Porsche Design is a subsidiary of Porsche SE or better known as the company that makes Porsche cars. Porsche Design has been around for 48 years, designing car accessories early on but in the last four years moving also into the electronics markets including working with AOC on a few of their highest-end monitor designs. They have partnered up once again with the PD27 which incorporates a car roll cage like design for the monitor stand with a high-end gaming monitor with a 240Hz refresh rate, Freesync Premium Pro, HDR, and a 1000R curvature for a premium gaming experience. Today I’m going to check out the Agon PD27’s design and performance and see if it lists up to the high pedigree of the Porsche name and its premium price.

Product Name: Porsche Design AOC Agon PD27

Review Sample Provided by: AOC

Written by: Wes Compton

Amazon Affiliate Link: HERE

Packaging and Accessories

The truth is, normally for monitor coverage I wouldn’t need a packaging section at all. At most, you get the same old Styrofoam around a monitor, a power cable, and maybe a display cable. Then for the box, you get a brown box with basic artwork. This time around with the Agon PD27, it is different though. Like the monitor itself, they have gone way above the normal on the packaging. The box itself is blacked out and on the front, it has Porsche Design on it as well as the model name which isn’t all that crazy. They then slipped in a picture of the back of the monitor with the lighting on the side. But even the size of the box is significantly different than most other monitors, even other gaming monitors. Most of those still break down the stand to get a compact box but the PD27 doesn’t and the box ends up being huge.

When you open it up things are different as well. There are two large pieces of padding that enclose the entire monitor and it is a nicer foam than the Styrofoam that is normally used. But up on top, you have a black box with the Porsche Design logo and the AGON branding on it and to make things simpler they also have a clear plastic band that goes all the way around the box and foam. You can use this band to pull everything out of the box.

The Agon PD27 also comes wrapped up in a foam bag to help protect it from scratches and the stand itself has plastic protection that will need to be pealed off on the front-facing bars.

The black box is interesting though, this is where they have all of the accessories and you get the full experience when diving in. Once you pull the top off the top tray has a great looking polished USB drive with the Porsche Design branding on it. That has digital copies of the user manual in every language you can think of and is a 16GB drive should you want to use it for anything else in the future. The top tray also has a folder on top with MORE Porsche Design branding with the documentation inside. You get a quick setup guide as well as the manual in paper form as well.

Under the top tray, there are multiple boxes, each with their own cables. AOC also slips in the USA specific power cable into the main box as well to go with the power supply that comes in one of the many boxes here. There is also a DisplayPort cable, a USB cable for the built-in USB hub, and an HDMI 2.0 cable as well. This gives you options depending on what you want to use and is nice. We bought my wife a new monitor recently and it only came with an HDMI 2.0 and no DisplayPort meaning until we got a new cable we couldn’t use FreeSync/Adaptive Sync. As for the power supply, the PD27 uses a big one. It is six and a half inches long, three wide, and over an inch thick as well. It is inline so you don’t get a big power wart, but keep in mind that you will need to find a place to hide this monster if you want a clean desk and if you are buying the PD27 I would imagine you do.

Now all of the cables were normal for most monitors, as was the power supply. But there is one area that the Agon PD27 stands out. It comes with a desktop cordless remote. You get the remote as well as two triple-A batteries to put it to use and this thing is crazy. On top, it has preset modes that you can switch between numbered 1-3. Then above that the direction controls, center button, and the bottom right back button are all for menu navigation. It also has Porsche Design branding on it as well. The remote is heavy due to the chromed shell and it has an IR lens on the front to broadcast to the monitor. The bottom has the battery compartment which its cover is also chromed and then the bottom also has a line of rubber for one large foot to keep it from moving around on your desk. The top controls are interestingly also backlit so you can use it in the dark.

Photos and Features

With the Agon PD27 out of the box, I could finally get a better look at the overall design and look. As the name implies, it is a 27-inch monitor which is the sweet spot for me. My desk has four 27 inch monitors and my wife also runs two as well, they are large, but if you like to run more than one monitor anything larger gets to the point where you can’t fit them on most desks. The AOC and Porsche Design collaboration is eye-catching though, more than all of my other gaming-focused monitors. Namely because of the chromed stand that peaks out at the bottom, but the monitor itself does also have a clean look. It comes with a small sticker in the bottom left corner that lists off the main features like you would see if there was a display in retail. The first listed is the 240 Hz refresh rate and the 1ms response time which interestingly enough isn’t the same as listed in the online specifications. Those have the refresh rate at half that at 0.5 ms. They have the 1000R curved screen and the light FX. Then quad HD which stands for 1440p because it is four 720p screens together and adaptive sync at the end.

