HP Z27q Monitor Review: Aiming For More Pixels
by Brett Howse on December 22, 2015 8:00 AM ESTFinal Words
When HP entered the 5K market with the Z27q, the only real competition was the 27-inch Dell 5K display, but it cost close to $2000. HP came into the market with the same display dimensions and resolution, but undercut Dell by almost $800. $1200 for a display is still a lot of money, but if you are someone that needs high resolution, the HP Z27q needs to be considered.
The overall accuracy of the display is great, especially in the AdobeRGB color mode. sRGB does need some calibration of the grayscale and white point to make it practically perfect, but the calibration of the LUT at the factory by HP is quite good resulting in a decent out of the box experience. The one real issue with this display is that the backlight is uneven, dropping as high as 20% from the center when measured at the top left corner. This is pretty much the same issue that we found with the Z27x, and it would not be surprising to find that both monitors are designed similarly. It is the one blemish on an otherwise great performing display.
People looking at 5K displays have to factor in that it takes a lot of GPU power to drive these. You can’t even drive the display with a single cable; instead you have to use two DisplayPort 1.2 ports and cables to achieve the 5120x2880 resolution. This means that the display leverages MST, and while I’ve heard of people having issues with this, I did not have any issues with MST driving this display with an AMD FirePro card in Windows 10. It will still be a while before we have the DisplayPort 1.3 capabilities to drive this with just a single cable.
The construction of the HP Z27q is not going to win any style awards, but it is functional and for most people, a black monitor is all that is needed. The stand is very easy to use though, with lots of options to tilt -5° to +22°, and the swivel is plus or minus 45°.
Due to the nature of the display, input lag was not able to be tested, since the tester used is HDMI and 1080p. In my time with it, there was no noticable lag at the native resolution.
There are not too many people that need almost 15 million pixels, but there are certainly use cases for a display like this. Editing 4K video is an obvious use case, since you can have the entire 4K video in a pixel perfect window, with enough room for toolbars as well. The gamut is a long way from the Z27x offering from HP, but that is only a 2560x1440 panel. Just like the Z27x the one glaring issue is the uniformity. If HP can get on top of this, they will likely have the display to beat, especially at this price.
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Murloc - Tuesday, December 22, 2015 - link
I think they are not centralized in one HQ so it isn't enough to have "someone" who's good at photography.brucek2 - Thursday, December 24, 2015 - link
I agree -- the cover photo is so unflattering that it is easily the strongest impression I am taking away from this review, and what I will remember most / the longest. Despite all the text that follows what this article has communicated most forcefully is that "this monitor is a piece of junk." It appears it arrived warped. Unless this is actually the case it is very unfair to the manufacturer.nathanddrews - Tuesday, December 22, 2015 - link
You should try out the new MadVR build with HDR LUT as part of your monitor reviews. 300 nits is a bit better than the standard 150/200nits of other monitors.CaedenV - Tuesday, December 22, 2015 - link
So are those extra 1000 pixels of height enough to cram in all of your UI in Adobe so you can edit 4K content while looking at native resolution? Heck at 4K 27" can you even see individual pixels when sitting a normal distance away from the monitor? I am sure that you can't with 5K! That's just ridiculous pixel density. I'm looking at moving to 4K myself and with my own measurements and distance from the screen I am looking at a 48" TV to get slightly higher pixel density without having the scaling issues of Windows... can't imaging how bad scaling would be on such a high res display!MrSpadge - Tuesday, December 22, 2015 - link
On my 25" DELL with 2560x1440 I can't see individual pixels, whereas at work my 24" 1920x1200 looks a bit gross in comparison, because verything is so large. From my point of view my DELL has pretty much the perfect resolution to (mostly) work without scaling.DanNeely - Tuesday, December 22, 2015 - link
I can't see the pixels on my 30" 2560x1600 monitor; but the text the 3200x1800 screen of my XPS13 is noticeably sharper due to the higher DPI. Next year's big tech buy for me will probably be a 31.5" 5k monitor.zeeBomb - Tuesday, December 22, 2015 - link
Damn...a monitor review? By Brett? Is this a fake review!?petteyg359 - Tuesday, December 22, 2015 - link
Why must they keep pushing huge screens? Give me 4k and 5k in 24" or less so I can actually fit two of them on my desk.ImSpartacus - Tuesday, December 22, 2015 - link
There are 24" 4k monitors, but you wouldn't want 5k at that size. You'd have to use non-integer scaling to make stuff readable.Murloc - Tuesday, December 22, 2015 - link
what's the point? Just use windows management software if you can't deal with one big screen.