Goodbye to 1080p as the standard: AOC now sells more 1440p monitors than Full HD

For years, Full HD has been the near-mandatory starting point for any PC gamer: cheap, undemanding on hardware and backed by the full catalogue of high-refresh-rate monitors. According to an interview published by Vandal, that reign is starting to crack. César Acosta, Senior Director of Gaming Products at AGON by AOC, has confirmed that 2026 is the first year in which the brand has sold more 1440p (QHD) monitors than 1080p ones.

The news matters because it is not a forecast or marketing wishful thinking, but real sales data from one of the most widespread gaming monitor manufacturers. And it lines up with what the Steam hardware surveys have been showing for some time: 1080p is still the majority thanks to its enormous installed base, but 1440p is steadily gaining ground. When the company selling the screens and the platform measuring them point in the same direction, it pays to take notice.

What you need to know

• In 2026, AGON by AOC is selling more QHD monitors than Full HD for the first time, as Acosta explains to Vandal.
• The Steam surveys still place 1080p as the majority resolution, although 1440p keeps growing at a steady pace.
• Full HD's lead comes down to its installed base: there is a huge number of rigs and screens already in use that do not get replaced all at once.
• Vandal believes 1440p will become the new standard for PC gaming, and the sales trend backs that reading.
• The source offers no percentages or exact figures, so the scale of the shift has yet to be confirmed.

What changes for PC gamers

The jump from 1080p to 1440p is not cosmetic. A QHD panel has considerably more pixels than a Full HD one, which translates into more sharpness, cleaner text and an image that holds up better on larger screen sizes. The trade-off is obvious: the graphics card has to work harder to push the same frames. For a long time that cost was too high for anyone who prioritises refresh rate, which is why 1080p has been the go-to resolution in competitive play.

What has changed is the supply. High-refresh-rate 1440p monitors have stopped being a niche product and have become the mid-range of every catalogue, while upscaling techniques and current hardware make holding high frame rates at QHD a reasonable goal for a mid-range rig. When the entry price drops and performance stops being a hurdle, consumers migrate, and that is exactly what AOC is seeing in its sales.

Why 1080p holds on so long

Selling more QHD monitors does not mean Full HD will vanish from the surveys overnight. A monitor lasts for years, gaming laptops still ship with 1080p panels in bulk, internet cafés and LAN tournaments replace their equipment at a trickle, and plenty of people simply do not change what works. Steam measures what is plugged in, not what is sold this quarter, so the 1080p majority will take a while to fall even though the market for new units has already turned.

Our take

At Underworld Lordz we have been recommending 1440p to anyone upgrading their setup for a while now, and this data only confirms that the market has arrived at the same place. For a competitive player the priority remains the same: stable frames and minimal latency. But today you no longer have to choose between sharpness and speed; a good high-refresh QHD panel delivers both, and on top of that it makes reading the minimap, picking out silhouettes at a distance or following a stream chat far more comfortable. Anyone buying a new 1080p monitor today is buying a screen that is already dated out of the box.

For content creators the argument is even clearer. Recording and streaming from a 1440p desktop gives you room to crop, rescale and reframe without the image falling apart, and video platforms are increasingly punishing footage that looks soft. If your screen is the first camera on your channel, it had better have enough pixels.

That said, we need to be critical of the message. A manufacturer announcing that it sells more QHD is also an elegant way of saying it wants you to buy QHD, and the interview provides no percentages that would tell us whether we are looking at a decisive swing or a technical tie. On top of that, a 1440p monitor without a graphics card to match is a poor investment: better a 1080p running at full frame rate than a stuttering QHD. Resolution does not change on its own; the whole rig changes with it.

What do you think?

The trend looks clear, but the decision is still personal and depends on your hardware, your games and your budget. Are you still playing at 1080p to squeeze out every frame, have you already made the jump to 1440p, or are you waiting for 4K to be the next stop? Tell us in the team chat or on our Discord and let's talk it over.