AOC G2490VX Review: Cheap 144Hz Gaming Monitor

The AOC G2490VX is one of the cheapest 144Hz gaming monitors available, yet it offers plenty of features including wide color gamut, HDR, FreeSync, 1ms (MPRT) and more!

Now, the specifications seem to be too good for the price — and they are; the GtG pixel response time speed is the slowest we’ve seen on a high refresh rate display.

Image Quality

Unlike most 24″ 1080p 144Hz VA panel gaming monitors with 23.6″ curved screens, the AOC G2490VX uses a different 23.8″ flat-screen VA panel.

This panel offers a superior static contrast ratio of 4,000:1 and a strong peak brightness of 350-nits. In comparison, the more common 23.6″ curved panels have a bit lower static contrast ratio of 3,000:1 and a peak brightness of 250-nits.

Now, the difference in contrast ratio and brightness is not particularly noticeable, especially since 250-nits is more than bright enough for most users under normal lighting conditions.

Moving on, the AOC G2490VX features a wide 93% DCI-P3 color gamut (equivalent to ~126% sRGB) for more saturated and lifelike colors, and it has true 8-bit color depth support (16.7 million colors without dithering).

All in all, you get deep blacks, bright whites and vibrant colors, while the 1080p resolution results in a decent pixel density of 92 PPI (pixels per inch), which makes for a decent amount of screen real estate and fairly sharp details and text.

The VA technology also boasts 178° wide viewing angles, so you won’t get big shifts in brightness, contrast and color when looking at the screen at skewed angles like you would with a TN panel display.

Still, due to the wide color gamut and some minor gamma shifts of the monitor, it’s not recommended for color-critical work; you will need an IPS monitor for that.

There’s an sRGB mode in the OSD (On-Screen Display) menu that’s supposed to restrict the color gamut to ~100% sRGB for a more accurate sRGB color representation, but its accuracy varies across different units of the monitor.

The AOC G2490VX monitor also supports HDR (High Dynamic Range). Thanks to its high contrast ratio, decent peak brightness (considering the price) and wide color gamut support, some HDR content will look a bit better.

However, you’re not getting the true HDR viewing experience, which demands local dimming and significantly higher brightness, among other things.

Performance

While the image quality of the AOC G2490VX is exceptionally good considering its price, it all falls apart once objects start to move on it, as the speed at which pixels change from one color to another is rather slow.

In fact, this is a common issue for most VA panel monitors, but it’s even worse on this 23.8″ flat-screen model.

There are five response time overdrive modes: Off, Weak, Medium, Strong and Boost.

The ‘Off’ and ‘Weak’ options barely increase the response time speed resulting in noticeable trailing behind fast-moving objects, whereas the ‘Strong’ mode is too aggressive and introduces prominent pixel overshoot.

The ‘Medium’ mode is your best choice as there’s no overshoot, however, there’s still going to be a lot of ghosting and motion blur visible.

Lastly, the ‘Boost’ mode enables the Motion Blur Reduction (MBR) technology, which uses backlight strobing to reduce the amount of perceived motion blur at a cost of picture brightness. In this mode, motion clarity is a bit clearer, but you still get noticeable ghosting and overshoot as well as double images caused by strobe crosstalk.

At any rate, if you play fast-paced games, avoid this monitor.

Moving on, the AOC G2490VX input lag amounts to ~5ms, so you won’t be able to notice any delays between your actions and the result on the screen.

Adaptive-Sync is supported as well, providing you with a variable refresh rate (VRR) for tear-free gameplay as long as you have a compatible graphics card by AMD (FreeSync) or NVIDIA (G-SYNC Compatible).

The monitor is not officially certified by NVIDIA as ‘G-SYNC Compatible‘ though.

The VRR range is 48-144Hz with LFC (Low Framerate Compensation) support, but keep in mind that some units of the monitor might suffer from VRR brightness flickering.

Features

But it is not all bad news:

The one thing AOC did right on this monitor, in comparison to their previous budget models, is the navigation through the OSD (On-Screen Display) menu via a 5-way joystick instead of the usual clunky hotkeys.

Pressing the joystick ‘up’ changes the input source, ‘down’ places a cheat crosshair on the screen, ‘right’ swaps between different picture modes, ‘left’ changes the aspect ratio and ‘center’ opens up the OSD menu.

Apart from the standard image adjustment tools such as brightness, contrast and color temperature, you have access to three gamma presets, three different HDR modes and four different low-blue light modes.

Now, the backlight of the AOC G2490VX 144Hz monitor is flicker-free (unless MBR is enabled) as it doesn’t use the PWM (Pulse-Width Modulation) method to regulate brightness.

Useful gaming features include pre-calibrated picture presets (FPS, RTS, Racing and three customizable Gamer profiles), Shadow Control (improves visibility in darker games), Game Color (color saturation levels) and ‘Frame Counter’ which keeps track of the monitor’s refresh rate.

Additionally, the MBR setting allows you to adjust the intensity of the backlight strobing technology. The higher the number, the smoother the motion will be, but at a larger picture brightness cost. Note that MBR and Adaptive-Sync cannot be active at the same time.

Design & Connectivity

The AOC G2490VX features a 3-side borderless design with a matte anti-glare coating, while the stand is tilt-only by -5­°/23­°. You can mount the screen via the 100x100mm VESA pattern.

Connectivity options include DisplayPort 1.2, HDMI 1.4 and a headphone jack. Both the DP and HDMI inputs support FreeSync up to 144Hz.

Price & Similar Monitors

The AOC G2490VX goes for $140 at the time of this writing, whereas the Philips 242E1GSJ based on the same panel can be found for $115.

However, we highly recommend investing $5 more for the AOC C24G1A instead. It offers a much better design with full ergonomic support as well as a significantly faster pixel response time speed.

Some ghosting will be noticeable on the C24G1A, too, but mostly in dark scenes only and to a much lesser degree.

If you don’t want any prominent smearing in fast-paced games, you should get a 144Hz gaming monitor with an IPS panel, such as the AOC 24G2 or the BenQ EX2510.

Visit our best gaming monitor buyer’s guide for more information and the best deals available.

Note that the AOC G2490VX also goes by the following names: AOC G2490VXA, AOC G2490W1G4 and Alpha Scan AOC G2490 — these are all identical.

It’s also available as a 27″ sized variant, the AOC G2790VX for ~$160.

Conclusion

What’s our final take?

While the AOC G2490VX offers an excellent image quality and plenty of useful features, its pixel response time speed is simply too slow for an enjoyable gaming experience.

Specifications

Screen Size	23.8-inch
Resolution	1920×1080 (Full HD)
Panel Type	VA
Aspect Ratio	16:9 (Widescreen)
Refresh Rate	144Hz
Response Time (GtG)	Not specified
Response Time (MBR)	1ms (MPRT)
Adaptive-Sync	FreeSync (48-144Hz)
Ports	DisplayPort 1.2, HDMI 1.4
Other Ports	Headphone Jack
Brightness	350 cd/m²
Contrast Ratio	4000:1 (static)
Colors	16.7 million (true 8-bit) 93% DCI-P3 (126% sRGB)
HDR	HDR10
VESA	Yes (100x100mm)