HP ZR2740w - High Resolution IPS that Doesn't Break the Bank
by Chris Heinonen on March 16, 2012 1:15 AM ESTColor 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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cheinonen - Friday, March 16, 2012 - link
The last time I find the U2711 (non-refurbished) for sale was early December, and that was for $849 without a coupon. It used to be on sale more often, but not much recently, and so most people are going to be paying $1,000 or so for it. Comparing an occasional sale price to a list price of $729 is apples to oranges.Lemure - Saturday, March 17, 2012 - link
Those claims are wrong, any LCD with input lag of around 10 and under are all extremely quick. The HP zr series ips panels along with the dell 23" e-ips and NEC e-ips all have low input lag and are great for gaming. And if input lag was such a huge issue you would not bother to buy an LCD in the first place, you would be buying the Sony fw900. So unless you are competing at the highest levels of CS or Quake, such a difference is unnoticeable.IlllI - Friday, March 16, 2012 - link
"If you can provide links to any other 2560x1440 27" displays with IPS panels that cost less than $700, let's see them."i kindly direct you to this topic http://www.overclock.net/t/1215866/reviewed-400-25...
supposedly have same ips panel that apple display has.
maybe you guys can do a professional review of one, since the other reviews are in a different language.
Roland00Address - Friday, March 16, 2012 - link
I am waiting eagerly with gleeseanleeforever - Friday, March 16, 2012 - link
i was actually going to make a reference to the catleap.the sales price (at korea) is 250 dollars for 27 inch and i think all catleap monitor *could* be set to 90+ Hz which is actually bounded by the graphic card.
i cancelled my U2711 shipment few days ago decide to give this monitor a try. with Dell i am paying about 900 dollars (tax + env fee) which would bought me 2 of those 27 inch monitor.
and yes, i fully agree with Snowshredder102. we are not talking about black friday price. and paying MSRT is probably not a smart thing to do to purchase anything. ESPECIALLY with DELL. their stuff goes on sale every other week. the U2711 has been around 700 since last year, if not the year before.
seanleeforever - Friday, March 16, 2012 - link
for some reason, i highly doubt anandtech site will review a non-US market display. actually this webiste once made a statement that they only review what vender provides to them (with VERY few exceptions, the thinkpad review was one of them, and PSU comparison was another)anandtech is great source to learn new technology and hardware performance. However, i wouldn't use it for any serious system comparison due to conflict of interest (or i think). i doubt they will put any unfavorable words for vender provided machines and i am pretty positive there is some financial reasons.
with that said, i will do my own review on OC once i receive the monitor.
Crazyeyeskillah - Friday, March 16, 2012 - link
Jared is right on all accounts. I bought the zr30w because there is absolutely no noticeable input lag. It performs about on par with my sony fw-900 crt. The lack of included scaler makes this possible.As for pricing, the only monitors in this price range come from korea named shimian and catleap. You have to buy them from one of two ebay sellers and there are no returns or warrantees. you have about a 1/4 chance of getting a defective product for about 4-500$ so it's a crapshoot.
I'd really like to see how this compares with my zr30w with the addition of the LED lighting. I think the zr30w is the best gaming monitor on the market with nothing even remotely close. The lack of lag, an ips panel, size, gamut, resolution and brightness are astounding even when compared to the 2200$ paw.
seanleeforever - Friday, March 16, 2012 - link
those monitor technically can be exchanged for free except shipping back to korea will set you 100 dollar easy.i am scheduled to go to Korea for a month long business trip, so i am actually thinking about checking it out there and ship it to U.S. the price as far as i know is 250~550 depend on the version you get (8 bit vs 10 bit).
apparently all catleap panel can handle up to 100 Hz
the 250 dollar version doesn't have any OSD, but a bit more expensive versions do.
Roland00Address - Friday, March 16, 2012 - link
Key word some.The catleap panels are not designed to do any refresh rate besides 60 hertz. Some catleap panels can be overclocked and a good amount of people were getting 85 to 97 hertz.
That said it appears the day of overclocking catleap panels are over since they newer manufactured ones (but still same model number) is using a new revision for a part and this part can only do about 60 to 67 hertz.
http://www.overclock.net/t/1225919/yamakasi-catlea...
Click on "OC vs. Non-OC Monitor Internals (Click to hide)"
Roland00Address - Friday, March 16, 2012 - link
While I agree it is a crapshoot and there is a chance you may get a product that breaks soon after the first few weeks you are vastly overrating the chance of a dead of arrival.http://www.overclock.net/t/1215866/reviewed-400-25...
This thread had 2 out of 96 people have a DOA or item was not shipped. Of those 2 they actually did not post in the thread detailing their experience, instead just answering the poll. (It is completely possible these items took forever to ship and thus they answered the poll the item did not shipped.)
Furthermore if the item is DOA you can use Ebays or Paypal buyer protection program to get a refund.
Now if the item has 5 or less dead pixels you are out of luck them unless you pay return shipping, since all the vendors advertise the 5 dead pixel policy and they advertise the item is new in a box. Furthermore if the item dies in 3 months you are out of luck, you may be able to get the original manufacture to cover it but you would be responsible to ship it back to South Korea. If the item breaks in 18 months you will be out of luck...etc
So in sum a crapshoot, but a crapshoot with good odds. I would not recommend this deal to everyone, but if you know what it is going in then it is a good deal.