Verdict

Pros

• Good overall image quality
• Fantastic gaming performance
• Stylish and versatile stand
• FreeSync works well
• Plenty of connectivity

Cons

• 240Hz is niche
• Not the slimmest of bezels
• Low resolution for the money

What is the AOC Agon AG251FZ?

The AOC Agon AG251FZ is one of a handful of new 240Hz refresh rate gaming monitors that have just hit the market. These new displays offer a much higher refresh rate than the 144Hz panels that have come before them, and look to be the perfect choice for eSports gamers.

That extra speed comes at a price, though, since this 25-inch display with a resolution of just 1920 x 1080 pixels costs the better part of £400. With AMD FreeSync onboard, a versatile stand and plenty of connectivity, it’s loaded with extras, going someway to justify the price.

AOC Agon AG251FZ – Design and Features

This is a great-looking monitor. The elegant angular stand has a solid metal base, while the matte black finish of much of the rest of the frame looks great. A small red Agon logo on the lower bezel is the only “gamer” addition visible from the front, although round the back there’s a rather more obvious large red plastic panel. Even then, it’s a relatively muted red, and therefore isn’t too garish.

The only area that isn’t quite as sleek as I’d like is the rather chunky bezel. While the likes of the Asus PG279Q have incredibly thin, low-profile bezels, here they stand proud, and there’s no avoiding them.

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When it comes to features, though, this display has many. The stand offers a full complement of adjustments, with 130mm of height, +/- 20° swivel and -3.5/+21.5° tilt variation, and the display can pivot 90° into portrait mode. There’s even a numbered indicator that can be used to pinpoint your preferred height, so that you can dial the monitor straight back in after you’ve had to move it or plug something in. If you’d rather use a monitor arm, the stand can also be removed, exposing a standard 100x100mm VESA mount.

There are plenty of connectivity options too. For video, there’s a DisplayPort, two HDMI, DVI and VGA, and there are analogue inputs and outputs for audio and a USB 3.0 hub.

Two of the USB ports are found on the side, one of which is able to charge devices – such as your phone – while the monitor is in standby mode.

Just above the side ports is a fold-down headphone hook. It’s such a simple addition, but it adds yet another line-item in an already-bursting features list.

AOC Agon AG251FZ – Image Quality

I was prepared to be somewhat underwhelmed by this display’s overall image quality, expecting gaming performance to trump quality. I’m happy to say I was wrong.

This monitor performs brilliantly out of the box. If you have the patience, some tweaking will enable you to get the best out of it, but you can certainly get away with using it right away.

Most striking is how good the viewing angles are for a TN LCD panel. Moving from left to right there’s almost no obvious change in the image, and it’s only when you make a real effort to view the screen from a very low angle that you get any significant change.

The backlighting looks nice and even, there’s no obvious backlight bleed and the matte – but not grainy – finish to the display keeps reflections to a minimum.

What’s more, there’s no tendency for bright colours to become crushed together. Some TN displays can struggle to correctly display the subtle grey shading used in apps such as Outlook, or the grey boxes that surround the Pros and Cons on TrustedReviews. They can often look off-colour or be indistinguishable. Here, though, the display largely gets everything right.

Firing up our colorimeter, I measured this display’s colour performance and found that, on the whole, it backed up my initial impressions. Its colour temperature of 6814K is close enough to the ideal of 6500K to be acceptable, while a contrast ratio of 961:1 is good enough to provide a punchy-looking image.

It also covers a decent 93% of the sRGB colour space (68% AdobeRGB) and has an average Delta E of just 1.03 (maximum 2.74); closer to zero is better. Both these figures show that the monitor can display most colours properly and so is unlikely to suffer colour-banding issues.

The default setting has the brightness at only 90 out of 100, but this still delivered 318 nits of light, which is more than bright enough.

The only figure that’s slightly off is gamma, which is a little low at 1.84. This results in darker colours appearing a little lighter than they would at the correct value of 2.2. This is a feature sometimes found on gaming monitors where the manufacturer wants to give you “the edge” when facing foes in darkened corners.

The Agon AG251FZ’s figures changed very little at different refresh rates, too. The only measurement that adapted as I pushed it to 240Hz was the Delta E, which rose to an 1.27 average (3.42 maximum), suggesting the panel struggles a touch to display the finest colour differences when running at full speed.