HP ZR24w 24-inch S-IPS LCD Monitor
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31s5ttVZfML._SL160_.jpg
- 16.7M displayable colors, 1920 x 1200 resolution, 7 ms response time and 3000:1 dynamic contrast ratio.
- 8-way comfort adjust stand that provides tilt, pivot, swivel, and column height adjustability
- Input signal: DisplayPort; DVI-D; VGA
- I/O Ports: 5 USB 2.0
The ZR24w has an 85% efficient power supply, while the chassis is made up of least 25% recycled resin, so you can be confident the ZR24w has the responsible features your business requires.
HP Monitor
HP ZR24w 24-inch S-IPS LCD Monitor
List Price: $ 545.12
Price:
Good all-rounder monitor, great for average users, not just pros,
If you don’t want to read my long rambling, skip down to the pros and cons below. Also read my update below.
I previously owned a ‘Samsung 226BW’ for 6 years (TN panel) and had the ‘HP LP2475w’ briefly (H-IPS panel, instead of e-IPS like this ZR24w). My problem with the LP2475w was it’s wide gamut and I wanted consistent color saturation across the entire desktop. I wanted a good looking monitor for multiple purpose, for work and entertainment. This ZR24w meets my need, it only come with a few small imperfections, but they are not bad enough so I would still recommend it.
General impressions, the good stuff:
-The monitor has a very sturdy stand. After turning the brightness down to zero (which is still bright enough), it output around 37watt which is acceptable. The monitor is very bright, but CCFL backlights are known to slowly dim as it gets more hours, so this is a good thing for the long run.
-The colors are simply stunning, combined with great contrast this monitor have very good clarity. When viewing photos and videos, the details and objects stands out, unlike most TN panels which look washed out by comparison. Watching HD videos should be a joy.
-The text is really smooth and sharp at the same time, one of the highlight of this monitor. Good for people who spend lots of time reading online. Small pixel pitch (.270mm) so you won’t notice dots unless you move your eyes up close to the screen. There is a feature to adjust sharpness, but only 5 steps, which isn’t enough IMO.
-The monitor is standard color gamut (not wide), so colors are not over saturated and are consistent across the whole screen. This is important as it makes the monitor more attractive to average users who don’t want to mess with color profiles. Of course, if you are an artist/designer and want to work with Adobe RGB colors, you should buy a wide gamut monitor instead.
The green tint:
My previous HP LP2475w have the infamous problem that plague some IPS monitors: one side of the screen have a pinkish tint and the other side a greenish tint. Unfortunately, my ZR24w came with a slight green tint starting from the right edge of the screen disappearing toward the middle, the left side is white. I can notice the green with white and gray backgrounds. Turning down the green and calibrating the monitor can help a lot, but the green doesn’t fully go away. This imperfection bothers me because I do a lot of online reading and a bit of scripts editing that usually involves white background. UPDATE: I fixed this problem using a (better) colorimeter, more info below.
Backlight uniformity:
There are some backlight leakage. I set the monitor to display a black screen and in a dark room took photos of the monitor using my camera with 1/4th and 1/8th second exposure to exaggerate backlight leakage. The photo shows leakage coming from the bottom left and a small bit from the rest of corners. Believe it or not, I noticed these leakages even while using the monitor in daytime when the screen background is a dark colored like black or dark brown, though not anymore if the screen is displaying brighter colors. Also, the backlight slightly dims along the very top and bottom edges of the screen.
Black level:
The black level isn’t great and have problem showing ‘true black’. Experienced users will know what I mean when a monitor’s black level is not good and instead of pure black you see kind of a ‘reflective black’ because of the backlight bleeds through. This creates a problem when you watch movies or play FPS video games where very dark scenes are involved, this ‘reflective black’ can makes it harder to pick out objects and details. Despite this, the contrast is good and the colors are accurate, it’s still much better watching black and white films on this monitor than my Samsung 226BW. However, I don’t think this is the best monitor to edit black and white photos (also due to a bit of ‘color banding’, though rarely will you notice it unless you are doing specific tests to identify the banding).
Viewing angles:
If your eyes are leveled with this monitor, the image quality will remain if you shift left and right horizontally. However, if you stand up and look down from the top-right or top-left, it loses gamma and saturation. So imagine a situation when someone is standing by your side looking down at the monitor, they would either have to bring their eyes down to the height of the monitor or step back one or two steps to see more clearly. Same problem looking up diagonally from below. This e-IPS panel has better viewing angle than TN panels, but possibly not as good as the more expensive H-IPS panels.
Display speed:
-Input lag: I have the Samsung 226BW which is known have very low input lag. I connect it and the ZR24w to the video card for clone view, ran a stop-watch timer software and set my camera to 1/125th…
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|IPS for $400? Sold!,
It is getting increasingly difficult to find 16×10 monitors. I don’t watch TV on my displays, I program computers. All I care about is real estate and text. I want maximum pixels. And the text must be sharp. PIXELS & TEXT. That’s it.
So I bought a $700+ Samsung 245T a few years ago. IPS or SPVA are the best options for a non-professional display, according to the internets. The cheaper TN-panel monitors look like crap. I know because a couple years ago I mistakenly bought a “cheap” (450 bucks) Acer 24″ monitor to pair with the Samsung and it gave me a headache trying to discern the blurry text. Why I kept that turd around for 2 years is a mystery, but I did.
Anyway, I was trying to dig up a comparable display to the Samsung (since it’s no longer in production) and considered the very-well-reviewed Dell 24″ IPS. It comes in at 500 + tax. Not bad. Then I discovered the HP. 405 shipped, no tax. Duh.
It’s not very pretty, it seems a smidgen cheap in build quality, but dang that text is sharp. I am going to buy another.
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|You’ll be much happier with a 16:10 aspect ratio for your PC!,
It seems the monitor industry has adopted 16:9 as standard widescreen which is great for watching movies but not for PC use! With a 16:10 aspect ratio (which I’ve found is hard to find!) you won’t have to scroll as much since you have another inch+ or so height on your monitor. The height on the ZR24W, 1200 pixels, is the same as a 20″ 4:3 aspect ratio standard monitor. If you pop in a movie you should have thin black bars on the top and bottom but no stretched screen like the another review mentioned. ??
I use the Dell U2410 at work which is 12 bit and about $150 more than this monitor and I really can’t tell any improvement. I’m not a power user but I do some entry level graphics design but this monitor is an 8 bit that shows 16.7M displayable colors, the U2410 is a 12 bit and can display 1 billion+ colors but the human eye can only distinguish about a million. Plus most video cards only process around 16.7 million colors. So someone please explain what’s the big deal about 12bit? Also we have 8 of the U2410s at work and 2 have to be returned due to dimming in the bottom corners, not good odds Dell! About the only thing I like better on the Dell is the touch sensitive controls but usually you only adjust these when you first set it up.
The picture on this monitor is stunning, I replaced an old SyncMaster 204B LCD with this one – me and my wife must have sat through our complete photo folder (she was beside me and she could still see the photos no problem at an angle thanks to IPS), it was like we’ve never seen some of our digital photos before! That together with IPS quality at $400 this is a great deal.
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