Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/5636/hp-zr2740w-high-resolution-ips-that-doesnt-break-the-bank



Introduction

Almost 15 years ago I set up my first multiple monitor system, using a 17” and a 15” CRT. At that time it was a very uncommon setup, but now it seems that many people use multiple displays to manage their workspace. No matter how many displays you hook up, there are always some things that benefit from having a single, large, high resolution desktop, such as the spreadsheets that I use for doing display reviews.

27” and 30” displays with 2560 horizontal pixels have been available for a few years now, though the pricing on them has been very high that whole time. Sometimes you can find a display on sale and pick it up for a reasonable price, but typically the cost of entry seems to be right around $1,000 and up. Because of this people are still likely to buy two, or even three, 1920x1200 displays for the same price and run a multi-monitor desktop.

We finally have our first real affordable 27”, high resolution display on the market now, and it comes courtesy of HP. The HP ZR2740w is a 27” IPS panel with 2560x1440 resolution (16:9 aspect ratio) and an LED backlighting system. With a street price that comes in at $700 or below, what has HP done to be able to bring a high resolution display to the masses at a price well below other vendors? Thankfully, they provided me with a unit so I could evaluate it and see.

Design, OSD, and Viewing Angles

Since my usual desktop monitor is a lowly 20” Dell widescreen, unpacking and throwing the HP on my desk in its place was quite a difference. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the HP still has a stand with tilt, swivel, pivot, and height adjustments. When 24” monitors that are value priced, or even $300, are leaving these out it is quite nice to see on a value priced 27” display. The front of the display has four buttons: Power, Brightness +/-, and Source.

Once you look for the inputs to hook the display up you get your first clue as to how HP shaved the price on this display. The only inputs available are a Dual-Link DVI and a DisplayPort. For people that want to use their monitor for gaming or watching movies, there is no HDMI port available. With no HDMI port, there are also no speakers in the HP either. I was a little bit surprised that they still have the standard USB 2.0 hub with four ports available, as that seems like another item that could be cut to save a bit on costs, but I was happy to have it available.

Once you go to adjust the brightness, you’ll notice something about the OSD on the HP in that there isn’t one. There is no menu system either. The only adjustment available to the end user is a single brightness control that has no on screen setting. There is also no LUT inside of the monitor to help for correcting the color, but that wasn’t much of a surprise either. With no OSD, there are no color presets, no dynamic contrast or enhanced response modes, nothing beyond what you have as a standard. There is also no way to control the aspect ratio so if you feed the HP with a signal other than 2560x1440 you will have it scaled automatically and there is no way to adjust that. Because of this lack of an OSD, having the necessary hardware and software to perform your own calibration might be a little more important with the HP. In a sense, it's a bit of a throwback to the early 30" LCDs, except now there's a DisplayPort connection in addition to the DL-DVI.

Despite the loss of all these features, the HP does have the specs that many of us are looking for: 2560x1440 resolution and an IPS panel that is listed at supporting 10-bits per pixel with A-FRC (8-bit native), and has a native gamma of 2.2. It only has a standard gamut LED lighting system, so it is listed as being able to do 99.9% for the sRGB color gamut but only 77.2% of the Adobe RGB gamut. For many users, that's actually not a problem and could even be seen as a plus. (High gamut displays running sRGB content can sometimes look oversaturated if your applications aren't color space aware.) So now that we have an idea of what HP had to do in order to hit this price point, did the performance suffer from these choices? Here's a quick overview of the specs and then we'll get into the evaluation portion of the review.

HP ZR2740w
Video Inputs DisplayPort, DualLink DVI
Panel Type IPS (8-bit native, 10-bit A-FRC)
Pixel Pitch 0.233mm
Colors 1.07 Billion
Brightness 380 nits
Contrast Ratio 1000:1
Response Time 14ms typical, 12ms GTG
Viewable Size 27"
Resolution 2560x1440
Viewing Angle 178 degrees H/V
Backlight LED edgelit
Power Consumption (operation) 95W typical, 120W maximum
Power Consumption (standby) < 2W
Screen Treatment Anti-Glare
Height-Adjustable Yes
Tilt Yes
Pivot Yes
Swivel Yes
VESA Wall Mounting Yes, 100mm
Dimensions w/ Base (WxHxD) 25.4" x 9.3" x 21.26"
Weight 23.1 lbs.
Additional Features 4 port USB 2.0 hub
Limited Warranty Three Years
Accessories DualLink DVI Cable, DisplayPort cable, power cable, USB cable
Price $729 MSRP;
Starting at $633 online

Despite the large panel, viewing angles are very nice on the HP as you can see. To see much of a brightness shift you had to be very far off angle, and I had no issues at all with normal use.



