The actual bad: The monitor's green push can be minimized but not eliminated.
The underside line: The HP x2301's low price, good performance, and sound design allow it to be a new high-water mark for budget monitors.
LED-based monitors actually worth their selling price is a recent trend I can easily get behind. Displays such since the Dell S2330MX and the Samsung S23A550H are LED-based, low-priced, and, when push involves shove, are ultimately worth their low prices.
The HP x2301 is the most recent in recent monitor releases following the same thin design paradigm, but will it follow the high-quality trend as well?
Design and features
Removing the specs and features sticker in the top bezel of the HP x2301 revealed quite a handsome monitor, having a glossy piano-black bezel and wide, stylish foot stand. The black bezel steps 0. 75 inch wide, but shifts into metallic silver at the bezel's bottom, where a cylindrical shaft connects the foot stand to the neck from the display. The stand measures 10. 1 inches wide by 5. 5 inches deep and offers ample stability when the monitor is knocked from the sides, delivering probably the most stationary LED-based monitor we've yet seen. The foot stand is covered with a cool-looking, green-tinted transparent plate.
On top of the foot stand toward the leading are five buttons including a power button, which glows with turquoise gentle. To the left of the power button are, from right to remaining, the OK button, source button, preset shortcut, and main OSD menu. The source and shortcut buttons also double as down and up navigation buttons. Speaking of which, with the inclusion of the OK switch, navigating the OSD is simple, clear, and direct, with a very brief learning curve.
The menu has your usual expected menagerie of options, such as brightness, contrast, sharpness, RGB color controls, and color temperature options including 5000K, 6500K, as well as 9200K. Four presets tailored to movies, photo, gaming, and text are showcased, as well as a custom preset that allows you to adjust red-colored, green, and blue to your heart's, or at least your eye's, content material.
Build quality is about upon par with most 23-inch LED-based monitors, feeling somewhat flimsy at the the surface of the panel, but stronger toward the bottom where the foot stand and solar panel meet.
Performance
We tested the 23-inch HP x2301 through its DVI enter, connected to a Windows Vista PC, using our own DVI cable. The actual display posted a composite score of 89 on CNET Labs' DisplayMate-based overall performance tests.
The screen is extremely glossy and reflective with seemingly no antiglare layer. Some may prefer the glossiness, though, as it increases the perceived comparison; however, with the monitor turned off, it could easily double as the mirror.
DisplayMate: The HP x2301 visibly displayed dark gray down to a minimal level of 2 and light gray was visible to the not-quite-as-high-as-we're-accustomed-but-still-good degree of 252. Judging from these findings, the display would likely not have a lot trouble displaying dark detail or confuse white with light colors.
Color overall performance overall was good, but it was plagued by the nearly impossible-to-escape green hue problem that crops on many monitors during the color-tracking test. Dialing the green down to 234 helped a great deal, but it was still noticeable.
Backlight bleeding was prevalent along the middle bottom and top edges of the screen in addition to along the left edge.
Text: It's difficult screw up text on today's monitor. So we look not only at the text itself, but also the result of black text on a white background, which can sometimes cause a weird yellowish glow to emanate round the text. On HP x2301, black text on white looked clear, but having a slight tinge of green around it. Also, fonts were clearly visible right down to a 6. 8-point size.
Movies: We tested the HP x2301 using the actual Blu-ray version of "Avatar. " Sitting right next to the better-performing Samsung PX2370, the x2301's green push was easily noticeable although not to an egregious extent.
