixel response.
Something that instantly stuck out for me was the removal of the annoying brightness limiter, which boosts brightness up above what you would normally get on a static image, before lowering it gradually back down (or rapidly, in the case of the worst offenders). Aside from skewing our colorimeter testing, the limiter looks terrible when you’re greeted by a beautifully bright scene, which then dulls down visibly as you’re watching. The AG326UD doesn’t use this artificial boost at all, giving you superb consistency no matter what proportion of the display is illuminated. The AG326UD still has panel protection features, of course, but they are unintrusive (covered in more detail further on in our review).
Panel response
The QD-OLED panel in the AG326UD is, as you’d expect from OLED, rapid. Blur is essentially non-existent at higher frame rates, especially if you have a GPU that can take advantage of the overclocked 165 Hz refresh rate. Conventionally, competitive gamers tend to play on smaller 1440p displays, but the 32” 2160p panel of the AG326UD is still ideal for fast-paced games. I put in a lot of hours on Marvel Rivals, and although it didn’t magically make me a better gamer, the higher frame rate and speedy response had me accurately mowing people down as Punisher, and the AG326UD was definitely not the weak link when I died (I know, I know, “git gud scrub”).
Good old BlurBusters reinforced my opinion, with the AG326UD acing every test. It has practically zero blur, no inversion artifacts, superior clarity on the moving image tests – I don’t have a motion camera rig to capture photos to show you, but rest assured, this is an incredible monitor.
Brightness, contrast and colour
Out of the box, the default 90% brightness peaks at 212.5 cd/m². Unlike other OLEDs from AOC that we’ve tested, the brightness curve is much more linear, as can be seen in the following measurement report.
Although the colourimeter reported black levels of 0.03, this is incorrect, as the pixels can be switched off giving true blacks. This is correctly reported when using DisplayCal, which reports the contrast ratio as infinite.
The default Warm colour temperature exactly matched our preferred 6500K white point, also offering the highest levels of brightness compared to the Normal and Cool presets.
Out-of-the-box colour accuracy was excellent on the AG326UD, with a DeltaE of 0.80 (maximum 2.60). Anything less than 2.0 is considered imperceptible to the naked eye. Of note is that the exceptionally dark colours and blacks were the highest deviations – the majority of colours were well below DeltaE 1.0.
This is already suitable for content creation and colour grading, but following calibration the accuracy improved to a DeltaE of just 0.04. This is clearly an improvement over native, but I could not see any notable changes whilst switching between calibrated and uncalibrated profiles. Top marks for the out-of-the-box experience again.
The gamma with the default setting (Gamma 1) is highly accurate, requiring no adjustment for an optimal image.
Gamut coverage
The AGON PRO AG326UD has options to select panel native, sRGB and DCI-P3 colourspaces. sRGB mode clamps the output to 100% sRGB with no over-extension, but locks out the brightness, gamma and other adjustments. Fortunately the display is still highly accurate in this mode.
For our tests and in regular usage, I kept the AG326UD in its native guise. Even though this display can produce a huge volume of colour above standard sRGB, it does so without oversaturation or unnatural looking colours, which is highly impressive. I’ve tested many monitors that can look almost garishly colourful, but the AG326UD is far more subtle and natural in the way it presents images, yet can still ramp up the colour when required.
The panel in the AG326UD has native 10-bit colour depth, allowing it to display up to 1.07 billion shades of colour.
- sRGB 100% coverage – 158.5% volume
- AdobeRGB 93.2% coverage – 109.2% volume
- DCI-P3 97.0% coverage – 112.3% volume
*Coverage refers to how much of the specified area of the gamut is covered, whilst volume includes any colour that extends beyond the defined gamut.
HDR
I’ve spent the vast majority of my time using this monitor with HDR turned on via my PC. For regular desktop use, the HDR image in DisplayHDR mode is indistinguishable from regular SDR. Unlike other displays I’ve tested, there’s no oversaturation of colours, with the output resembling sRGB in the best way possible. As soon as HDR content is displayed, however, this display literally and figuratively lights up. My testing tied in nicely with Nvidia’s release of improvements to RTX HDR and RTX VSR (Video Super Resolution) and it has been an absolute game-changer – The AG326UD already looks great in SDR, but now that I’ve been watching and playing everything in glorious HDR I don’t think I can ever go back.