The front of the Agon PD27 has the matte-finished screen itself but it is the bezels that make the overall look of the monitor. Down at the bottom, the main bezel has a grey finish with a brushed effect on it. This has the Porsche Design logo in the center which has a chrome finish. The bottom bezel is the thickest on the entire monitor and it is thicker than most newer monitors at a full inch thick. They make up for it on the top and side bezels which are only 2mm thick. At least the plastic portion is, if you look closely you can also see that the screen itself doesn’t start until the 8mm mark which is closer to normal. So the functional bezel isn’t smaller, but they do a great job of making it look smaller.

Now going back to the small feature sticker, the Agon PD27 doesn’t just list this as a curved monitor. They specifically mention 1000R and I’m sure a few of you might be curious what that is. 1000R was introduced at CES last year for monitors. The R stands for radius and the 1000 means the number of millimeters the circle would be if the curve continued into a full circle. 1000R is specifically picked because that is the radius that matches the human eye. Up until now, we would see curved monitors more in the 1800R range which has less of a curve, so even though the Agon PD27 isn’t an ultrawide monitor, it does have a significant curve to the display.

The Agon PD27 is packed full of tech features, but the feature that makes it stand out the most is still the stand design. This is where Porsche Design comes into play. They designed the stand using small chromed tubes to design it like a race car’s roll cage. The top and bottom of the main frame at the back have isosceles trapezoids at the top and bottom, with the top being smaller than the bottom. Then it has two long legs that stick out on the front, like a lot of normal monitor stands. All of the stand has been polished to a mirror-like finish as well. This is the type of stand/monitor that you expect to see in an office that has a crazy expensive airplane wing desk or a minimalistic desk. In other words, this is more than just a monitor, it is furniture. The stand itself is solid, but if you look closely you can see that the Agon PD27 has the height adjustment built into the back of the monitor. It has a height adjustment of 150mm and in the pictures below it is up at its highest setting. It can swivel left and right 15° each way for a total of 30°. Then for up and down tilt it can swing from ­4° up to 21.5° for a total of 25.5°.

The bottom of the Agon PD27’s stand does have rubber feet integrated into it. At the back, the entire length has a light grey rubber foot and inside of the two holes at the end, they have also plugged the screw holes with rubber as well. Then at the end of both of the long lengths, there are smaller rubber nubs as well. Be careful moving the monitor around as I did pull one of these small nubs out when moving around once. Beyond that though, the light color of the rubber does help prevent scuff marks on your desk.

The back of the Agon PD27 has the AGON by AOC branding on the right and the Porsche Design logo on the left. Up at the top, the vents look fake but are functional which helps vent out heat. Then over on the left is the only control/button on the entire monitor. This has a center press for power then toggles up, down, left, and right. In the bottom right corner, they also slipped a small Kensington lock hole, this isn’t a cheap monitor. You can use this with a Kensington lock to lock it down to something more secure.

Down at the bottom of the Agon PD27, it had overhangs on both sides, like other monitors which have all of the I/O connections. The right side has two DisplayPort plugs on the right and two HDMI on the left. Both HDMI are 2.0 and both DisplayPort are 1.4, so no worries about plugging into the wrong connection. Please note that the 1440p display can run at 240 Hz on DisplayPort but “only” 144 Hz with the HDMI 2.0 connections. If you are running an Nvidia GPU, DisplayPort is also needed for the Adaptive Sync, AMD does however support it over HDMI. On the far right, there is also a microphone out plug. On the left side, there is a microphone input as well as a headphone plug. Next to that, there are four USB plugs. The three blue plugs are USB 3.2 and the fourth one in yellow is also 3.2 but is a fast charging plug. The larger USB input is the USB cable that needs to run to your PC for the USB hub to work. Then to the left of that is the DC input for the monitor power. Back on the right side, below the I/O is where the info sticker is. This has all of the model information as well as your serial number and all of the normal required certification logos as well.

