Hewlett Packard LP2480zx Monitor Review

Taste the rainbow. No seriously - stick out your tongue

You may not immediately think of the words 'Hewlett Packard' as synonymous with cutting-edge LCD monitors, but HP's new LP2480zx has the potential to change all that.

Now, before you do a double-take on the pricetag and laugh the poor thing out of town, you need to realise who this monitor is built for. It's not for your average joe home user. Strangely enough, nor is it for your high-end gaming connaisseur. This bit of kit is a tremendously useful stepping stone for professional designers, animators, game developers, photographers - in fact anybody in the graphics community.

Flat panel displays, although convenient, have long been a bone of contention for graphic artists. Despite their impressive resolution capabilities and reduced flicker, they've never been particularly trustworthy as benchmarks for true colour. As a freelancer, you could be paying up to a grand for a flat panel, only to have to check all your work on an old CRT screen before delivering. Either that or shell out £8000-10,000 for an accurate LCD equivalent. HP's LP2480zx fills this gap, allowing designers to achieve industry standard colour depth on a (comparatively) modest budget.

So how does it look? Well from a consumer point of view, it can only be described as the absolute cream. It's big, it's responsive, and the colours are starker and more vibrant than on any LCD you will have used before. This is primarily down to the fact that it displays over a billion different colours, a big jump from the mere 18million the rest of us are used to (that's about 55 times greater colour range). Pair that with the capable 2048 x 1200 resolution and every input type you can think of, and you have a very impressive screen indeed. It is admittedly heavy, but at 24in you're hardly likely to be carting it about. The stand it ships with is well designed and infinitely adjustable, while its on-screen display is elegant and perfectly integrated.

For designers, this is an obvious choice. If you're sick of having to keep your old CRT around, cluttering up your studio, then get one of these right away. If you're just a consumer who reeks of dosh with only a note of common sense, then by all means go for it. Your friends might laugh at you when they hear how much you paid, but Monsters Inc. will never look more alive when you hook this up to a Blu-ray.

Similarly if you're a hardcore gamer, you may notice some difference in more exotic and colourful scenery. On the other hand there's a whole host of other, more reasonable investments available that will heighten your killing experience in more effective ways. One for the professionals then. A sound chunk of dedicated hardware.