HP ZR24w

HP’s ZR24w has been around for over a year now, but remains a popular screen due to its high quality IPS panel and low price tag compared to professional monitors.

Measuring a full 24 inches diagonally, the ZR24w packs in a 1920 x 1200 resolution. This means 120 more lines of vertical resolution compared to standard 1080p screens, which gives you just that extra little bit of height for working with documents and images or browsing the web.

Even before changing any settings, I found the colour levels of the ZR24w almost perfect. It did appear to have trouble with detail in dark areas of the screen, however. Even after a (basic) calibration, I couldn’t squeeze better shadow details out of this screen – it just has a high black level.

In most other respects the image quality is very good. Vertical and horizontal viewing angles are impressive, save for a small amount of colour shift. Most transitions in the response speed tests were excellent except for the white-to-grey transition which ghosted a little.

Aside from image quality, another thing which sets the ZR24w apart is the range of adjustment options. You can tilt, swivel and pivot (with height adjustment) the screen to your heart’s content. Not only is this handy for finding a comfortable viewing position, but combined with the slim bezel you can easily put two or three monitors in a row for an almost continuous image.

There’s even a DisplayPort input so you won’t need to buy adapters if you plan on using AMD’s Eyefinity technology in a multi-monitor setup. And yes, I could game comfortably on the ZR24w despite its rated 5ms response time: slow in gaming-monitor terms.

Sadly, I think the ZR24w would be overlooked by most consumers. It still has an old CCFL backlight in it, so there are no obnoxious stickers proclaiming its few-million-to-one dynamic contrast ratio (which is meaningless figure in my books anyway), and on paper it’s not immediately apparent why it costs more than cheaper IPS panels like the Asus ML239 and AOC iv2340Ve.

Take one home and plug it in though, and it soon becomes clear why this “old” model still has a spot on the shelves.