AOC (the display manufacturer, not the American politician) has announced one of its fastest gaming monitors, the Agon AG273QZ. It is a 27-inch display with a Twisted Nematic (TN) panel that offers an incredibly fast refresh rate of up to 240 Hz and an incredibly low response time (MPRT) of 0.5 ms, both of which are very suitable for esports.

What these numbers essentially mean is that the AG273QZ can keep up with the hardware. Whether the converse is true depends on the setup, especially the GPU and CPU (in that order). The native resolution of this display is 2,560x1,440, and it would take a meaty setup to get 240 fps at 1,440p in more demanding games.

If you have that, this is one of the fastest monitors available, although it's unclear if you can overclock the refresh rate to 280 Hz on this model, as the Asus TUF Gaming VG279QM ($399.99 on Newegg) does with its IPS panel, This is a 1080p display.

Here is a summary of the relevant specifications:

IPS and VA panels usually result in better viewing angles and better color accuracy, depending on the model. However, AOC claims that the AG273QZ covers 93.7% of the AdobeRGB color space and 126.4% of the sRGB color space. While these are certainly respectable numbers, we have not spent any hands-on time with this model, so we cannot speak to its actual performance.

As for the 400 nits brightness, it is enough to qualify for VESA's DisplayHDR 400 certification, which this monitor meets. This is also one of the requirements for AMD's FreeSync Premium Pro brand, which this monitor also boasts.

We wish AOC would include the more commonly used gray-to-gray (GtG) response time metric. Nevertheless, MPRT is gaining popularity; according to the folks at Blur Busters, the MPRT evaluation is more useful.

As for refresh rates, at least for now, I don't know of any monitors that go faster than this without overclocking; there are 300Hz laptops, and Asus said at CES that it will have a 360Hz G-Sync monitor later this year. But like the VG279QM, it too is a 1080p display.

The AG273QZ will be available later this month for £659. No word on when it will be available in the U.S. or how much it will cost, but if we translate the exchange rate as is, it will be about $857.