I measured a peak full-screen brightness of 320 cd/m², and a 10% window measured 460 cd/m². Although I can’t accurately get a reading from such a small area, <3% highlights were exceptionally bright – rated at 1000 cd/m² by AOC. It’s not the most retina-searingly bright HDR panel I’ve used, but where the AG326UD excels is the way it can produce detail in dark tones whilst simultaneously illuminating the rest of the screen. It also transitions very quickly from dark to light, making this one of my favourite HDR panels to date.
Of the HDR modes available, DisplayHDR provides the most realistic tones and doesn’t suffer the oversaturation that crops up in the other modes. The peak brightness is slightly higher in the other modes, but it’s not worth the unnatural colour palette that accompanies it. Gaming mode in particular oversaturates reds, making natural skin colours look fake – pink lips look like they’re covered in bright red lipstick, and darker skin tones end up looking like mahogany. I noticed no difference in latency between the different HDR modes, so I’d recommend DisplayHDR as the best option for all content.
Viewing angles and uniformity
The AG326UD is the most uniform display we’ve ever tested, both in brightness and colour accuracy. There were very subtle variances when I measured the display, but to the naked eye it is perfect.
Off-angle performance is also exceptional. The AG326UD retains contrast, saturation and accuracy from the most extreme of angles, including above and below, and at far greater angles than you’d ever use this monitor from.
OLED Panel Care
A concern many prospective buyers have is OLED burn-in. The AG326UD utilises AOC’s latest suite of OLED care features that go far beyond earlier generations of OLED. Previous features such as pixel orbiting, pixel refresh and automatic dimming (named screen saver in the menu) are now joined by Logos Protection <sic>, Boundary Dimmer, Taskbar Dimmer and Thermal Protection, most of which have several levels of strength.
The application of these new OLED Care features is subtle but effective: Taskbar Dimmer lowers the brightness of the taskbar, which is likely to be the main static element on the display and I would always have this on maximum strength. Logos protection detects static elements such as channel logos in the corner of the screen and dims them, but I also noticed it activating and slightly dimming UI elements on games, like mini-maps, for example, which is a very welcome feature.
Combined, these care features are unintrusive. When they activate, it isn’t a sudden shift, it’s a gentle dimming that you may barely notice. It’s most apparent when you leave a video paused or when you’re working on a text document with a bright and light background and the screen dimming kicks in, but as soon as there is motion, it returns to its full brightness. It’s a near-perfect implementation that activates when you need it, without infringing on regular use.
Finally, pixel refresh is the one that most people take umbrage with, due to the reminders that pop up after four hours of continuous usage. Whilst you can turn off the notifications, I leave them on, as it’s a mildly inconvenient but essential part of OLED panel maintenance. If I’m mid-game I’ll occasionally ignore the reminder until I get another reminder an hour or so later, but it’s always worth performing the refresh when it pops up. The refresh also happens automatically when the display has been on standby for a prolonged period, such as overnight. As a note, it states the refresh takes around 10 minutes, but I timed it at 5m30s (+/- 10 seconds) over a dozen or so tests, which is perfectly acceptable to me. Once you get into the habit of activating it when you step away from your PC, it’s a second-nature action like hitting Win-L to lock your PC.
Sound quality
AOC has fitted the AG326UD with a pair of 2x 8W stereo speakers, and they are an improvement over the usual 5W disappointments you get in most gaming monitors. As expected, the sound produced is predominantly mid and treble focused. Clarity is good, though; I watched a few short-form videos on YouTube that sounded alright. Switching to music, however, the bass was thin and essentially non-existent at the lowest frequencies. Once evocative songs became hollow shells, lacking the presence and dynamism for me to truly enjoy what I was listening to Still, they are far from the worst monitor speakers I’ve heard. Peak volume is good and free from distortion, and the clarity is fine, but I couldn’t use them as my sole source of sound. A £30+ pair of PC speakers would undoubtedly be better, but the same is true across almost every gaming monitor.
Summary
The AOC AGON AG326UD is my favourite OLED monitor so far. It is perfectly set up straight out of the box, and the colours and extensive dynamic range inherent to its QD-OLED panel are simply stunning. Like most OLEDs, the blistering responsiveness makes it a gamer’s dream, and it’s also an amazing display for watching your favourite shows and movies. Combine it with one of the best modern GPUs and/or the latest consoles, and you’ve got a sumptuous visual experience that’s hard to beat, especially at this price point.
If you’ve managed to snag an RTX 5090 or you want to plan for the future of your setup, you may want to consider holding out for AOC’s take on the next gen of monitors, with 4K/240 Hz (and dual-refresh/resolution) panels gradually hitting the market, but in the here and now, this is the monitor I’d buy to replace my already great 32” UHD monitor.
