A Good Budget Priced Monitor - The HP L2045w

The last weekend saw me hunting markets and tech shops for a new monitor for my home computer as my previous one has become incumbent(Don't ask me how..it's a long story..lol). While last time, I had gone in for a pretty expensive monitor, this time I was looking for a cheap yet suitable monitor that would fit in with my budget as well as with my expectations. And the answer to all my prayers arrived in the form of the HP L2045 which, according to me, is one of the best budget priced monitors available in the market today.

About the Product

Well, the HP L2045 is basically a 20 inch LCD monitor which comes with two built in USB drives and is priced ranging from $300 to $350. To be very honest, the price did attract me but after viewing the demo I was convinced that this was the product for me.
The monitor resolution is a good 1680x1050 which compares favorably to the other monitors present in the market at present. The outside is covered with a beautiful black bezel covering which gives the monitor a very attractive feel and look.

Another thing that I really liked was that the base had sections for holding clips and other small items which I found to be really cool and handy because I normally have a use for such items and this seemed an ideal place to store them. The second plus point about this product is with regards to connectivity as it has two built in USB drives at the right side panel. However, this HP model does not come with a USB cable so you will need to shell out around $15 extra for that.

There are 4 buttons on the bottom panel which grant you access to the various screen menus. Using these 4 buttons, you can change the display settings of the monitor to suit your needs. You can change the contrast, brightness, color temperature, RGB level etc. There is also a button which allows you to control other functions like putting a sleep timer or change the power settings. One really cool thing with this monitor is that HP provides you with a software through which you can perform all the above functions using your keyboard and mouse rather than punching buttons on the panel.

About the Display

When I read the manual that came along with it, HP said that this was a low business level monitor and hence I though that the display would be rather low end as it was mainly meant for desk and office jobs. However, to my surprise, I found this quite contrary to the truth. The HP L2045 performs very well when it comes to display. I found the colour bright and pretty much uniform in all places while there was hardly any sign of tinting which normally happens with low end monitors. Yes, I did have a problem while reading very small fonts but overall it was quite satisfactory.

I played the movie ''Wall Street'' on this monitor as a test and it played very smoothly and in fact looked very nice on the wide-screen. The colours do seem to shift when there are two people watching and one of them is watching from an angle greater than 150 degrees but that can be regarded as a minor flaw. I feel that HP is highly underrating its own product because this one gives a great performance as compared to other business level monitors present in the market.

Another major advantage of this monitor is the fact that one can easily switch from Landscape mode to Portrait mode. This is very advantageous when it comes to handling long documents, websites for editing vertically-oriented photos. Since I use Photoshop quite regularly, I find it really cool to change between these modes rather than scrolling up and down or zooming in and out continuously, which can be quite a pain sometimes.

Other Information

There are no attached speakers that come with this monitor although you do get this option at an additional price. I did not go for it as I already have a good set of speakers. This product also comes with a full three year parts and labor warranty along with a toll free support for 90 days. You also get utilities like the User Guide, Portrait Display's Pivot Pro and a set of drivers. I have listed some of the important specifications below.

1. Display Type LCD display / TFT active matrix
2. Built-in Devices USB hub
3. Width 18.5 in
4. Depth 8.8 in
5. Height 14.9 in
6. Weight 17.2 lbs
7. 20.1 in - Widescreen
8. Viewable Size 20.1 in
9. Dot Pitch / Pixel Pitch 0.258 mm
10. Max Resolution 1680 x 1050 / 60 Hz
11. Color Support Up to 16.2 million colors
12. Voltage Required AC 120/230 V
13. Operational power consumption 62 Watt
14. Operational power consumption (standby) 5 Watt

Final Verdict

The HP L2045 is a great buy in my opinion if you are looking for a high performance monitor while at the same time having a budget constraint. Although it might not appeal to high end users or gamers, the monitor performs quite admirably when it comes to display and is a very good buy at a price around $300. Before buying, do take a demo to be satisfied about the product although in my opinion, this is an extremely good value for money product and I would recommend it to anyone who is lookign for a good performance oriented monitor.

Also Posted on Ciao under the username onlinemoolah