HP Announces The HP ENVY 27 4K Thin Bezel Display
by Brett Howse on October 12, 2016 12:30 AM EST
Today HP announced an update to their product lineup, and one of the announcements that caught my eye immediately was the new ENVY 27 display. HP has packed a lot of features into a great looking display, but best of all it’s going to be available for $499.
The 27-inch display is an IPS panel, and although HP doesn’t list the refresh rate, it is likely going to be 60 Hz. It also supports FreeSync, meaning it should help with image tearing when gaming at 4K, where the high resolution really taxes even the strongest cards. The benefits won’t be as pronounced as some higher refresh rate gaming displays, but regardless it is better to have this than not.
HP is also promoting that the “sRGB color accuracy exceeds 99 percent” which sounds like they don’t mean what they are saying. Accuracy is generally measured in Delta E, where lower is better, and gamut coverage is measured in percentage. With full sRGB gamut coverage, hopefully they have spent a bit of effort on panel calibration, and if so they will have a pretty nice display for the money.
It also features DisplayPort, HDMI, and USB-C for connectivity, and the latter can also charge your laptop or phone with up to 60 Watts of power. That means this can be a single cable connection to drive the display and power the laptop, which is exactly what USB-C is designed to achieve, and it’s great to see more products supporting this. For a desktop, it is less important, but if you want to dock your laptop, a single cable will give you display, and power.
The design is a thin bezel, with a chrome finished support mounting the display to the base. There is no mention of height adjustment, and the images are unclear.
As already mentioned, this 27-inch 4K IPS FreeSync display will be price at just $499, with availability starting December 4th.
Source: HP via Windows Blog
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
37 Comments
View All Comments
Valantar - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link
"(..) price [sic] at just $499". Am I the only one who is kind of stunned by monitor price development in recent years? Way back when I bought my Dell U2711, it was REALLY expensive among home monitors - at around $500. Sure, it was 2560x1440 factory calibrated 99% Adobe RGB IPS at 27" at a time when the standard was 22-24" 1920x1080 TN with no colour calibration (and probably ~70% sRGB). But those were generally $100-200. And with the commoditization of IPS, production costs are now far lower. Sure, the U2711 was cheap for its class of monitor. But it was still possible to sell at that price - in 2011.Newegg has 24-25" IPS 1920x1080 monitors at $170. This isn't bad (although I'm not looking at colour specs here). Add $100, you get 2560x1440 at the same size. But to get 2560x1440 27" non-TN from a major brand (HP, Acer, BenQ), there's an additional ~$100. This makes little sense to me. Sure, 27" panels require more materials. But they are lower density, which makes them easier to make and gives higher yields. The increase in area from 24-27" is just ~26%, which really doesn't add up in terms of adding another $100 (~40%) to the price (with the same panel technology and resolution).
Given the explosive growth in production of high-DPI panels and IPS (and similar) display technologies in recent years - with the commoditization this brings with it - I'd expect the _average_ 27" 2560x1440 non-TN monitor today to be below $300. Instead, I'd have to pay MORE today to get an equivalent* monitor to my U2711 than I did in 2011. Say what now?
*(yes, it would be LED-based and thus more power efficient, and probably have a better display coating. That's it for improvements, though)
Death666Angel - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link
You realize this is 4k, right? So you don't have to pay more for the same monitor today. 27"/IPS/1440p is pretty cheap compared to years passed.Although I have to say, 500 USD for the Dell U2711 in 2010 was a bargain. In Germany, it launched at a street price of 1000€. I paid 580€ (on sale) for the Samsung S27A850D, their first PLS 1440p monitor, in 2012 and the competing Dell U2713HM was about 650€ at the time. I sold it in 2014 for 310€ and bought a Korean B-Grade PLS 1440p DVI-only monitor for 290€ incl. shipping, overclockable to 110Hz. That was a bargain.
Today I can get decent (A-Grade panels) 27"/IPS/1440p monitors from German shops for anything between 250€ and 400€. That's a great selection of quality/price/features and something for everyone. I'm pretty happy with where the prices are at today and didn't expect it to be lower. Average (and mean, funnily enough) of the 10 lowest cost 27"/IPS/1440p monitors on a comparison site is 311€. So a drop of about 50% in price in a 4 year span is quite something in my opinion, especially since there isn't such rapid development as with chip technology and material cost is ~constant in all 27" panels.
FYI, price conversion is usually 1 USD = 1 Euro, what with markups and added taxes.
Valantar - Thursday, October 13, 2016 - link
I'm in Norway, just converting to USD to make things easier for the (mostly) US commenters here. I paid around 5000NOK for the U2711, including 25% VAT, I guess that was closer to $650 USD (without VAT) with the currency of the time. The Krone has dropped pretty significantly in later years.And sure, prices have dropped somewhat. But you're ignoring quite a few aspects here. Sure, those monitors you list are 27" IPS 1440p. But do they even cover the full sRGB spectrum, let alone AdobeRGB? Are they individually calibrated? Do they have proper adjustable stands (not just tilt)? I very, very much doubt it. Even this HP has a shitty non-adjustable stand - for $500!
What I'm saying is this: monitors - even decently nice ones - used to be 20-30% of the price of a decent PC. Now they're more like 50-100% of the price. And while you get more premium features, I don't see this as a good thing.
zodiacfml - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link
Great specs.Next year though, we will see a similar one only with an updated interface.
How come we still don't have Display Port 1.3 on monitors?
flashpowered - Thursday, October 13, 2016 - link
UHD and USB-C single cable connection including charging is exactly what I'm looking for, however I want this in a 24" display. This is encouraging though, and I assume similar displays won't be far behind.Varezhka - Thursday, October 13, 2016 - link
This look like a very nice display, especially since I was looking to get a USB-C compatible display.I do wish, though, that it had a USB hub capability like LG UD88. Having just one cable to connect to my laptop would've been quite convenient.
jens_anand - Tuesday, December 6, 2016 - link
This should have been available for order now, but I can't find it anywhere. Does anyone know the status of this monitor?