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recently we checked out the three cheapest

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144hz gaming monitors that we could get on amazon.com and we were pretty

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impressed well mostly

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except for one common problem that they all had they're all running a by modern

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standards lower 1920x1080 resolution

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so today we've got something new for you guys we've actually never covered a

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product from aoc before but this the cq27 g127 stood out to us for a number

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of reasons one it's 144 hertz which

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means theoretically it should be great for gaming two it's running at 2560 by

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1440 resolution three it's got a va

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rather than a tn panel and four it comes

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in at just 280 us dollars we couldn't find anything

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else that has this feature set at this price point so we've got high

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expectations and hopefully they don't disappoint us

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instantly see your current and past network activity detect malware and

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block badly behaving apps on your pc or Android device with glassware use offer

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code Linus to get 25 off glasswire at the link in the video description

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i'm actually pretty excited about this because we've had a ton of requests to

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cover aoc in the past but the main reason that we haven't done it

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is that ever since the crt days their presence in north america has been

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fairly limited so i i've been aware that

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they're kind of a big deal over in europe and i believe asia but over here

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they've had basically very little availability and certainly

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no marketing so i

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don't really know what to expect because even from other media outlets i haven't

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like read a ton of reviews of their products or anything like that first impressions

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of the stand are pretty good it's got a nice metal base under a fairly

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tastefully if a touch gamery top

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tool-less assembly is always a nice touch

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honestly i gotta say initial impressions

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pretty positive so far height adjustable stand i mean to be clear this is not

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like a 140 gaming monitor or anything like the ones

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we looked at last time but considering how much higher their

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costs would be to get this better panel technology it's a larger display

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i i am i'm pretty pleased so far with the

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overall fit and finish now i can't say that this is a perfect

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job that they've done of the uh the plastic housing here you can actually

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see some of the tape that they've used to probably put the

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um see this unit in the back here that houses the power supply and the scaling

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and all that stuff you can see some of the tape they've used to like tape it on

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but in terms of the like the overall feel of

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it it doesn't feel cheap it doesn't feel crappy and we've got a reasonable if

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unexceptional i o so there's no built-in usb hub but you've got dual HDMI ports

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displayport a headphone jack and a power

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supply built into the monitor rather than as an external brick which some

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people care about it's not a huge deal for me but it is considered a better

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feature all right the toollessness continues here

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and we're just going to peel this off bezels are looking pretty slim actually

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and this is nice not just power cable included but also

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displayport and HDMI so in terms of adjustability we've got

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your tilt we've got your swivel

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no pivot but we do have height adjust i still remember when that used to be like a

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super premium feature now it's only really cheap stuff that

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it's not included on it's really nice makes a big difference immediately

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the deep blacks on this monitor are quite

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noticeable compared to if we were looking at like a an entry-level ips or especially

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a tn like as this wallpaper

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fades off towards the edges it's it's quite dark not bad at all all right 144

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hertz option showed up just fine there yes

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and because this is a variable refresh rate

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monitor that means that even if it is not certified g-sync compatible we can

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enable g-sync and it is in fact enabled right now so

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without further ado why don't we fire up some games now feels like a good time to

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have a look at the on-screen menu everything here is reasonably intuitive

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personally i prefer just an instant switch rather than animation

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i can see how they might do that bright

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frame what even am i looking at here

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can you see anything let's see oh what the crap

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oh what it just brightens the top corner of the

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screen so it's like a faded out washed out

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section in the top left corner so you can change the brightness

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contrast you can move the position of it around actually you can put it wherever

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you want guys let me know in the comments

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what is this feature for i would love to know i thought that was

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interesting game mode is off by default

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oh that's the FPS mode

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that looks terrible

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okay hold on a second let's get uh let's get

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our settings adjusted here oops

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i have to say i have just never understood

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these weird color profiles that they create for particular genres of games

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the correct color profile is the accurate color profile because

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that's the way that the developer intended it quite frankly at least

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they've got customizable ones so you can have gamer one gamer two gamer three and

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then you can adjust things that might actually be meaningful like whether you want the low blue light mode on uh so

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you could have like nighttime gaming mode uh whether you want the built-in

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frame counter on that's pretty nice to have so their gamer display modes are

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not necessarily useless just the canned ones are stupid

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okay overdrive can be adjusted to weak medium or strong

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medium is usually the best bet there but we'll play around with that a little bit

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and low input leg we will leave on

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i will say that there's no discernible

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increase in input lag compared to what i'd expect from a 144hz gaming monitor

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so that's nice to see really responsive a touch on the smeary

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side so these are not the fastest pixels that

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i've ever seen by a long shot if you pick up a like a decent tn gaming

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monitor or you know even one of those really

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high-end ips's that lg released recently you're going to see better readability

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of of things like text as you're as you're moving around like this you see

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that everything's got kind of a trail behind it but

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for a va panel i would consider this perfectly reasonable and acceptable

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now one thing that's hard for me to tell right now because i'm playing kind of a

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dark and gloomy game is

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whether this gets any brighter so what i'd like to do is