I used this picture previously, but I’m showing it again because I do want to also talk about the built-in lighting. The Agon PD27 has three different forms of lighting. In the monitor arm, at the top of the picture below you can see that the arm has lighting to glow behind/around the monitor if you have it near a wall. Then down at the bottom edge, you can see the curved white diffuser which glows the entire area under the monitor. Both of these have different effects and colors available so you can set it to match the lighting of your desk if you want it at all. If you don’t it can be turned off. I would love it however if you could tie it in with motherboard or Corsair/Razer lighting software which most likely controls your peripherals and other hardware. Then the third lighting is in the center right above the bottom diffuser bar, this projects the Porsche Design logo which had the P and d integrated together. This projects in white which overrides whatever color you have glowing below the monitor, putting it on your desk. You can go into the menu and set the brightness of this from off, to low/medium/strong.

Performance

Before jumping into the testing of the Agon PD27 I did want to confirm that it was running at what it should be. For this, I double checked Nvidia control panel to see that the display was running at 2560 x 1440 which is 1440p, and that 240 Hz was selected. While doing that I could also see that you can run the display at multiple other high refresh rates if needed, starting down at 120 Hz and up to 200 Hz before reaching the impressive 240 Hz. The other big feature that I wanted to check while in the Nvidia control panel was to make sure that the Adaptive-Sync would be supported. This isn’t like your normal G-Sync which has an Nvidia controller in the monitor. Adaptive Sync works with both Nvidia and AMD, as long as Nvidia supports it. They have standards set to block lower quality monitors but the Agon PD27 came right up and supports it. I also used Passmark Monitor Test to look at the rest of the info being transmitted to the PC. The model name and serial number are there. SDR is listed here, but that is because I hadn’t turned the HDR support on yet. The Agon PD27 does support DisplayHDR 400 which is the lowest of the VESA HDR standards but supports true 8-bit image quality, global dimming, a peak luminance of 400.

Before getting into the rest of the testing I did want to point out that when booted up the Agon PD27 does have a small pinhole LED on the bottom front bezel that lights up. The display itself shows the AGON by AOC branding as well as a large Porsche Branding logo before you get to what is provided by the display connection. It is extremely quick to power off if you don’t have anything fed to it as well, so keep that in mind. You can flip between all four of the connections which means you could run two different PCs and also flip to two consoles as well as an example. 

Before getting into the display itself I was interested in checking out the ambient lighting that the Agon PD27 provides. This isn’t the only monitor to add in lighting, a lot of the “gaming” focused options do them. They did manage to keep it somewhat unique with the logo being integrated. Asus has done this, but only when it shot out of the bottom of the stand. This design is simpler and keeps the stand to be all polished. The bottom lighting bar lets you pick between the basic red, green, and blue. Then the Porsche Design logo lights up in the middle in a bright white.

Less obvious because of how they tucked the LED diffuser away is the lighting on the back of the monitor as well. This runs the same color that your bottom facing lighting is set to and it lights up the back of the monitor. If you have a desk where the back of your monitor faces out this will be visible. But it does also bounce light if you have it placed up against a light colored wall as well, giving a small glow around the display.

Before getting into our normal tests, with the Agon PD27 being an HDR monitor I did want to test that out. For this, I used Passmark’s Monitor Test where you can see a full gradient and color range. Then you can switch HDR on and off. Obviously, some of the effect is lost when taken through a camera, but you can see the huge difference in the range shows both with the gradients and the rec709 and 2020 results.

From there I went to our standard tests. The first is a look at a test pattern which shows a range of colors as well as a grid to show that everything is straight and tucked into the corners correctly. The uniformity is important as well, which uses a grey background to make sure there aren’t any dark or bright areas. The Agon PD27 was a touch dark in the corners and on the bottom edge, but not enough to be concerned with. Normally those areas have light bleed, not darkness. 

In the gradient test, I’m just checking to see if there are any bars/lines in the gradients but the Agon PD27 kept the transition smooth. For the test tests, I have a zoomed-in picture and the text is crisp. I also included a second picture with a ruler as well for scale, being zoomed in you do see the screen door effect which isn’t visible from a normal viewing range.

With the Agon PD27 being a curved monitor viewing angles are much less of a big deal because the curve, especially the 1000R curvature, block the angles at the far sides. But the Agon PD27 did very well, especially considering it has a VA panel. From the bottom angle, you do see lightening up at the top edge, but beyond that, there weren’t any viewing angle issues at all.

For the gamma test, the Agon PD27 came in at 1.9 which is a little below the sweet spot of 2.2 on a windows monitor but better than the other monitors I have tested recently.

