HP LP3065 30" monitor

Beefy monitors get more versatile, and stay as groin-tinglingly glorious as ever.

A new segment in the monitor market has emerged, and it’s quite literally a sight to behold. Back in 2004 you could only buy one 30” monitor, from Apple, which was aimed squarely at the design market. Now, major players in the consumer space -- Dell, Samsung and now HP -- are all offering 30” displays. We would have expected to see these being provided by companies like Eizo, Lacie and other companies specialising in the professional domain, but following Dell’s success with the 3007 it would appear that the market for huge screens is bigger than anyone imagined.

It uses the same panel as Dell’s most recent 30” monitor, namely LG's LM3001WQ1. It also uses a WCCFL backlight that reproduces 92% of the NTSC colour gamut. The beefy backlight provides a purer white -- made up of more colours than normal backlights provide -- giving the transistors in the panel more colours to filter. The result is a more natural image; cooler, more subdued and more accurate.

It’s hardly surprising that the HP gave us the same DisplayMate results as the Dell: blacks went down to 4 before becoming indiscernible from each other and the whites went up to 251 before blowing out. Gradients were excellent with minimal banding; however, like the Dell, we could see a purple tinge while benchmarking that you wouldn’t notice in every day use. It’s bright too, thanks to the 1000:1 contrast ratio, and there is no bleeding at the edges.

Four USB ports are hidden behind the left side of the unobtrusive bezel. There aren’t any card readers built in (which is surprising, because they are popping up everywhere else) although the LP3065 makes up for this with its party trick.

Not one, but three dual-link DVI inputs are provided, which you can switch between with the dedicated source button on the front of the unobtrusive bezel. There are two DVI-D cables in the box to sweeten the deal too. Like all 30” monitors we’ve seen so far, there are no VGA, composite, S-video or component connections for you to hook up consoles or other analogue sources.

You can’t hijack the DVI ports to plug VGA connectors into the monitor (or for that matter any DVI plug on any monitor) with an adapter either, because the DVI standard doesn’t allow it. The little pins around the flat connector of a DVI connector on video cards that carry the red, green, blue and horizontal synchronisation signals for VGA backwards compatibility are blocked off on the DVI connectors of monitors. You can use HDMI connectors with a converter, but as a rule you’re limited to digital connections.

The controls on the bezel are limited to power, source and brightness. Colour controls are left to your video card, as there is no OSD. The stand gives you more play than the Dell (and far more than the Apple 30” Cinema HD) and there’s an ingenious sliding lock mechanism on the back that doesn’t makes setup feel like it should be a two man job.

At a hair under $3,000, it’s a little more expensive than the Dell, but it does offer more flexibility. Gaming is beautiful, with no noticeable blurriness and an unsurpassed sense of immersion -- provided the words ‘too big’ aren’t in your vernacular.