Photos and Features
The AOC CQ27G3Z does have to be put together before you can use it and it comes in three components. You have the base, the arm, and the display itself. The stand design isn’t different than the last few AOC displays that I’ve taken a look at. It doesn’t have a projection logo built in. The arm is black with a red accent strip up the back. It also has a circle built in which is also red, that is for routing cables through to keep things cleaner. The base then has an X shape with two of the legs being significantly longer. Both have a steel base structure and just the black plastic housing over that so it looks good. The base has six round rubber feet and then in the middle of the X there is a flip-out screw, that screw is what attaches the arm to the base. On top it has two metal pegs that also stick up, those are there to help line everything up and add a little more structure.
Before attaching the AOC CQ27G3Z display to the stand it does give us a chance to get a better look at a few areas, especially all of the connections and buttons that face down. For menu controls, all of the buttons are on the bottom edge of the AOC CQ27G3Z and you get 5 buttons in total. The main power button on the far right and four other smaller buttons let you open the menu, click enter, and flip through the options. Then around on the back, the rear I/O is split up with all of the display and audio connections on the left and the power plug on the right. For display connections the AOC CQ27G3Z has two HDMI 2.0 plugs and then two DisplayPort 1.4 plugs. Both can handle the 1440p resolution but it is important to know that the HDMI connections will only support up to 144 Hz for the refresh rate, to get the full 240 Hz you will need to use DisplayPort. The left side also has one headphone jack that outputs audio if you need it, the AOC CQ27G3Z doesn’t have built-in speakers so that is the only audio option. Personally, I would prefer to have neither to avoid the audio issues that you get when updating drivers when you have a display with speakers or a headphone out. Then on the right side for power, the AOC CQ27G3Z has a C14 power plug, aka your standard PC power cable. This means the power supply is built in and you don’t have to worry about an inline power brick or a power wart.
The back of the AOC CQ27G3Z has red accents at a 45-degree angle in both corners. They look a lot like speaker slots but we know it doesn’t have built-in speakers so they could be a little deceiving. It has the AOC logo up top in the center then right in the middle you have the stand and VESA mount. The included stand uses tabs that latch in at the top and bottom and the plastic housing is designed to fit flush with that mount. There are also four black screws pre-installed here. You can remove those and that is your 100mm Vesa mount if you have your own stand or want to wall mount the CQ27G3Z. The back gets thinner down below the rear I/O, in that area it has a sticker with the serial number and model information as well as all of the normal certification logos as well.
The AOC CQ27G3Z is a 1000R curved display meaning the curve is a 1000 mm radius. Before getting it on the stand I was able to get a measurement at the high point which sits at 44mm back from the outer edges of the CQ27G3Z.
The CQ27G3Z just latches right onto the included stand and the stand does have some adjustability to it. You can adjust the CQ27G3Z’s height by 130mm which as you can see in the last picture below puts it almost down on the stand legs. It can tilt down as much as -5° and face up as much as 23°.
The base also swivels to the left and right 40 degrees in each direction for a total of 80 degrees range. The picture below is at the full range to the right.
I touched on the back of the monitor features already but here is a look at it on the include stand. This does better show how the hole in the stand is used for wiring. If you run your cables up through that hole and keep them tight to the stand you won’t be able to see them. Sadly there isn’t a clip on the stand down near the base to help with that.
If you haven’t used a curved display before the curve is only noticeable when you aren’t looking at the display right on. When looking at it from the center the curve just keeps all parts of the display the same distance from your eyes. The CQ27G3Z is 27" diagonally and the front has almost no bezel on the top, left, and right edges. Only the bottom edge has a noticeable bezel and they have the AOC branding there as well as more red accents on both sides.