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get rid of doom let's switch to something like cs go and see if my impressions here are

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correct because it seems like our maximum brightness i mean even just

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opening up something like you know our own website here by the way

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Linus techtips.com is awesome forum you guys should go check it out

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this is supposed to be pretty much white white and it's

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kind of a gray and it's not like we're at a very very low brightness even

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actually the brightness is cranked 100 already

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actually before we do that i wanted to play around with the overdrive settings

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a little bit off is clearly terrible like you guys i'm sure you can see these

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comet trails behind icons as i'm dragging this around on the desktop here

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but as usual strong also yields a really

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kind of over sharpened uh visual artifact-y type

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look and our best bet does once again appear to be medium overdrive in

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fairness white to dark is a very challenging

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scenario so let's actually get that game fired up now

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so this is a little bit more fair uh

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and it's not great and coming out here into the the daytime

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arabic freaking sun here um i've been

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informed from off camera this is a 250

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knit peak brightness display and i believe it because while the

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blacks are deep and that was impressive

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it's a lot less impressive to have deep

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blacks when your monitor is just

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dark i mean maybe this would be the monitor

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for you if you're trying to game at night and be stealthy

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and while you're at it you can grab a hoodie like the one i'm wearing it's the

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LTT stealth hoodie LTT Store.com now to give credit to the strength of this

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monitor the 1440p resolution does look

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a lot clearer than what we were dealing with with those 1080p monitors but

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something that you guys have got to consider is that there is more to the

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perceived sharpness of an image than just the number of pixels and contrast

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is actually a big part of what makes an

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image look clear and sharp and crisp

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so yeah the lines are fine

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but the image doesn't look great so it just feels like the monitor is a little

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self-defeating because it's key feature is that it manages 144 hertz and higher

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resolution but it gives up so much contrast that you lose a lot of the

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perceived image quality and that's not a problem just for like

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scenic games it's it's a problem in general like it's noticeably bland this

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is a bland looking game in the first place but it's really bland like can you

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tell on camera how bland this is you know what no hold on i think what we

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need to do is grab another monitor and swap it out for you guys so david hold

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as still as you can i mean put the camera on sticks put the camera on sticks now this monitor costs about

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twice as much and actually you might have noticed that especially

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in terms of brightness it looks pretty similar except

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funny story this is actually the monitor that we use for b-roll shots so it has

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its brightness turned down to 20 out of

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a hundred in order to make it appear

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um not too bright for certain shots that we do so putting it up at something more

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reasonable like around 80.

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wow that is a really really different

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experience back to our aoc

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the difference is very clear and i'm just going to double check yes we are at

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100 brightness on this thing that's a little unfortunate

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this looks a little bit more palatable right i think that's why all the gamer modes

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have this game color option turned up because it might hurt

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the accuracy of your color but it'll certainly make your games as long as you

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don't go too far like their FPS and their rts modes it'll certainly make

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your game look a little bit more vibrant you can

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see i've overdone it a little bit here so i'd probably say that if it's purely

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for gaming use knowing that you're giving up some of the um the color

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accuracy that you might have gotten in the native profile going to a game color

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of somewhere in the 11 to 13 range improves the playability a lot like it

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makes it not look like i'm looking at a super cheap you know washed out monitor and

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what's interesting you saw that flashbang wasn't even bright what's

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interesting is part of the reason for that is that the way that humans

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perceive brightness is affected by the saturation of the color so looking at a

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more saturated color makes you think that you're looking at something

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brighter even though the panel itself is not particularly bright and if we were

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to alt tab out of the game you can see things like my icons look way overdone

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here so this is a monitor that

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you're definitely giving something up at the price point but if you're willing to

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fidget around with your on-screen menu which to their credit is quite usable

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actually has workarounds that work

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if you're willing to go around them so bringing our ad27qd back up on the table

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this is a clearly better display it looks great not only in games when you

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adjust this dial or on the desktop if you adjust it the

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other way but in both all the time thanks to its 10-bit ips panel and it's

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much higher brightness but

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if you think about it as paying yourself

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250 dollars to adjust a knob every once

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in a while i still think there's a very compelling value argument to be made for

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aoc's display here even if it does

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give up some of the creature comforts that you might get

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with a higher end panel so guys let us know

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does this look like a great option or do you want us to explore some of the other

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1440p 144hz monitors on the market they are a bit more expensive but there's

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options from votech rocksol dell has one it's a fair bit more

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expensive make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss it if you do leave a comment about

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that do you need to create a beautiful website without the hassle well check

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out squarespace their all-in-one platform makes it easy to get up and

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you're having trouble with squarespace they offer webinars a full series of

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help guides and you can even contact their customer support via live chat and

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transfer it over to squarespace and every squarespace site includes

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your inventory and orders so go to squarespace.com forward slash LTT to get

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10 off your first purchase we're gonna have that linked below so thanks for

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watching guys and we will see you in our next budget monitor video which i guess

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we're kind of committed to now hey

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we'll find something