Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
Viewing Angles, Uniformity, Lag And Gaming Tests
To learn how we measure screen uniformity, please click here.
AMVA is a bit weak in the viewing angle department, falling squarely between IPS and TN in quality. It’s not a deal-breaker by any means, and we saw no issues at normal viewing distances with real-world content. At 45 degrees to the side, you’ll see a shift to red and green and an obvious light falloff. There is no loss of detail however. From the top, the color change is similar and gamma is visibly affected. You can still see all the brightness steps, but only barely. We still feel the C3583FQ, or any other AMVA curved monitor, is well-qualified for a multi-screen installation.
Screen Uniformity
Artifacts like backlight bleed or IPS glow can really affect games and video content that contain a lot of dark shadowy material. Even when a monitor sports high contrast, these anomalies can be a spoiler. Fortunately the C3583FQ has none of these problems. Both the white and black field tests yield results comfortably below 10%. In looking over the raw data, there are slightly-hot zones in the center (top to bottom), which is likely a function of the tight 2000R curvature.
Color uniformity is about average among all the monitors we’ve tested. It seems that neither the curve nor the AMVA technology has any effect on the result. A 2.10dE variation is invisible to the naked eye and puts the AOC mid-pack in today’s group of ultra-wide screens.
Pixel Response And Input Lag
Please click here to read up on our pixel response and input lag testing procedures.
The C3583FQ offers a maximum refresh rate of 160Hz, which in our experience is the highest currently available in the FreeSync category. Given its 2560x1080 resolution, it shouldn’t be too hard to approach 160fps with a high-end GPU. That’s where you’ll find the lowest level of motion blur and the least latency. We performed our tests at 160Hz and recorded mid-level results: 9ms for the screen draw and 34ms total input lag.
The top finisher is the G-Sync Acer Z35, but there’s that price premium again. The BenQ XR3501 doesn’t offer adaptive refresh but it does top out at 144Hz which makes tearing almost a non-issue. But it too costs more. AOC has really made a price breakthrough here. Considering these results, it’s hard not to call it a performance bargain.
Gaming With FreeSync
The C3583FQ’s lower limit of 45Hz might seem at first glance to be a liability, but don’t forget its relatively low resolution. Pushing 2.76 mega-pixels doesn’t require a ton of processing horsepower. Achieving high framerates won’t be that difficult or expensive. As always, we start our gaming tests by adjusting detail levels to find a monitor’s motion-processing sweet spot. Since 160Hz means the sky’s the limit, we started with Far Cry 4 on High detail.
This game has a lot of organic and detailed textures but they are mostly viewed from afar. Things like leafy trees and grassy slopes retained their sharpness even when the mouse was moved quickly. Overdrive should be left at its medium setting to avoid ghosting. The Strong option results in annoying ringing even when motion is slow. Framerates stayed comfortably above 45fps so we never saw any tearing. We weren’t able to explore higher speeds here, however. The processing requirements are beyond the capabilities of our Radeon R9 285.
Tomb Raider on the other hand will maintain 100fps or greater even when game play gets intense. On its high detail setting we enjoyed a very smooth experience with no perceived latency whatsoever. We did notice a little smearing however when moving close to complex textures like stones or moss. It was an initial disappointment, but after playing a while we found it easy to ignore thanks to the game’s quick responses and stutter-free movement.
Battlefield 4 provided a similar experience and since its graphics are more industrial looking, there was no softening, even when we moved the mouse rapidly. We were able to ratchet detail up to Very High with framerates still hovering around 100.
It’s a forgone conclusion that users with high-end GPUs should have little trouble setting their games up for maximum detail and extremely high framerates. This kind of smoothness, coupled with the wraparound feel of the C3583FQ’s 2000R curvature, can really add to a game’s realism and suspension of disbelief.
