HP W2408H Review:
The HP W2408H Monitor rotates to allow landscape and portrait views, height adjustment, swivel, and tilt function. Dual inputs support true digital (HDMI) and traditional analog (VGA) signals. Connect your DVD player or gaming console with a single HDMI cable directly to your monitor. BrightView Technology provides brilliant picture quality. 160 degrees horizontal and vertical viewing angle Display resolution. HP w2408 Vivid Color - A premium perfect monitor for your PC that provides vibrant colors, convenience, personalization and height adjustment options. The HP w2408 provides richer, more vibrant colors as it uses high quality panels that can cover more of the color gamut. It’s easy for you to connect your USB devices, with the built in four (4) USB Ports. The BrightView widescreen panel with 5 ms response time offers brilliant picture quality, and the built-in ambient light sensor means that the monitor’s image adjusts automatically to your environment. Dual inputs support true digital (HDMI) and traditional analog (VGA) signals. HDCP-enabled for optimum viewing of High Definition content (High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection). Double hinge base allows height adjustment from the youngest to oldest viewer to view comfortably. Rotate from regular mode to portrait to view long documents or web pages on your PC. My Display provides one touch adjustment for brightness, color and contrast. Quick View modes change work environments easily and quickly. Integrated speakers and keyboard parking keeps your desktop clutter-free. Personalize your monitor with Easy Clip by clipping on photo holders, cameras, and accessories. My Display provides one touch OSD adjustment for brightness, color and contrast. The wide aspect ratio and high resolution bring gaming, videos and internet surfing brilliantly alive when you plug into your HP PC.

HP W2408H Features
For a monitor hovering at the one grand mark, the HP W2408H does lack some of the features of its competitors.

The 24-inch panel itself boasts a 5ms response time (on to off) and HP’s BrightView Technology for better contrast. It has a native resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels, making it capable of displaying high-def content.

For connecting PCs and other digital equipment the monitor comes with an HDMI port with HDCP support — for decoding 1080p content. Unusually, HP W2408H lacks a DVI connector, which OS versions seem to have, so you’ll need to buy a DVI-HDMI cable.

Unlike the HP’s main competitor, the Dell 2407WFP-HC , this monitor lacks advanced features like component, S-Video and Picture-in-Picture.

Rounding out the feature count, though, are a set of onboard speakers (2 x 2W) which can decode HDMI audio, and four USB ports including two on the side.

HP W2408H User Review:
I love HP W2408H. Going to the 24 inch size was maybe a little bit more than I needed, a 22 inch would have been adequate, but I have no regrets whatsoever. Easy on the eyes plus I watch MLB.com baseball games on it and some TV so the size is just perfect. Color contrast is excellent as well.

What I really like is the new e-mail reader on Vista being able to have my folders listed to the left of the screen and immediately right of that have a colum listing all the e-mails in my inbox and plenty of screen left to the right to display the actaul e-mail message itself. This way you have amuch better look at all the emails you have versus the little pane on top of the e-mail messages showing only a handful of messages.

I haven’t used the rotating screen function, HP W2408H is big enough to use in the landscape mode, plus it seems to be a littel awkward to rotate such a big screen.

I did buy a small metal screen pad from Staples to lift it up a few inches and like that better, it just didn’t raise up as high as I would like, I’ve found this to be true on all of the monitors out there so it’s nothing specific for this model. Just a general ergonomic thing for me. Plus I like the little stand as it really doesn’t take up any more space than the monitor then the speakers easily fit under the monitor and I have room to place the tape dispensor ect. underneath it, so it actually opens up more space on my desk.

The HP W2408H monitor has built in speakers which can do in a bind but it’s nothing you want to use for listening to any quality music with.

I have noticed when viewing TV from my HP Pavilion that the screen is a little darker than it needs to be. Not sure if this is in the monitor or the computer and may easily be the computer as I can watch TV from the web with no problem but from the media center it’s a lot darker than I want it to be. Also when watching TV you need to adjust the monitor to rotate about the y axis and be fairly close to perpendicular to your viewing angle or you get a variance in darkness as well. No problem with the adjustablity of the screen though.

One other minor issue I’ve run into is when using Quicken 2000, some of the smaller text just doesn’t show up as well defined as it should be. I changed the size of the text in my registers and that solved the problem there but still text in the general Quiken system still has the problem. I may just need to go ahead and update my Quicken software to a newer version, just havn’t found the need to just yet, it still does everything I want it to do.

Bottom line is I haggled with saving the $100 and getting the 22 inch monitor but I’m very pleased with going ahead and getting this one. I have no regrets and would recommend you do the same, you’ll be looking at it a lot the rest of you life so why not be easy on the eyes.

By A. Bert

Buy HP W2408H Widescreen LCD Monitor