The Agon PD27 has a refresh rate of 240 Hz which is extremely impressive and also very hard to show in photographs. For that, I have the blur busters frame skipping test which shows there aren’t any frames being skipped. The short distance of the white bar also shows how well the 240 Hz refresh rate works as well. I then also tested the refresh rate on blur busters as well which came in just a hair below 240 Hz at 239.986 Hz. What I can’t show in photos is that the 240 Hz refresh rate makes everything extremely smooth and in shooters especially it can allow faster reactions and more frames to be able to take the shot.

I also like to take a look at the on-screen menus to see what options you have available and the Agon PD27 is packed full of features. The menu layout is the most unique I’ve ever seen as well. Most have that standard boring menu in the center of the screen but the Agon PD27 has a pop up menu on the bottom right corner with a weird layout. You can use the button on the back of the monitor or the included remote to flip through it and it has a staggering amount of options. To make things easier they do have a few game modes that help turn on relevant gaming features depending on the type of game you are playing which helps. But on top of all of the standard display options, there are also full menus for controlling the lighting effects under and behind the Agon PD27 in both the LightFX and Extra menus.

The Agon PD27 does also have on-screen display options, like just about every gaming-focused monitor these days. The on-screen frame rate display was the coolest though. They also have an optional crosshair as well but I’ll be honest and say that I could only figure out how to turn this on and off. I was never able to find a way to change the crosshair design or color which most other monitors have as an option.

Overall and Final Verdict

The partnership between AOC and Porsche Design is an interesting one because they do complement each other well. On the tech side of things, AOC knows what they are doing but monitors aren’t known for being stylish. This is where Porsche Design comes into play, with the Agon PD27 they did put the monitor in a class of its own when it comes to styling. The polished metal bar stand is very heavy duty and isn’t something you would want to hide at all. I mentioned it earlier and it sums the Agon PD27 up well. This isn’t a standard monitor, it is furniture for people who are trying to incorporate a gaming setup into a room. For most of us, myself included we build our PC to our style and maybe even add accents and decorations in the office around our PC, but the desk area is often the same look. The Agon PD27 combines actual high-end gaming performance with the styling, similar to how a few wireless gaming peripherals have been doing recently as well.

The display itself hits the sweet spot in my opinion with the 1440p resolution, especially with the ultra-high refresh rate of 240 Hz. You need to be able to push games up into that range and it is still hard to do at 4K. The 1000R curve on the monitor is more immersive and even if you get outside of the sweet spot the VA panel does a shockingly good job at viewing angles. Having adaptive sync is nice as well, you don’t have to worry about locking yourself in to one specific company, it works will with Nvidia and AMD. HDR also helps push the Agon PD27’s output to have brighter whites and darker blacks. Going back to the styling touches, the included desktop remote is also very unique though it isn’t all that necessary, I would be happy using controls on the monitor. The quick change options that let you flip between multiple display profiles are nice though for flipping from gaming to movies for example.

The Agon PD27 isn’t perfect, the focus on styling ends up bringing up a few downsides that most other monitors don’t have. One of those is that the stand isn’t removable, you can adjust the height, side to side angles, and up and down angles. But if you design you want to use a VESA mount you will be SOL. This is standard on nearly every monitor, even the gaming monitors which have lighting built into their stands so it is important to know. With all of the styling focus, I’m surprised that the power supply ended up being so large and integrated into the cord. Building it into the monitor itself would have made it a little thicker, but if you are going for a clean desk look it is going to be very hard to hide that big power supply. It’s a small issue, but the bezels look small but when you power things up you will notice that they are just as wide as on other monitors. I also had trouble with the integrated crosshair, If I were going to use it I would want the option to have something smaller and maybe to be able to pick a different color. Most gaming monitors have that but I couldn’t find the option in the menu on the Agon PD27. It may be available, but it wasn’t in the manual or easy to find.

The last big consideration is of course the price. The Porsche Design AOC Agon PD27 isn’t cheap and considering the features both on the design and tech side of things that isn’t a surprise at all. It’s going to run you $799.99. That’s a lot of money. That said, if you start to look at similar options. To get a 27-inch 1440p monitor with a 240 Hz refresh rate you would be looking at the Samsung Odyssey G7 which feature for feature is nearly the same including the 1000R curvature and is selling for $888.99 or even more for the Faker Edition. I also think the Porsche Design AOC Agon PD27 has a much nicer stand than the G7 with everything else being the same.

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Author Bio

Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org

Editor-in-chief

You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.