HardwareCentral - HP LP2065 Monitor Review

HP LP2065 Monitor Review

Twenty Inches, Two Inputs, Four Cables, Two Positions

January 31, 2006
By Eric Grevstad

An HP monitor? Are HP monitors even sold separately? You mostly see them in computer/printer/monitor bundles in electronics stores' Sunday newspaper flyers. They're mostly value-priced home-PC screens. Right?

Not quite. You also see HP displays on corporate desktops, thanks to the company's considerable business-monitor business. And the new model LP2065 sits firmly at the high end, although it's priced more toward the middle, of the pinstriped scale: It's a 20.1-inch LCD optimized for dual-PC and/or dual-monitor setups, with a handsome face, flexible stand, and elegant setup software. The HP isn't cheap at $649, but it's a swiveling, pivoting, solid, and stylish performer.

Silver on Black

Except for the not uncommon flat-panel crime of mounting video and power cable ports parallel with the desk -- so inserting plugs obliges you to either lay the monitor face down or stab blindly upward -- setup is no chore. After one or two false starts the LCD slid smoothly onto its bracket atop the black plastic stand (which isn't needed if you're mounting the monitor on a swing arm or wall).

We had to read the manual (an Acrobat PDF file) to learn that the LP2065 has a cable holder to help keep your desk tidy; it's an awkward thread-the-needle channel compared to some monitors' simpler snap-off rear panels. On the positive side, the display's power supply is inside the stand, so there's no notebook-PC-style power brick to kick around.

The screen and stand measure 16.7 by 21.8 by 6.7 inches and weigh about 20 pounds. The last plus the stand's recessed design make it a bit of work to reposition or move the monitor, but a 45-degree swivel in each direction helps make such moves less necessary.

There's a handhold at the top rear of the display to help take advantage of the HP's commendable 5.1 inches of height adjustment. The screen also tilts up to 5 degrees forward and 30 degrees back from vertical, so it's easy to set up a comfortable line of sight. (One caveat: With the on/off button in the lower right corner, we occasionally turned the monitor off when grasping it for adjustment or pivoting.)

The LP2065 follows today's thin-bezel fashion, with the silver strip around the LCD just half an inch wide at the sides and three-quarters of an inch at top and bottom. That makes it a good candidate for side-by-side placement or tiling if your PC's graphics adapter and your company's budget permit multiscreen configurations.

Strictly Business

Speaking of side-by-side placement, the LP2065 is ready to serve if you come in Monday morning and put your notebook PC next to your desktop system: The monitor has two inputs, with a front-bezel button for switching the display from one PC to the other. Both inputs have DVI-I connectors; the HP comes with two DVI-D-to-DVI-I cables and two VGA-to-DVI-I cables to accommodate any combination of analog and digital outputs.

While it makes DVD movies look great, however, you have to play the DVD on a PC: There are no S-Video, composite, component (YPbPr), or coax inputs for connecting video or TV equipment. As partial consolation, the monitor is also a USB hub, with one upstream connection to your computer -- cable included -- and four downstream USB ports for flash drives or other devices. Two of the USB ports are positioned vertically at the rear and two horizontally behind the left side of the screen.

The LP2065 sticks to the traditional 4:3 aspect ratio instead of a newfangled widescreen, but its 1,600 by 1,200 landscape-mode resolution is anything but disappointing -- especially since we saw no "stuck" or bad pixels on our test unit (though the documentation says HP allows a maximum of five, no more than two of them adjacent).

The display combines 250 nits of brightness with an 800:1 contrast ratio and 8-millisecond response time. That added up to wide viewing angles, sharp text even in tiny sizes -- well, 6-point, anyway, 4-point was a little squinty -- and vivid colors in both regular applications and DisplayMate test patterns.

If pressed, we might grumble that adjacent colors at the far end of a color-spectrum slide were just a bit hard to distinguish -- oddly enough, at the bright end, though we usually make this complaint about the two darkest hues. But generally tip-top image quality, with no ghosting or streaking to be seen, earns the HP a hearty thumbs-up.

Sidewise

If you want to view Web or word processing pages with less scrolling, it's easy to turn the monitor counterclockwise to portrait-mode or vertical orientation, using Portrait Displays' Pivot Pro software and hot keys such as Ctrl-Shift-0 and Ctrl-Shift-7 to flip the screen image accordingly. (Our early-production example came with a software CD that lacked the Pivot utility, but HP sent an updated disc which the company says will be in all retail shipments.)

It was hard to quantify, but we thought the portrait-mode screen looked just a touch darker and more grainy than its landscape counterpart. Cranking up brightness and contrast to close to 100 percent, however, eliminated the problem, and we saw none of the flicker some other pivoting LCDs have shown us when scrolling through portrait views with the Page Up and Page Down keys.

Plus, minus, and menu buttons centered in the bottom bezel help you navigate a more-intuitive-than-most set of display adjustment or setup screens. As an alternative, supplied HP Display Assistant software provides a full array of mouse-controlled test patterns and adjustments, available either a la carte or in a wizard that walks you through fine-tuning color temperature, contrast, or whatever.

Another software utility lets you fight image burn-in by scheduling times for the screen to turn on and off (if you keep your PC on overnight; turning the computer off has the same sleep-mode effect on the monitor). According to HP, the display downshifts from its usual 50-odd watts (70 watts if you max out the USB ports) to a thrifty 2 watts when idle.

The HP LP2065 doesn't blow away every conceivable competitor. (Dell's comparable 2001FP is $629 and Gateway's 21-inch widescreen is $600, for example, with both offering video as well as PC inputs.) But it's a first-class contender, a display any IT manager would be glad to deploy. It might even lure a few consumers from HP's desktop-bundle deals.