Color Quality

Straight out of the box, the color accuracy of the HP leaves a disappointing taste. The average dE is close to 9, and the grayscale is well up there, almost entirely in the double digits. Due to the lack of an OSD or other controls, there isn’t any other color mode you can select, such as sRGB or 6500K, to try to improve these results without calibration. If you purchase the ZR2740w and cannot calibrate it, this is the performance you can expect with no way to improve upon it at all.

Color Tracking -  XR Pro, Xrite i1D2 and XR i1DPro

Of course, since many people purchasing this display will be calibrating it, we want to see how well it performs after a calibration. Using ColorEyes Display Pro on a MacBook Air, I set the targets to my usual preferences: 200 nits of light output, a D65 white point, gamma of 2.2, and minimum black level. The calibration was done with an i1Pro spectrometer that is NIST certified to have a maximum error of 1.0 dE and an average error of 0.4. Using these settings, we get a much better result out of the HP.

Color Tracking -  XR Pro, Xrite i1D2 and XR i1DPro

Here we can see that our dE has dropped down to an average of 1.76 which is pretty good. The errors, as usual, are in shades of blue at the edge of the sRGB colorspace, and that grayscale that was horrible is now down to an error of under 1 for almost the entire range. Again I wanted to look at the median color error and see how much this average error is being skewed by the blue results.

Color Tracking -  XR Pro, Xrite i1D2 and XR i1DPro

Our median color error is a dE of 1.2, which is quite good. There are a lot of panels that do worse than that, and not many that can do much better at all. The only way to really get an error much better than this is to find a panel that uses the full AdobeRGB colorspace, so those shades of blue will be able to be rendered correctly. As a high resolution 27” monitor is likely to be targeted towards professionals, including those doing print work, the 100 nits results were even more important this time than usual.

Color Tracking -  XR Pro, Xrite i1D2 and XR i1DPro

The dE results are very similar to those with 200 nits of light output, down to the grayscale having similar errors across the spectrum. The worst grayscale patch is the dark gray, which is the hardest for the i1Pro to read accurately, but until I have a better calibration program that allows for meter profiling, it’s the best result I’ll be able to get for you. Overall the calibrated results for the HP are good, but with no OSD at all the only way to get even close to these is with a calibration package, since you can’t even copy settings from another display and hope they look OK on your monitor. You could always try copying a color profile from someone else with the same monitor, but even then you're likely to get significant errors as there's plenty of variance between otherwise "identical" panels.



Color Uniformity and Color Gamut

The calibrated results on the ZR2740w were pretty good, but with such a large panel was the uniformity going to suffer because of it? 23” 1080p displays have a hard time with uniformity and are easier to fix, but perhaps since the HP is a higher end display more work has been put into keeping the screen uniform all around. Measuring nine points around the screen at the 200 nits calibrated setting, you can see what we found.

LCD Color Uniformity

Only one of the nine locations had an average dE above 3, and the median value there was still below 2.75. What concerned me the most is that the uniformity on the grayscale was so bad, so when you have a solid white background, which is likely on a monitor like this with spreadsheets and other applications, you will be able to clearly see a shift in the white point as you look at it. Colors were far more consistent than white was across the display, so it seems to be a shift when the panel is fully driven, probably due to unevenness in the lighting I would assume.

While it has an 8-bit panel and can do 10-bit colors with A-FRC, the backlight system of the HP means that you aren’t going to get the full AdobeRGB colorspace on it. The HP comes out of Gamutvision with 76.82% of the AdobeRGB space, pretty much dead on to the 77.2% in the specs.



Brightness and Contrast

Is your work environment bright? Are there massive spotlights behind you that shine directly onto your screen? Well, don’t worry; the ZR2740w will produce more than enough light for you. I’d expect screens to get a little dimmer as the size gets larger, since a backlight would need to be more powerful and more expensive to light it up, but apparently that is not the case. The HP managed to put out almost 450 nits of brightness when turned up all the way, which is plenty for anyone no matter what their work environment.

White Level -  XR Pro, Xrite i1D2 and XR i1DPro

I can only assume that to evenly light up a 27” or larger LCD panel, vendors need to use larger, more powerful backlights and it is as easy to use one that does this much brightness as one that only does 250 nits of light, but I’m going to say this is a good thing. The downside to a larger light is that it might cause the black levels to be higher than on other displays, and that does seem to be the case here with the HP.

Black Level - XR Pro, Xrite i1D2 and XR i1DPro

The black levels on the HP are higher, but they are right in line with other 27” and 30” displays, so it really is a middle of the road result for it. Given the cost difference between the displays, that the HP equals them in performance is very nice to see on here. One area that the larger panels fell behind in was contrast ratio, where they only manage around 750:1 which is a little disappointing given their cost. The HP manages to exceed this, offering over 1,000:1 at both maximum and minimum brightness levels.

Contrast Ratio -  XR Pro, Xrite i1D2 and XR i1DPro

The only high resolution display we have tested that can exceed this is the Apple Cinema Display, but it only does that at peak brightness as the contrast ratio falls off at lower light levels. The more consistent results from the HP gives it the best contrast of any high resolution display currently tested in my mind. Of course a larger panel also means a higher chance of uniformity issues, so hopefully the powerful backlight is able to correct for that.

