Hi All -
Well I thought this would be easy. I am going to do a lot more work from home, and am looking for the optimum monitor setup. I won't say price is no issue, but I am happy to spend on anything that improves productivity, and to pay for quality.
Work is coding and data analysis - and screen real estate really helps with productivity: in particular vertical inches and pixels. I do a bit of image editing, but next to no gaming. So my priorities are number of pixels, size, and clarity of text.
My plan was a 30" 2560x1600 main panel, with two 2nd hand 20" 1600x1200 monitors in portrait mode either side. This gives 1600 vertical pixels and about 16" vertical real estate, with a clear main monitor, which seems about perfect for me.
I did a bit of research, and eventually bought an HP ZR30W. The size is great, image quality is great (despite a slightly more grainy anti-glare coating than I would like), and the build quality is very good.
BUT - it buzzes at anything below full eyeball melting brightness. It's not loud, but my home office is almost silent, and it's the loudest thing in my office if the hard drive isn't thrashing. For most people, in most enviroments, it would be a non-issue, but for me it's a show stopper. A very helpful tech support person at Hazro (I was investigating alternatives) tells me that all 30" CCFL panels, including theirs, do this to an extent, and that it should be considered 'a panel characteristic' (HP told me substantially the same thing). They also explained that the somewhat aggressive 'anti-glare' coating is necessary on these panels to compensate for lack of backlight uniformity.
Sadly I think this means I have to rethink. Looks like every 30" panel on the market will have the same issues - unless I was to get very lucky with an individual panel. Obviously neither are issues for gamers or in a noisy office but a show stopper for me.
So next stop seems to be 27" LED panels. I don't really mind the 10% smaller overall size, but don't like the 16:9 vs 16:10 aspect ratio: it's nearly 20% smaller vertically. I also much prefer a main monitor with 2 satellites
But what other choices do I have? I am not keen on a portrait mode only setup as the horizontal width becomes constraining.
I am thinking that my best setup might be two Hazro HZ27C's, but just hoping I may have missed something. So before I return the HP and order an HZ27C, does anyone have any better alternatives?
(Sorry if I sound like a spoilt s.o.b. - just curse me silently and move on to the next thread
)
Well I thought this would be easy. I am going to do a lot more work from home, and am looking for the optimum monitor setup. I won't say price is no issue, but I am happy to spend on anything that improves productivity, and to pay for quality.
Work is coding and data analysis - and screen real estate really helps with productivity: in particular vertical inches and pixels. I do a bit of image editing, but next to no gaming. So my priorities are number of pixels, size, and clarity of text.
My plan was a 30" 2560x1600 main panel, with two 2nd hand 20" 1600x1200 monitors in portrait mode either side. This gives 1600 vertical pixels and about 16" vertical real estate, with a clear main monitor, which seems about perfect for me.
I did a bit of research, and eventually bought an HP ZR30W. The size is great, image quality is great (despite a slightly more grainy anti-glare coating than I would like), and the build quality is very good.
BUT - it buzzes at anything below full eyeball melting brightness. It's not loud, but my home office is almost silent, and it's the loudest thing in my office if the hard drive isn't thrashing. For most people, in most enviroments, it would be a non-issue, but for me it's a show stopper. A very helpful tech support person at Hazro (I was investigating alternatives) tells me that all 30" CCFL panels, including theirs, do this to an extent, and that it should be considered 'a panel characteristic' (HP told me substantially the same thing). They also explained that the somewhat aggressive 'anti-glare' coating is necessary on these panels to compensate for lack of backlight uniformity.
Sadly I think this means I have to rethink. Looks like every 30" panel on the market will have the same issues - unless I was to get very lucky with an individual panel. Obviously neither are issues for gamers or in a noisy office but a show stopper for me.
So next stop seems to be 27" LED panels. I don't really mind the 10% smaller overall size, but don't like the 16:9 vs 16:10 aspect ratio: it's nearly 20% smaller vertically. I also much prefer a main monitor with 2 satellites
But what other choices do I have? I am not keen on a portrait mode only setup as the horizontal width becomes constraining.
I am thinking that my best setup might be two Hazro HZ27C's, but just hoping I may have missed something. So before I return the HP and order an HZ27C, does anyone have any better alternatives?
(Sorry if I sound like a spoilt s.o.b. - just curse me silently and move on to the next thread
)
Last edited:
Drown out the noise.
