- Full HD 1920 X 1080 resolution
- 3,000,000:1 Dynamic Contrast Ratio
- LED backlighting
- Ultra-slim 23-Inch diagonal monitor
- 170/160 degree viewing angles
The primary improvement of this display is driven by its use of next-generation LED back-lighting instead of compact fluorescent bulbs, which contain mercury vapor. The benefit of LEDs is several-fold. One is the elimination of the mercury, which is an obvious environmental boon. Two is the significantly greater energy efficiency of the LEDs over the compact fluorescents. Three is that the LEDs are brighter and will maintain their brightness longer than fluorescent bulbs, which will extend the usable life of these displays. Four is that the LEDs are smaller, allowing for a thinner, lighter overall package. Finally, the LEDs give off a fuller spectrum of light than the compact fluorescent bulbs, giving brighter, more vibrant colors with greater saturation.
Indeed, the display is noticeably thinner than previous iterations, and considerably lighter. The design appears less bulky, more svelte. They also decided to go to an all glossy black design, with some texture to give the appearance of two-tones. It's simpler than the two-tone silver and black of the previous HPs. I like the economy of this approach, which gives some appearance of sophistication without being too showy. The design is consistent with most of the HP line clean lines, and simple, elegant forms, with understated repetition of the HP branding on the front and back.
It comes in a very narrow box. You do have to do a bit of assembly, but it's trivial. I recommend testing the display before snapping it together, just it case you wind up deciding to return it, due to dead pixels or whatever. My display did not appear to have any dead or hot pixels. It seems that manufacturers no longer ship displays with such problems. This may be an issue of the past.
One added bonus here in California is that you won't be charged the state-imposed $8 recycling fee, thanks to the elimination of the mercury. I don't think Amazon charges you that anyway.
Some basic specs follow.
-The display is 1920 x 1080 resolution at 60 Hz. It's not 120 Hz, so it cannot be used for 3D display in the future.
-I find 23-inches to be a perfect size for general use. It seems smaller than it is because the margins around the display are smaller, so it doesn't quite feel like it's 23 inches large.
-I like the option of having DVI or HDMI input. It has VGA too, but I consider that a total waste. The plug-ins at the rear are normal to the panel, and are much easier to access. On the previous versions, the connectors mounted in the vertical, making it a difficult, blind connection. Also, the power supply is smaller, due to the lower power consumption, and plugs into the display with a tidy little DC jack.
-It is indeed a matte-finish display. I personally prefer matte finishes as they reduce room-lighting glare. However, the glossy displays do tend to mellow and smooth out the imagery.
-There is a tilt-hinge, but height is not adjustable. There is some elevation to the display already, so most people will not care to adjust any further.
I only have one caveat about this display. I'm not sure what to make of LED back-lighting technology for quality of light. The display is brighter, and there are myriad indisputable benefits to using LEDs. My concern is the quality of the color gamut. Some colors seems more vibrant, but at the same time, it also seems harsh and a bit washed-out. I couldn't find a way to tweak the brightness and contrast settings to adjust for this. Maybe it just requires some getting used to. For my needs it will be just fine, and I expect to get used to the difference. Others may find it a bit jarring. There is no doubt that most manufacturers will standardize on LED back-lit displays, so I figure we should try to get used to it. For graphic designers, or anybody for whom color matching is critical, this may be an issue.
I tried the Samsung 23-inch LED display before this one but returned it because the text display on it wasn't smooth. To be fair, this may have been a display adjustment I failed to make, but the Samsung menus were not as simple and easy to use as the HP menus. The Samsung uses capacitive, touch-style controls, whereas the HP uses REAL BUTTONS. I know touchscreens are cool, but I think it's a mistake to eliminate real buttons altogether. The tactile feedback given by a proper button makes certain things much easier. When I've pressed a capacitive touch button and nothing happens, I'm always asking, "Is my finger in the right place? Did I actually press the button?" This is not an issue with real buttons.
Note that the tilt-image above shows the previous generation HP 23-inch monitor. That's a mistake. This monitor does not have that range of tilt motion.
Overall, for anyone considering a 23-inch display for general use, you cannot go too wrong with this product.
Buy HP 2311x 23-Inch LED Monitor - Black Now
For the price, this monitor is a great value. HP list price is $250 (on HP website), but I got it on Amazon for $179 (price fluctuates from day to day). Highlights:(1) The screen is indeed a matte finish. I dislike the more prevalent glossy screens, which reflect overhead lights. The bezel is a glossy black though. It can pick up stray reflections. I have no idea why glossy black is so fashionable in electronics these days. Well, I'm grateful at least that avocado isn't the color de jour.
(2) Text, still images, and video display sharply and with clean colors. At work, the IT dept recently bought 21" monitors from another brand. Text is jagged. Images and video are washed out.
(3) There is a full range of settings available controlled by four small switches at the bottom front right corner of the display. One switch brings up the main menu with 10 fields. The other three switches allow you to scroll up/down, left/right, and enter. It's a bit tedious, but you don't need to tweak all the settings. I mainly changed the brightness and contrast to suit my taste. There's a reset to factory settings selection in case you mess things up. The unit at work has horrible switches buried under the bezel that take a lot of pressure to activate.
(4) The inputs provided are VGA, DVI, and HDMI. Although this is a 1920 X 1080 display, it's still useful to have a VGA input. You can use it with computers with only VGA outputs and be HD ready when you upgrade your PC. Another reason I chose this unit is because of the HDMI input. My laptop has VGA and HDMI, but not DVI. Many HD monitors on the market have VGA and DVI. You then have to buy an HDMI DVI adapter. VGA and DVI cables are supplied, but not HDMI.
(5) There are no speakers. But this is a thin profile display, and built-in speakers would probably be pretty bad anyway.
