AOC C3583FQ 35-inch Curved Ultra-Wide FreeSync Monitor Review

Reviews
By Christian Eberle
published

Is price still preventing you from picking up a curved ultra-wide monitor? You might want to check out AOC’s 35-inch C3583FQ selling for only $600. We’re checking out this 160Hz FreeSync screen in our lab today.

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OSD Setup And Calibration

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AOC’s unique menu system carries over to the C3583FQ with its strip of options that appear at the bottom-center of the screen. It’s one of the most efficient OSDs we’ve worked with. While it doesn’t have a lot of options, it doesn’t leave much out either.

The first section is called luminance, and it’s where you’ll find brightness, contrast, gamma, and other related controls. Eco Mode refers to the six picture presets. Standard is the default and the only place where all calibration controls are available. We found a seventh preset in the Color Temp menu called sRGB and as it turns out, that is the best out-of-box setting. We’ll provide more details below. Also in this menu is the Overdrive control. We found Medium to be the best option. Higher settings cause visible ghosting which ultimately robs the image of detail in fast-moving content.

In the Color Temp menu you’ll find four fixed presets plus an adjustable User mode. The RGB sliders are very precise and start at center-range which is a good thing.

The Picture Boost menu contains AOC’s unique BrightFrame feature. It places a sizeable and moveable window on the screen whose brightness and contrast can be adjusted independently from the surrounding image. It allows the user to highlight any desired area of the picture.

OSD setup controls things like transparency, position and timeout for the menus. We saw no need to move it from its convenient spot at the bottom of the screen.

Remaining options are in the Extras menu along with signal information indicating the resolution and refresh rate of incoming material. There are a number of different aspect ratio options that will help you get signals of all sizes to fit properly within the C3583FQ’s 21:9 shape. The default option, Full, stretches all resolutions to fill the screen. This can sometimes result in image distortion so take care to match pixel counts carefully when gaming or watching video.

Calibration

As shipped, the C3583FQ is set to the Standard picture mode. It doesn’t look too bad, although whites are a little too warm and gamma is clearly too dark. Changing to Gamma 2 gets you pretty close to 2.2 and that might be enough for most users. Those who wish to improve color accuracy have two choices: select the sRGB option in the Color Temp menu, or perform a full calibration in Standard mode. sRGB aces all our color tests but has one limitation: output is fixed at a bright 300cd/m2. Standard is fully adjustable but has slightly over-saturated color. It doesn’t make for an ideal measured result, but the image looks nice and vivid. And you have full control over peak output. If you want to try the latter option, here are our recommended settings.

Swipe to scroll horizontally
AOC C3583FQ Calibration Settings
EcoStandard
Brightness 200cd/m258
Brightness 120cd/m228
Brightness 100cd/m220
Brightness 80cd/m213
Brightness 50cd/m23
Contrast45
Gamma2
Color Temp UserRed 42, Green 48, Blue 56
Christian Eberle
Christian Eberle
Contributing Editor

Christian Eberle is a Contributing Editor for Tom's Hardware US. He's a veteran reviewer of A/V equipment, specializing in monitors. Christian began his obsession with tech when he built his first PC in 1991, a 286 running DOS 3.0 at a blazing 12MHz. In 2006, he undertook training from the Imaging Science Foundation in video calibration and testing and thus started a passion for precise imaging that persists to this day. He is also a professional musician with a degree from the New England Conservatory as a classical bassoonist which he used to good effect as a performer with the West Point Army Band from 1987 to 2013. He enjoys watching movies and listening to high-end audio in his custom-built home theater and can be seen riding trails near his home on a race-ready ICE VTX recumbent trike. Christian enjoys the endless summer in Florida where he lives with his wife and Chihuahua and plays with orchestras around the state.

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33 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Bibbit
    Is this worth getting if you own an nVidia card?
    Reply
  • Xajel
    1080p on 35" ....... really !!
    Reply
  • SinisterMessiah
    Enough with the 1080p monitors...what year is it?
    Reply
  • psycher1
    Lost me at 1080. I don't care about the size at that point, 1080 anything shouldn't be above $300 today.

    And at 35''? With this, you're going to get $600 of near CRT size pixels. I have a 27'' ($250) and, with it on my desk in front of me, pixels are already easily defined. In game as well, it's the one element holding back my otherwise stunning experience in W3 right now.
    Add another 8'' to that, without enhancing the resolution, it'd be too much.

    The only benefit I can see is if you sit far away from the screen (e.g. couch on the other side of the room) and watch movies with people (using something like VLC to zoom already 21:9 movies to fill the screen).
    Reply
  • rgd1101
    it a wide 2560x1080, not the 1920x1080
    Reply
  • realibrad
    You guys realize this is not a 1920x1080 monitor right? This monitor has 33% more pixles than a 1080 monitor. If you dont think 33% is a big enough jump, then realize that a 1440 (2560x1440) is only 33% above this monitory.

    So, those who say things like 1080 whaaaaa, just know that you do not know what you are talking about. If the height matters so much to you, I would gladly sell you my 1920 monitor...*rotates monitor 90 degrees.
    Reply
  • ohim
    @BIBBIT You can use it without issues on an Nvidia card, you just won`t benefit from the FreeSync specs.

    the monitor is a failure due to resolution, 35" and 2560*1080 is very poor.
    My 21:9 34" LG monitor has 3440x1440 ~ 110 ppi
    a typical 24" 1080 screen has ~91 ppi
    this monitor has 79 ppi

    The resolution is crap, you`ll be able to see the individual pixels on the monitor while working on it ... i wouldn`t recommend this monitor to anybody.
    Reply
  • tegiri nenashi
    Yet another ultrashort waste of pixels on the sides.
    Reply
  • ahnilated
    All I had to see was "curved" and they lost me.
    Reply
  • Sam Hain
    Concerns with 1080p can be negated with DSR settings (2k & 4k sim-rez) when gaming and it's FREE... It's a relatively SIMPLE setup-process that produces pretty decent results and for $600, you can't complain about that.

    If a 1080p monitor were placed in DSR x1.78 and the markings were removed from the monitor and a game were running on it, with appropriate graphics settings applied to the corresponding GPU, you'd have a hard time distinguishing it from an actual 1440p monitor or a 4k one for that matter when DSR'd.

    Pixel density... Unless you're sitting within 18 inches or have your mug right up on the monitor, you're not going to notice this when it's in 1080p on the desktop, web, word-processing, programs, etc.

    My .02 cents... Spend your $1K on a monitor that WILL have glow issues while this monitor will allow $400 to be applied elsewhere in a system/upgrades or a GPU upgrade down the road and still have performance to match that the naked eye may or may not be able to discern.
    Reply