AOC’s e2440Va looks expensive, complete with curvy lines and translucent plastic. But AOC hasn’t left enough in the budget for a fancy IPS panel: instead, the e2440Va comes with a standard LED-backlit TN panel.
It’s basic elsewhere too, with a solitary DVI and D-SUB input and a 3.5mm audio jack on the rear. The integrated speakers are thin and tinny sounding, and the external power supply is a disappointment too.
With a measured brightness of 229cd/m’ and a contrast ratio of 818:1, the e2440Va is a touch shy of its claimed specifications. The LED backlighting was a little uneven, but we didn’t notice any backlight bleed. Power consumption is low: the e2440Va drew only 16W from the wall in our power test.
Image quality is no match for the IPS monitors on test. We found colors looked a touch unnatural. It struggled to reproduce the rich palette of blues and greens in our Avatar Blu-ray, leaving many scenes looking washed out and lacking in vibrancy.
With an average Delta E of 4.2, and a maximum of 9.7, it’s no wonder the monitor’s colour reproduction looks a bit off to the naked eye. We managed to improve quality a little by changing the gamma setting to Mode 3, which lowered average Delta ETO 3.7, and improved grey scale performance, but it still lagged behind the best.
And that poor image quality is what does for the AOC e2440Va in the end. It just isn’t good enough to keep up with the competition, and the price isn’t low enough to compensate. We’d advise you to look elsewhere.