(6) I'm running with WIN 7, 64-bit. No problems.
(7) Mechanically, the unit is mediocre, but on a par with other units in this price range. It's stable sitting on a desktop, but be careful about bumping it. I have a 12 yr old NEC LCD monitor that's built like a tank, but it is only 15", has lower resolution, and cost $800 at the time. LCD panels and control electronics keep dropping in price, but mechanical components generally don't. Mechanical components are less robust than earlier generations to cut costs.
(8) The stand has no vertical adjustment. The bottom of the screen is ~4" above the desktop. If you need to raise it, you can simply stack it on some books or sheets of paper if you don't want to buy an auxiliary stand. [[Note: The display snaps into the base. Once snapped in, you can't remove it. If you think you may need a lower position, don't snap on the base right away, in case you need to make a separate mount.]]
Edit 11/25/2011. In the comments, R. Tadeo has corrected my statement on the mounting of the base. I have confirmed that there is a release button on the front of the base. I was not able to confirm, however, that the base can be removed. After what I considered to be a reasonable amount of wiggling and tugging, I was not able to remove the base. I didn't want to tug any harder, because I was concerned that I would break the unit. R. Tadeo indicated that considerable effort is required to remove the base.
(9) Note that the tilt is very limited. HP spec is 0 to +25 deg (that is, tilts up, but not down). As another reviewer has noted, the picture on the Amazon listing is incorrect. This range is OK for normal desktop viewing, but not OK if you place the monitor on a high shelf or mount it high on the wall.
Read Best Reviews of HP 2311x 23-Inch LED Monitor - Black Here
I have been buying 23-inch 1080p HP monitors for our engineering company for the last couple of years, and we now have more than 20 of them. The quality has always been impeccable (until now), and the price has been very reasonable (under $200). The few monitors I have purchased from other manufacturers have paled (literally and figuratively) in comparison. I recently started purchasing the LED HP2311x because it is thinner and lighter than our LCD models, and it is supposed to use less electricity. We now have 4 of them. A couple of people really like the screen's matte finish (all of our other monitors have the glossy finish) because the individuals in question have windows in their offices and do not have to deal with reflections. Most of us, however, find the matte image to seem less detailed and the colors to be less vibrant. The image just isn't as attractive. Furthermore, the last HP2311x we bought has had shadowing problems. When touched or moved the slightest bit, reds and whites begin to appear among the "real" colors (kind of a moiré pattern). After painfully long conversations with HP technicians, HP has finally decided to replace the new monitor with a refurbished one. We will see how that goes!Want HP 2311x 23-Inch LED Monitor - Black Discount?
This appears to be the stock monitor HP is shipping with its desktop computers right now. The image is very sharp, the monitor thin and light.I'll say up front the one thing I don't like about this monitor I've put it on an Apple desktop and laptop is that when the computer awakens the screen from sleep, the HP causes the computer's display driver to rescan it, so the screen goes white, then black a couple of times before stabilizing. I worry about what this does to the video card after a few thousand iterations. I have a ViewSonic VX2433wm 24-inch WideScreen LCD Monitor (not available locally any more) that keeps its signal to the computer constant even after turning off the screen, so that when the computer wakes up its output, the image instantly appears on the screen, with no video reset.
One other slight advantage of the ViewSonic for adding to a laptop is that it can tilt slightly downward, so that if you have it elevated above the laptop monitor, you can tilt it orthogonal to the line of site. The HP tilts to 90 degrees an no more.
Blessedly, the monitor makers haven't been sucked into the glossy screen fad the way Apple has. I would have bought an iMac instead of this screen and desktop if it weren't for the mandatory glossy screen on the iMac. This HP is nicely matte, with little in reflected artifacts.
There is growing concern about the amount of melatonin-suppressing blue wavelengths that are twice as strong in LED displays as in LCD displays (Cajochen, et al. 2011. Evening exposure to a light-emitting diodes (LED)-backlit computer screen affects circadian physiology and cognitive performance. J Applied Physiology 110: 1432-1438) . This HP display fortunately allows you to reduce the blue by choosing a cooler color temperature; whether this compensates enough I do not know.
**** Postscript ****
After using the monitor for a few days, I discovered that I was getting eyestrain with it, an experience I never got with the ViewSonic VX2433wm. I did some investigation to figure out what was going on, and found that quite a number of people complain of eyestrain from LED monitors. In both LED and CCFL LCD monitors, if you turn down the brightness, it achieves this by strobing the backlights. So I made sure to set the brightness to maximum. One can turn down the emitted brightness then by lowering the contrast, so the LCD layer blocks some of the backlight. I jimmied around with contrast, color, and temperature, all to no avail. The LED display actually has a continuous spectrum, while the CCFL has more discrete bands, making the LED more like natural light. Yet, my eyes got very tired looking at it. All I can think is that the deep blue spike in the spectrum of LEDs does something to exercise the focus muscles in the lense --otherwise, I have no theory for why my eyes got tired on it. At any rate, I returned it, and ordered the twin of the VX2433, the ViewSonic VA2431WM 24-Inch Widescreen LCD Monitor, which came quickly and is gorgeous and easy to look at.
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It's an awesome monitor. I went from a 18 inch LCD (the square type) to this, and it feels huge. Plenty of viewing real estate. I'm glad to go with this size and not any smaller. The monitor itself isn't enormous and has the same height as my old one, but about 6 inches wider. The look is very sleek. The screen is non-reflective without the hazy coating look, and the edge is shiny black. It feels quite light but not flimsy.The screen is really nice. Sharp and clear. The factory settings were too bright out of the box. Also, the color temp needed some manual adjusting too to get the white and colors to come out right. But, after you play around with the settings, it is absolutely fantastic.
