I promised my subjective review of the Hazro HZ27WA glassless vs. 20WGX² Pro.
I purchased the 20WGX² Pro more than four years ago and it cost me £330. It is a 1680x1050 AS-IPS screen. The AS means a fast response version of IPS. The screen is reflective and I use the following settings which gave superb colours at a slight trade vs. black level:
Brightness 54.6
Contrast 50.0
Advanced DV Off
DV Mode Standard
RGB Native
Sharpness 16.6
DDC/CI On
I purchased the HZ27WA yesterday for £480. It is a 2560x1440 LED S-IPS screen. The S means best viewing angles but not quite so good response times as AS. Out of the box calibration is pretty good but the colours are slightly washed out to my eyes. Changing colour temp to warm helped but after a bit of tinkering I quite like the following settings:
Brightness 30
Contrast 90
Sharpness 50
Colour Temp User - Red 30 - Green 22 - Blue 30
DCR Off
ECO 50
Note – memory recall changes language to Korean and sets input to VGA, both of which have to be manually corrected.
Comparing the two screens the Hazro is slightly less reflective but quite similar to look at. With these settings the colours on both monitors look very similar. If you like the NEC you are going to like the Hazro. I really don’t like AG coating the Dell u2711 or HP ZR24W have. I actually purchased the ZR24W last year but sold it on and went back to the 20WGX² Pro.
The Hazro is quite heavy but is slimmer despite its size. I think the bezel looks quite nice and the OSD buttons behind the bezel make the lines clean but are a bit of a pain to use. I wish it was possible to move the OSD more than halfway across the screen from the left!
The Hazro LED backlight uniformity seems fine; I’m not picking up any issues. I’m not particularly looking for stuck/dead pixels and pleasingly haven’t noticed anything yet and I think by now I would have picked up any that were going to bother me.
With a black background I can detect a bit of IPS glow (white) on the Hazro but less than the NEC which has an IPS purple glow especially when seen from an angle. The HP ZR24W had far worse IPS glow (white). Considering the size of the Hazro I think it is excellent in this respect.
The Hazro is a little slower when switching between resolutions than the NEC.
The Hazro stand is not great but it doesn’t wobble and with a monitor this size ideally I would only want it about an inch or two higher so I might not bother about a height adj stand.
TBH I am chuffed to bits with this monitor, it was a bit of gamble considering the price after what I read about the dust problems. But the glassless option has removed that problem and I think the H2 glare coating looks fine if maybe not offering quite the same protection against accidentally scratching etc.
Only just started with games but I have noticed that games that don;t have widescreen resolutions as standard i.e. 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 scale with black bars on each side, which I actually prefer as the conformity of the game is closer than if overstretched.
That’s it for now I’ve posted a few more pics of both monitors for what they are worth.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/651/2hazro.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/825/2nec.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/600/4hazro.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/836/5hazro.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/694/4nec.jpg/