Upgrading your monitor is one of the simplest upgrades to make to just about any gaming setup. So, if you're sitting out on upgrading your system due to skyrocketing memory prices, why not upgrade your ancient monitor? That's where this great AOC 27-inch IPS panel comes in. Discounted to just $169.99 at Best Buy, it's about time to dust off that old panel and allow it to become a secondary display, especially if you're still rocking a 60Hz monitor.
The Q27G42ZE comes in at a great price point, considering all of the features on offer, including G-Sync compatibility. When paired with a fast 240Hz refresh rate, it'll be worlds apart from the older monitors of yore, and you'll soon become aggravated at any panel that can't match the kind of fluidity.
Equipped with an $80 saving off its list price, the Q27G42ZE fulfils a sweet spot for many avid PC gamers. 27 inches is a solid size for 1440p, meaning that your PC can focus on pushing out frames to saturate that 240Hz refresh rate, instead.
You don't always need the most expensive panel to get a super-solid monitor, now that higher refresh rates have become commonplace, even in productivity monitors. So, at least spec-wise, the AOC Q27G42ZE appears to fit right into that sweet spot of price-to-performance for a "good enough" gaming monitor which suits most systems.
Competitive gaming titles are often optimized for performance over fancy graphical frills. Speaking of which, if you're playing competitive games, you'll have the added advantage of a quick response time, to boot.
Do note that there is some discrepancy between Best Buy's listing and AOC's official website, which reports a 0.3ms MPRT response time, with a 1ms GTG, while Best Buy reports a more generic 0.5ms response time. The panel also has access to a motion blur reduction function and a low input lag mode.
The panel is also capable of outputting HDR10, if you're willing to put up with Windows' frustrating HDR experience (ask me how I know), and a matte finish on the display itself, offering a tradeoff between color depth and less glare. If you're so inclined, you can also overclock the refresh rate to 260Hz if you're dead set on getting the most performance out of it.
Either way, AOC's Q27G42ZE has just about everything you might want in a modest gaming monitor. Thanks to its $169.99 price point at Best Buy for Black Friday, you won't have to shell out hundreds of dollars for something that appears to be pretty good, too.
If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best Black Friday PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, or CPU Deals pages.