There is certainly a bright spot in the center of the screen and fall-off around the edges, but the variance comes in at a very respectable 4.67%, which outperforms many smaller panels. The black uniformity also comes in very well, with just 6.6% variance. Of course I’d expect the black level to perform better since the higher black level in general will lead to a smaller variance percentage, even if the amount of variance is higher. To account for that, I’ll start to report the percentage for the white uniformity, since that target is always 200 nits, and the actual variance for the black level, in this case 0.011 nits, as we target the minimum level for black. I wish the units were the same so it was easier to compare, but to do that we would have to have a black level target, which would hurt displays that can do a lower level of black than others.



Input Lag and Power Use

Since the HP automatically scales the image if it is not sent at 2560x1440 and I don’t have a CRT that can produce that resolution, the HP had to run at 1920x1080 resolution for the lag tests. This is our second review using the SMTT program to test lag, but this lets us separate the input lag from the pixel response time, so we can hopefully figure out the effect of scaling the image. There is a chance that the performance with a native 2560x1440 signal could be better on the input lag, so these measurements again represent the worst case scenario.

Processing Lag Comparison (By FPS)

Despite this, the lag on the HP is very low overall, with 14.55ms being the worst case scenario. This breaks down at 2.6ms of input lag, and then 11.95ms of pixel response time. This is less than a frame of lag at the 60Hz refresh rate the display supports, so it should be fast enough for your gaming use, though hopefully your video card can keep up with it at 2560x1440. The effective lag, which is a more subjective measurement, came in at right around 10ms in my estimation. At that point you can clearly see what color a pixel was changing to, even if it hasn’t reached peak brightness yet. I really don’t think anyone will have issues gaming on the HP, which is very nice.

With the size of the ZR2740w, and the amount of light that if can put out, you can imagine that even with an LED lighting system it is going to use a lot of power. At minimum brightness the HP consumed 26 watts, and at maximum brightness it consumed 96 watts. With my usual settings (closer to 150-160 nits of brightness) I was seeing closer to 45 watts of power use on it. This isn’t the most efficient display you can get, but when you consider that it is likely to replace dual 24” monitors for a lot of users, the power use is better in perspective. Compared to the 30” monitors we have reviewed it is very good, and about equal to the 27” Apple Cinema Display.

LCD Power Draw (Kill-A-Watt)



Conclusion: Big Bang for the Buck

HP made a lot of choices to be able to get this panel in at this price point. For some people the lack of any analog inputs, or even an HDMI input, is going to be a deal killer as they might need those inputs for their use. Others might have issues with the lack of any OSD or scaling options, as you have very little control over the monitor.

This lack of controls also means that being able to calibrate this display is even more important than usual. The dE numbers out of the box were pretty high, with an average very close to 9, and there is no way to improve these without being able to do a calibration due to the lack of presets. If you are unconcerned with color accuracy then this won’t matter, but if you are then you’ll need to budget at least $115 for a basic calibration system (such as the Sypder4Express), or up to $450 for a spectrometer (like the ColorMunki Design) that can produce far more accurate results with LED backlit displays. Now you’re past the cost of other 27” displays, or even a 30” display, though you do have calibration gear that you can keep using with it.

Of course if you are going to do a hardware calibration of this display, you likely would do the same with any 27” model, so the cost of calibration tools might not matter to you. If that is the case then there is far more to like about the HP than to dislike. The lack of HDMI doesn’t bother me since you can always use an HDMI to DVI adapter, and until just recently there were no video cards that could do anything beyond 1080p over HDMI (at least while following the HDMI spec). The HP calibrated well, has a good but not exceptional contrast ratio, and has a nice ergonomic stand as well. The lag time was far better than I expected to see out of it, so it even works well for gaming.

After having a 27” high resolution display around for a few weeks, I really don’t want to go back. The extra space is so nice to have, letting me run Word on half the screen for writing this review while keeping Excel open on the other half of the display and still being able to see enough of each to be useful. For the price of the HP you could buy two of the 1920x1200 Dell U2412M displays that I most recently reviewed and have 25% more pixels available. For some people that will work better, as you can stash email and other programs on one and use the other for work, or more easily rotate one to portrait mode if you need that. For the way I work, I like the single, large monitor more but everyone has their own preference.

In the end, HP made some sacrifices with the ZR2740w to get to the sub-$700 price point, but they didn’t really sacrifice performance in the process. Short on inputs and features but long on performance, the HP ZR2740w LCD hits a new price point for high resolution 27” displays and hopefully signals the beginning of a shift in pricing for these monitors. If all you really want is a good display for your PC and you don't need to hook up multiple devices, the ZR2740w is an excellent choice. For such users we recommend it with very few reservations and present HP with our Bronze Editors' Choice award.

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