Trademark AOpenincluded in the holding Acer, has been presented on the Russian market for a very long time, but only less than 3 years ago it began to distribute products in the category of gaming monitors with us, offering high-performance panels at affordable prices.
The hero of our today’s review is a light and sleek curved monitor. AOPEN from the lineup HC5 with a diagonal of 32 inches, Full HD resolution and a refresh rate of 165 Hz. The average price at the time of this writing was kept at around 20,590 rubles.
PACKAGING, SET, APPEARANCE AND CONNECTORS
We have known for a long time that usually the packaging of gaming monitors looks colorful and defiant, which in turn is necessarily reflected in the final price of the product. That is why the box for the model that came to us for testing was created without unnecessary costs and looks quite standard. It is made of ordinary thick cardboard. It looks modest and at the same time strict.
The front side shows the outline of the monitor itself, as well as its main features. The box opens from the top, in the manner of TV packaging. Inside, apparently also from the calculation of savings, AOPEN 32HC5QR tightly hold two foam plastic molds, in which there are pockets for storing a set of network and connecting wires, a collapsible leg and accompanying documentation. What immediately catches your eye is the small size of the external power supply, which clearly indicates low power consumption and, therefore, efficiency in operation. The kit also includes a quality HDMI cable with two ferrite beads around the edges of the wire.
The metal leg of the monitor consists of two parts, which are connected together with a fixing screw. The lack of a mechanism for quickly connecting parts in the stand, apparently, also pursues the company’s pricing policy. In the place where the leg is attached to the screen body, there is the simplest mechanism for changing the vertical tilt angle of the display from -5 to +20 degrees. The leg is attached to it with four screws, and then this structure is closed with a small plastic cover.
Of course, by its appearance the monitor leg does not create a feeling of fundamental design, but its lightness and grace is not a sign of poor stability of the display on the table. The height of the AOPEN 32HC5QR cannot be changed vertically by the leg design. The monitor also has the ability to hang on a wall using a 100 x 100 mm VESA mount.
The appearance is also distinctive: from the front AOPEN 32HC5QR looks presentable and minimalistic. The display seems airy – it is so thin and graceful. And this is confirmed by its weight without a stand – 5.9 kg. Well, with the stand, not much more – 6.1 kg.
The height at the foot is fixed at 515 mm at the top. Display width – 713 mm.
The body is made of matte black plastic, which leaves fingerprints when touched. The frame around the matrix has a proprietary design “ZERO FRAME”, which makes the screen almost frameless. Thanks to this feature, you can use several such screens, expand the space for the game, since the gap in the picture will be minimal and will not create perceptible discomfort. The curvature of the screen is with a radius of 1800 R, which gives the player the feeling of being fully present in the game.
On the bottom, the widest part of the screen frame, the proprietary logo of the gaming series of this family of monitors – “Fire Legend” is applied. From behind, the AOPEN 32HC5QR looks more discreet.
The thickness of the monitor ranges from 6 to 45 mm due to the curved shape of the screen and the expansion of the case at the bottom on the back side, where the filling and connectors are hidden. On the right side of it there are 5 buttons to turn on the monitor and control settings. AOPEN 32HC5QR will not be suitable for fans of various RGB backlights and other flashing lights due to their complete absence. And you won’t find built-in speakers here either. But there is a 3.5 mm audio jack for connecting external acoustics or headphones.
In addition to the audio jack, the rear is located: a power connector, one DisplayPort version 1.2 and two HDMI version 1.4. All ports are facing downward, which is convenient when installing the monitor on a wall bracket. There is no cable management, so the wires stick out from under the shield.
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS AND SETTINGS
The 31.5-inch gaming monitor uses an 8-bit VA matrix with a maximum refresh rate of 165Hz (overclocked) and FHD resolution (1920 x 1080 pixels). The panel has a gray to gray response time of 5ms. The color gamut of the matrix is 72% NTSC. A WLED panel is used to illuminate the matrix. Peak brightness is 300 cd / m2.
Static contrast is 1000: 1 and dynamic contrast is 100,000,000: 1. Viewing angles – 178 degrees both horizontally and vertically. There is support for Flicker Free technologies to prevent screen flicker and Blue Light Shift, which allows you to minimize the impact of the blue spectrum on the user’s vision. To prevent tearing and distortion in dynamic scenes, the monitor is equipped with AMD FreeSync Adaptive Frame Sync technology.
Display settings are available by pressing the topmost button behind the screen twice. The second is responsible for quickly navigating to the input signal selection menu, the third for switching modes, and the fourth is for controlling the brightness. The lowest one turns the monitor on and off. Also, all 4 buttons are used to navigate the menu, which is not very comfortable in the era of more convenient analog joysticks. You can’t exactly call intuitive controls. Also, discomfort is caused by buttons with a relief texture.
As for the settings themselves, the menu itself is absolutely the same as in the Acer monitors from the Nitro and Predator lines. First of all, you get to the “Image Settings” tab, where you can adjust the brightness, contrast, black gain and blue light filter. Then there are colors with settings for gamma, color temperature, saturation, grayscale, as well as preset and custom color modes. In the “Sound” section, you can adjust or mute the sound of an external connected device through the audio jack, and the “Game” tab allows you to adjust the response mode, activate FreeSync and enable the on-screen sight for shooters. The OSD section is responsible for the settings of the on-screen menu itself, and in the system you can control video inputs, set up a widescreen display mode, hotkeys (3 middle control buttons), and the like. Next is a section with general information about the current settings, and the last tab is responsible for saving user settings.
TESTS AND GAMES
We’ve been able to test the AOPEN 32HC5QR on PC, Xbox Series X and PS5 on projects such as Cyberpunk 2077 (PC), Gears 5 (PC), Demon’s Souls (PS5) and Forza Horizon 4 (XSEX). The PS5 was only able to display 1080p 60Hz resolution on this monitor. On Xbox Series X, you could set the maximum resolution to 1080p @ 120Hz. At the same time, the FreeSync option on the Xbox could not be activated, despite the support of such a monitor. The AOPEN 32HC5QR performed best on the PC, demonstrating a very smooth and clear picture without tearing and artifacts. The monitor is capable of delivering the declared refresh rate of 165 Hz only via DisplayPort, but via HDMI, the frequency is limited to 144 Hz.
As for the viewing angles, everything is in order here, and the color rendition at different viewing angles remains at a fairly good level. Unfortunately, when checking on a black screen, we found large flares (glow-effect) at different points on the screen, which are clearly visible in dark scenes in games or when watching movies in 21: 9 format.
TOTAL
The AOpen 32HC5QR gaming monitor is a discreet and controversial device. On the one hand, this is a huge screen with a slight curvature, which eliminates the problems of VA matrices with viewing angles, good speed indicators and a fairly democratic price tag, and on the other, unpleasant flares that will annoy the eye in dark scenes in games and when watching movies. but the price here is extremely budgetary for such a diagonal. Highlights leave an unpleasant imprint on this model, as the rest of the monitor was good enough for the money.
Author: Sergey Dyakonenko (Madnfs)
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