Porsche Design AOC Agon PD32M review: Premium price, premium performance

The AOC Porsche Design PD32M is one of the latest in the slew of Mini-LED monitors to hit the market, at 4k and 144Hz, offering a beautiful 4K panel, is this gaming monitor worth the hype?

AOC’s Agon line is known for producing high-end gaming monitors, and near the precipice of its stack lies the Porche Design PD32M. Sporting a Mini-LED panel, and a host of other high-end features, is it worth the $1799 price tag?

Key specs

• Screen size: 32-inches
• Panel type: IPS Mini-LED
• Resolution: 3840 x 2160
• Brightness: 600 nits
• Contrast ratio: 1000:1
• Refresh rate: 144Hz
• Response time: 1ms
• Color gamut: 156% sRGB, 90% DCI-P3, 99% Adobe RGB
• Connectivity: DisplayPort 1.4 x1, HDMI 2.1 x 2
• Price: $1799
• Where to buy: Porche Design

Included in the box: PD32M monitor, Power cable & regional sockets, HDMI 2.1 cable, Monitor controller, pre-calibration report, assembly guide, USB-C to USB-C cable

Setup

The box for the PD32M is massive and well-packed with foam inserts that protect the monitor in transit. Once opened, you’ll get a separate box full of cables, which simply slots in at the top. After you remove the stand, you easily gain access to the monitor. From there, it’s a simple click to slot the monitor into the stand, and you’re ready to go. We were surprised at how easy it all was, though this is a fairly large monitor, and in order to not damage it, we recommend that you set this up with two people.

Design

The PD32M is a gorgeous-looking monitor. With a hefty V-shaped stand, which protrudes at its base, and simple mounting mechanisms. This monitor is an absolute stunner. The plastic of the monitor itself feels extremely high-quality, and around the back, you can find all the connectivity that you can shake a stick at.

Around the front, you can find the monitor’s relatively slim bezels, in addition to “Porsche Design” emblazoned on the bottom. Over on the stand, you can also see a projection of the Porsche Design logo projected on the bottom, which is a neat touch.

There’s a smattering of RGB around the back, which feels fairly redundant since you’ll never actually be looking at any of it. There’s also an additional headphone holder around the side, which neatly pops out. However, it just felt a little too cheap to put our Steelseries Arctis Nova Pro headset on.

The stand is extremely impressive, it tilts forward, and back, swivels left, and right, and can also pivot 90 degrees each way. Finally, you can also VESA mount the monitor, if it’s rather a large stand is not to your liking.

The PD32m has oodles of ports, including four USB 3.2 ports, a USB-B, and a USB-C port, to boot. The amount of IO on offer here is extremely impressive, and will surely come in handy for those looking to hook up all manner of devices to the monitor itself.

We had very few complaints, aside from the footprint that the included stand leaves on your desk. The PD32M is sturdy, looks great, and the matte panel will surely fit in with anyone’s setup.

Panel quality

This Mini-LED panel is exceptional, and the color accuracy of this monitor rivals an OLED panel. However, the black uniformity isn’t quite as good. It’s certainly a step above most other monitors, but it’s still there. With local dimming zones, you can tell that each part of the monitor can dynamically adjust while using HDR. This is achieved after enabling it through the easy-to-use OSD, which comes with a controller of its own, too.

This monitor has ports for days.

The color accuracy of the monitor is fantastic, and we can’t understate just how great games look on here. Through all of the effects onscreen in Final Fantasy XIV, it looked absolutely excellent.

Windows is still awful at HDR, but the PD32 performed in games like Cyberpunk 2077 and made every pixel pop. Using the RTX 4090, we managed to really drive this monitor hard at 4K / 144Hz in single-player titles. Through everything that we threw at it, it managed to look leaps ahead of the 1440p TN panel that we were previously using. The neon-drenched streets of Night City never looked so good, especially when in tandem with G-Sync. There were occasions when we saw overlap in the dimming zones, however, it still managed to look excellent.

Gaming performance

At 144Hz, the PD32M absolutely sings. In CS:GO, we accurately saw all of our enemies with ease. However, while 144Hz is indeed impressive on a 4K panel, it’s not at a competitive level. You’ll need a 360Hz or above panel for that, and at 4K, it just isn’t worth it.

While gaming in SDR, the colors got a little muddied out of the box, blacks looked slightly compressed and crunchy. This is slightly disappointing, as the monitor sings in HDR content.

The stand can be adjusted in all manner of different ways.

We really recommend this monitor to be used while playing single-player titles that support HDR. That’s where the real value lies, and where this monitor really looks best. While using the HDMI 2.1 ports over on the back, the monitor looks really incredible on PS5.

Consoles have easier access to HDR, and when in games, titles like Demon’s Souls stunned us with how great the image looked. You’re not going to get OLED performance, but it gets damn close.

Should you buy it?

The PD32M is certainly an extremely impressive monitor. With 1ms of input latency in addition to a host of other features, and enough IO to make a motherboard blush, it’s an absolute titan. However, the price is incredibly steep, and it’ll be a tough pill to swallow for most. Let’s be honest, you can get an OLED TV for the asking price of this monitor. For this price, you could get a speedy esports panel and an OLED TV for all those HDR single-player experiences.

But, if you were really looking for one of the highest-end gaming monitors, you won’t be disappointed by the PD32M. You’ll just have to cough up enough cash to justify doing so.

7/10

The PD32M is a titan of a gaming monitor, boasting excellent build quality and a great Mini-LED panel with a speedy response time at 4K. However, it’s just too expensive to recommend to most people. However, if you’re one of the lucky few with an RTX 4090 and this monitor, you’ll get great 4K, 144Hz performance. The number of people who can actually drive a monitor of this caliber is just too small, and there are better options out there for those who don’t.