AOC drops the bottom out of 4K market with new $400 display

By Jon Martindale February 9, 2016

Although you’ll need a monster GPU to go with it if you fancy doing any gaming at native resolution, that isn’t stopping monitor manufacturers from trying to push us all to upgrade out of 1080p displays to a much higher end 4K alternative. To that end, AOC has announced a new upcoming model measuring in at 28 inches diagonally that operates at 4K resolution (3,840 x 2,160), with a low $400 price tag.

As an added bonus, it supports AMD’s FreeSync, a frame synchronizing technology that matches the monitor’s refresh rate with the output framerate of the video card.

The AOC U2879VF uses a TN panel, and has a 16:9 aspect ratio. It is only capable of a 60Hz refresh rate, so don’t expect monstrous frame rates to make much of a difference, but if you have hardware that can consistently exceed 60FPS at 4K resolution, you have the money to go for something a bit more expensive than this budget offering.

AOC quotes some rather absurd quality figures, including an 80,000,000:1 contrast ratio. That’s way, way too high to be realistic — most monitors can’t even exceed 1000:1 in our tests. The response time of one millisecond response time shows you this is a very capable gaming display.

Related: Immerse yourself in the action with the best gaming monitors

Connectivity includes VGA, DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort, and MHL ports. Projected pricing has this display going for 350 euros, which works out to just shy of $400. It is expected to become available at some point in March.

When it does show up, the new AOC model will have some stiff competition. It will have to beat off the likes of LG’s 27-inch IPS 4K display. That also supports AMD’s FreeSync, and is currently available for $500. Also giving AOC a run for its money is Samsung, which has the U28E590D priced at $500, as well.

Although AOC may have a price advantage against these competitors when its new model does arrive, expect its contemporaries to offer similar displays, or adjust their own pricing accordingly to remain competitive.

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