The HP w2408 Vivid Color Widescreen LCD monitor is the most expensive computer monitor I’ve purchased to date weighing in at a wallet bleeding $599 USD. You can see the complete specs on the Best Buy sales page here. I ponied up for the extra $79.99 for the 4 year extended warranty and after tax the whole purchase rang up a little over $730 USD. PriceProtectr, fast becoming my favorite site and best website friend of 2007, emailed me this morning to tell me the price already dropped $30, so I’ll be heading back to Best Buy to get my $30 back. Nice.

I’m not the type of guy who will typically spend more than a couple hundred bones on a monitor, but we’re on a bit of a mission to slowly replace the old CRT monitors with LCDs and am really happy with the HP w2408 so far. Let’s start with words you see when you first open the box:

It’s true, computer’s haven’t felt very “personal” for awhile. The HP w2408 has a very friendly feel from unpacking and setting up to powering on for the first time, complete with a picture with color step-by-step instructions gently taped to the face of the monitor.

The last LCD monitor I bought had me bending and twisting to figure out where to plug in the cords, but with the 90 degree turn of the HP w2408, you can simply twist into portrait mode (1200×1920 max resolution) and plug in the cords on the right with hardly any bending at all. You can use VGA or DVI-D and yes, it does come with the DVI-D cord.

Note: keep enough room so when you twist back and forth between modes, you don’t knock anything over. This prompted me to clean some of the clutter off my glass desk. Thanks HP!

Once you move the monitor back into the traditional landscape mode (1920×1200 max resolution), the cords neatly protrude from the back, snaking their way to the computer. There are 4 USB ports, two on the left side (landscape) and two in the back, which are handy for plugging and unplugging conveniently. There are rear speakers built into the monitor, but they are not very loud or useful; will probably want to stick with your existing speakers.

As I’m getting older, no surprise, my eyes aren’t quite what they used to be. The HP w2408 has an ambient light sensor which adjusts to the light around the room and provides a sharp, but not overly bright display. There are different settings available at the touch of a couple buttons on the bottom or left side (portrait mode): movie, photo, gaming, text and custom.

Here is landscape mode:

Here’s portrait:

You can see both sidebars on the homepage of Hmm at 1920×1200 with the window fully maximized. For convenience, I wish there was a button on the monitor to push to switch between these modes rather than having to right click on the desktop and change the orientation.

So far I’m using the monitor mostly in the portrait mode at full resolution (1200×1920) which is fantastic for reading web pages and longer text documents. I can place two decent-sized Firefox browsers and play the new Reel Deal Ghost Town slots (not real gambling) from Phantom EFX for fun all on the same screen:

Summary and grade
As mentioned at the beginning, this is my most expensive monitor purchase ever, but it’s easily the best quality monitor I’ve ever owned. The colors on the screen are vibrant and crisp. The 40″ Samsung HDTV we purchased in July has DVI-D and VGA input too and could serve as a monitor, but at nearly four times the price as HP w2408, that would make for a really expensive computer monitor.

$500-600 was about as much as I was willing to pay for something that could produce full 1080p attached to a computer, which will definitely come in handy editing the Hmmcast HD videos. For those who can put this in their budget your eyes will thank you. This monitor comes highly recommended with my only gripe thus far being the subpar rear speakers. Grade: A-

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