Porsche Design has quite a history in designing monitors, with the first going back to the Nineties. However, the studio never designed a gaming monitor until now: Porsche Design AOC AGON 27 is its first, and it’s quite impressive, primarily for its unique look, which come combined with a “high performance 240Hz VA panel with QHD resolution and true immersive gaming experience enabled by its 1000R curvature”, as Cesar Acosta, Product Manager at AOC explains to Domus.
A wonderful tool for gamers, but not only for them; this device was designed to assure an experience “as that of a racing car”, says the press release. The monitor, Cesar Acosta points out, it’s suitable for mixed usage and really good for working. “With the growing popularity of gaming in the past year, where people could spend much more time on playing their favourite titles and at the same time needing a well-equipped home-office, gaming monitor seems like a perfect solution meeting both needs. Especially, most gaming models these days have great picture quality and ergonomic features and can meet the needs of people working at their desks for long hours”. And with the global work scenario changing, with a more flexible and nomadic approach that’s forecasted, AOC is also planning to expand AOC’s portfolio of portable monitors.
This monitor “is a premium product meeting the requirements of most demanding users”, and that’s why it’s provided with four different input ports, “to address multiple functionalities and versatility, and to offer multiple digital input connectors has serious advantages”: so there are two HDMIs – the generale standard in the market – and two DPs. “DP connector as you’ll get the maximum refresh rate and resolution”, says Acosta.
Recipient of a Red Dot Award, the monitor features a curved display, as it’s fancy for gaming in our days, but could be a minus when using it to edit a doc or photoshipping a picture, and a wonderful base, an intertwining of metallic tubes, which is the most disruptive part of the outstanding design provided by Porsche Design. “We tried to combine the action loaded environment of gamers with the virtues of our studio”, says Roland Heiler, Chief Design Officer at Porsche Design Group. The clean design of the screen, the CDO explains, is complemented by the chrome-plated race car inspired structure of the stand, which is the innovative element here, with looks that you wouldn’t expect from a gaming monitor, and still fits perfectly, being elegant and dynamic at the same time.
“Pairing these two elements creates an exciting tension and visual entertainment and still respects the puristic and technical approach of the Porsche Design brand”, Roland Helier comments, adding that “the most difficult challenge certainly was in translating the stand structure design into a manufacturable product”, and pointing out how the AOC engineers did a remarkable job in achieving this.
The monitor projects the Porsche Design logo on the surface it’s standing on, and it’s not simply a detail, looking more like a signature. Not the most minimalistic, actually, and something that could feel “too much” in a regular design context, but this is a gaming product, a context where there is “room for a bit more flexibility”, Porsche Design’s CDO says. After all, as he explains, this was a first time for the studio, and he admits that the approach evolved during the design process of the monitor: “We learned a lot about the world of gaming”, he concludes.
