Arzopa M1RC Monitor Review: Respectable Budget Specs, But Reality Holds It Back
Advantages
- Cheap for its specs
- USB-C connection
- The screen is relatively slim and sturdy
Disadvantages
- Low brightness and contrast
- Some ghosting
- Not bright enough for HDR
- The stand is not really adjustable and may be too short, causing the screen to wobble.
When you’re shopping on a tight budget, it’s easy to be seduced by a product that offers a handful of enhanced features at a discount. That’s exactly what the Arzopa M1RC — a 27-inch, 1440p panel with a 180Hz refresh rate and Adaptive Sync — attempts to do, with specs that elevate it above the 24- or 25-inch, 1080p, 144Hz baseline of gaming monitors. The Arzopa M1RC offers all of that for a retail price of $269, though street prices have gone as low as $169, and more during sale season.
The thing is, specs are only part of the story. The M1RC certainly delivers on its reported resolution and refresh rate, offering reasonably sharp gaming images and fluid motion. It could still be faster, and the pixel response time leaves behind some faint ghosting nonetheless. But the rest of the experience is much more modest. Build isn’t exceptional, the kickstand is subpar, and HDR support doesn’t say anything about HDR quality.
Arzopa M1RC
| Price | $270 |
|---|---|
| Size (diagonal) | 27 inch/69 cm |
| Panel and backlight | Fast IPS |
| Flat or curved | Right |
| Resolution and pixel density | 2560×1440, 108 ppi |
| Aspect Ratio | 16:9 |
| Maximum color gamut | 100% sRGB, 82% DCI-P3 |
| Brightness (nits, peak) | 350 |
| HDR | HDR10 |
| Adaptive synchronization | AMD FreeSync |
| Maximum vertical refresh rate | 180Hz |
| Gray to gray response time | 5 ms (standard), 1 ms (overdrive) |
| Connections | 1x HDMI 2.0, 1x DP1.4, 1x USB-C (15W PD) |
| Sound | Headphone jack |
| VESA mountable | Yes, 100×100 mm |
| Panel Warranty | 12 months warranty |
| Release Date | April 2023 |
Still, seeing the price low enough can be a slam dunk for the buyer and deter you from looking for alternatives, as you’ll likely be faced with an abundance of inferior alternatives. But there are diamonds in the rough, and the likes of the HP Omen 27Q, Asus ROG Strix XG27ACS And Acer Nitro XV272U Vbmiiprx all of them far outperform the Arzopa M1RC. They too have higher retail prices but fluctuating street prices, so on any given day they could be the more affordable option, and would definitely be worth buying instead.
The Arzopa M1RC has almost every downside of a budget monitor. It sits on one of the most rudimentary stands we’ve ever seen, and offers no rotation, swivel, or height adjustment. All you get is vertical tilt. I had to bend down to see the screen, which makes for pretty poor ergonomics on a monitor you’ll be using for hours on end. You’ll likely want some sort of riser to get a better height, and those kinds of extra accessories can quickly depreciate the value of the product. While the stand is sturdy, it’s still fragile and can cause the monitor to wobble if shaken even slightly.
One of the few things that sets the Arzopa M1RC apart from the rest is the joystick on the back that lets you navigate through the settings menu. Joysticks are more common on more expensive models and can be less of a hindrance when navigating through on-screen menus than the row of buttons found on many budget monitors.
The short stand does not support any adjustments other than tilt.
Unlike others, however, clicking the joystick does not select but rather turns the monitor on/off, so if you’re trying to adjust settings and accidentally press the joystick, you’ll quickly become frustrated. Unfortunately, there’s little reason to actually use the joystick other than to switch inputs. Very few of the settings offer meaningful improvements to image quality. You might want to enable FreeSync, but otherwise leaving the settings as they come out of the box is as good as the Arzopa M1RC gets.
Arzopa has also added a USB-C port, which is still surprisingly rare in monitors — especially budget monitors — that offer both video input and 15 watts of power to a connected device. That’s joined by an HDMI 2.0 port and a DisplayPort 1.4 port. Arzopa has included a DisplayPort cable, but the length and rigidity combined with the low positioning of the monitor means that it will bump into whatever surface it’s sitting on with little chance of clean cable routing.
The monitor itself is built around fairly thick plastic, though it’s certainly quite sturdy. The panel is also slim. And should you want to upgrade the setup a bit — there are bolt holes on the back for VESA mounting.
Color measurements
The Arzopa M1RC comes with a handful of different picture modes, but none of them are what we’d consider good. Out of the box, the monitor is set to the Standard profile at 80% brightness, which equates to 254 nits. Cranked up to 100%, the best we could measure was just under 300 nits — not close to 350 nits — but the anti-glare finish helps compensate a bit. The low brightness does give it weak contrast for an IPS panel, coming in well under 1000:1 at all settings.
Color is a little cool at a white point of 7900K to 8200K depending on the preset, but unless your eyes are sensitive to color shifts it shouldn’t be a huge issue. It delivers a respectable 99% coverage of the sRGB gamut and 83% coverage of the P3 color space, which is not bad for the price. Color accuracy is on point for most colors, but is skewed by a single shade of blue that has a habit of being way off.
Color performance
| Preset | Gamut (% coverage) | White point | Gamma | Typical brightness (nits) | Contrast | Accuracy (DE1976 average/max) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard (default 80% brightness) | 99% (sRGB), 83% (P3) | 7900K | 2.3 | 254 | 810:1 | 0.67/5.64 |
| Standard (100% brightness) | 99% (sRGB), 83% (P3) | 8000K | 2.3 | 274 | 760:1 | 0.6/5.71 |
| Photo | 99% (sRGB), 83% (P3) | 7900K | 2.4 | 139 | 640:1 | 0.84/5.66 |
| Film | 99% (sRGB), 84% (P3) | 8200K | 2.3 | 285 | 850:1 | 1.05/6.36 |
| HDR standard | 69% (P3) | 10546K | n/a | 239 | 703:1 (based on min. black of 0.34 nits) | n/a |
Arzopa has an HDR mode for the M1RC, but as with all low-brightness displays, to say it’s mediocre would be an understatement. Enabling it severely restricts the colour gamut and peak brightness. Not good. This also comes with an extremely cold (blue-cast) white point above 10,000K, which might trick you into thinking you’re seeing a brighter image but doesn’t actually make images any brighter. I’d have been quite shocked to see such poor performance here if HDR on budget monitors hadn’t so frequently disappointed, and if I hadn’t seen similar downgrades to images with HDR on a second Arzopa monitor I tested.
Like most gaming monitors, the Arzopa M1RC includes a few different profiles for gaming. Again, though, these offer little in the way of meaningful difference for users. Gamut and contrast remain largely unchanged — and in the case of the FPS mode, they drop to a pitiful 520:1 due to overly bright black levels. While these tweaks can help with tweaks to color or increased shadows that keep more detail visible, that visibility comes at the cost of visual quality.
Sometimes you get nice surprises from cheap products, but usually you really do get what you pay for. Unless it’s on sale and you’re not picky, the Arzopa M1RC falls firmly in the latter category.
How we tested
Measurements for the Innocn 28C1Q were performed with a SpyderX Elite colorimeter using SpyderX Elite from DataColor software for SDR. Results of color accuracy measurements are reported in Delta E 1976 using the Datacolor 48-color patch test.
Please note that individual results may vary from those reported by the manufacturer. This may be due to different color patch sets, colorimeters, delta E calculations, settings, and more.
