Best Budget Option – AOC i2353Fh 23” Review

The AOC i2353FH is also one of the best looking monitors on the market and will look great in any living room, bedroom or office. Of course, you don’t get an IPS monitor at this great price without sacrificing something but the AOC i2353FH’s downsides aren’t too significant and shouldn’t put you off.

Specification Highlights

• Monitor Size: 23”
• Aspect Ratio: 16:9
• Brightness: 250 cd/m² (typ)
• Static Contrast Ratio: 1000:1
• Extremely thin screen
• Innovative stand for neat cables
• 97% sRGB colour gamut

 

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The AOC i2353FH monitor hasn’t been designed with photographers or colour professional specifically in mind. We are featuring it here because it performs very well, at least after some tweaking, in many of the areas a monitor needs to in order for accurate colour and photograph manipulation.

It’s also one of the sleekest looking monitors you’ll find anywhere. The AOC i2353FH has an unbelievably thin screen with a profile of just 9.6mm!

The bezel and has a silver metallic finish and looks the business. The circular base is also silver and has a “transparent crystal” trim, which really means a clear plastic trim.

The base houses some of the secrets behind the AOC i2353FH incredible waist line. All of the ports, including the power, are located at the back of the base. The OSD buttons are also found there and are touch sensitive. These features help to give the AOC i2353FH its unique look, but there are downsides to them.

The menu buttons are fairly unresponsive and make the OSD slightly frustrating to navigate. The menu itself is unorthodox and less intuitive than other OSDs but offers a good range of adjustments and options.

The desire to have all the connections in the base is presumably behind the disappointing lack of interfaces. There are no USB ports to be found on the AOC i2353FH or DisplayPort. While there are 2x HDMI and 1x D-Sub ports there is no DVI connection and you will need a DVI-to-HDMI adapter if you rely on DVI. On the up side an HDMI and D-Sub cable are provided.

Depending on your set up these considerations may not bother you, especially when the reward is a beautifully thin screen that almost seems like it floats in mid-air.

The ergonomics of the AOC i2353FH are also disappointing. You only have the option of tilting the screen; it cannot be swivelled or pivoted. However, the base can be doubled up as a wall mount which some users may find handy.

The AOC i2353FH uses an e-IPS panel so has excellent viewing angles. Little contrast or colour is lost right up to almost 180° horizontally and vertical viewing angles are nearly as good. The AOC i2353FH has no off-centre contrast shift which is great for working with photographs.

The anti-glare coating on the screen eliminates glare and reflections well but is quite soft so doesn’t affect the light coming from the screen.

The panel has LED backlighting which is another major factor in the sleek profile of the AOC i2353FH monitor. The LED backlighting is also responsible for this monitors pretty impressive colour gamut. The AOC i2353FH covers 73% of the NTSC, 76.0% of the Adobe RGB and 96.9% of the sRGB colour spaces. This is extremely good, particularly for a monitor in this price range. Colour professionals may have need for wider gamuts but for the average photography enthusiast a monitor that (virtually) covers the sRGB spectrum will do the trick.

The AOC i2353FH only has 6-bit colour depth but does manage to produce the 16.7million colours of an 8-bit display by using advanced frame rate control (A-FRC). This is not ideal for a monitor for photography but this is one of the sacrifices you make to have such a great looking, and performing, monitor at this price. In reality, the A-FRC does not detract too much from the image quality. There is some visible banding with darker tones but overall the AOC i2353FH’s colour gradation is still very good.

Unfortunately the AOC i2353FH doesn’t satisfy a photographer’s needs with factory calibration alone. In order to make the most of this monitor you will need calibration software and a colorimeter.

Testing the screen showed the gamma and white point to be pretty accurate, at 2.1 and 6441K respectively, out of the box but it was quite bright but produced a relatively poor black depth of 0.28 cd/m2.

The bigger concern to a photographer is the colour accuracy of the AOC i2353FH which is measured in Delta-E. The lower the score the more accurate the colour; a Delta-E of less than 1 is almost perfect and imperceptible to the naked eye. Less than 2 is considered suitable for colour-critical work but a Delta-E of 3 or above can be easily noticed and is unsuitable for working with photography.

The AOC i2353FH scored an average Delta-E of 3.0 with a maximum of 5.6 with the default calibration; too inaccurate for a monitor for photography.

With calibration, though, the AOC i2353FH’s performance is enhanced no end. This may be a drawback to amateur photographers who may not have the wherewithal to calibrate a monitor and this is certainly something you need to consider when thinking of purchasing this monitor.

If this presents no object then you won’t be disappointed with the results. White point and gamma were further improved to almost perfect results after calibration but the real improvements were with colour accuracy. The average Delta-E after calibration was 0.3 with the maximum at 0.8 which is more than adequate for working with photographs.

There are a couple of other minor flaws in the AOC i2353FH you should be aware of. The screen’s luminance uniformity varied a bit more than you’d hope with only 63% of the screen within 10% deviance. There have also been reports of some noticeable backlight leakage but both these factors can vary from unit to unit.

As an entertainment monitor the AOC i2353FH performs well. Its full HD screen is great for movies and the decent static contrast ratio and reasonable black depth helps to pick out dark details in films.

The AOC i2353FH also handles moderate gaming as well. The advertised 5ms response time is, perhaps, exaggerated and while there is no significant ghosting present it’s not as fast as some of the other models in this price range. The AOC i2353FH has also been shown to suffer from moderate input lag.

If you can calibrate the AOC i2353FH it’s a fantastic monitor that not only looks amazing but performs pretty well too, especially considering how cheap it is. It may not satisfy the ardent professional photographer but as a stylish, all-round monitor for the amateur photography enthusiast it’s definitely a winner.

Pros

• Great colour accuracy after calibration
• Wide colour gamut
• Produces 16.7million colours
• Looks amazing
• Great value
• Good all-rounder

Cons

• Need calibrating for use with photographs
• Only 6-bit colour depth
• Limited connectivity
• Some backlight bleed reported

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Specifications

• Monitor Size: 23”
• Visible Screen Size: 58.4cm
• Aspect Ratio: 16:9
• Brightness: 250 cd/m² (typ)
• Static Contrast Ratio: 1000:1
• Pixel / Dot / Pitch: 0.265 (H) x 0.265 (V)
• Viewing Angle: 178° / 178°
• Grey to Grey Response Time: 5ms
• Maximum Resolution: 1920 x 1080 @ 60Hz
• Connectivity: 2x HDMI, 1x D-Sub
• Power Source: 90~240VAC, 50 / 60Hz
• Power Consumption: Standby: 0.5 W, Off: 0.3 W, Typical: 25 W

OTHER FEATURES

• Plug & Play: DDC1 / 2B / CI
• User Control: Left / Clear Vision Right / Volume, Power, Source / Exit / Menu / Enter
• OSD Languages: 14 languages
• Regulations: CCC, cCSAus, CE, Energy Star 5.1, EPA, EPEAT Silver, FCC, ISO 9024-307, RoHS, Win7
• Other Features: Aluminium cabinet, DCR, Eco Mode, e-Saver, i-Menu, Low-Power, Off Timer, screen+, Touch Key, Ultra Slim, VESA 100 mm
• Dimensions (WxHxD): 549.5 x 185.7 x 388.3mm
• Weight: 2,85kg / 5,6 kg
• Warranty: 3 Years

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