HP L2208w

When matte met flat

If you’re not one for loud statements then you’ll appreciate the laid back, even bland design on this one. A matte finished body extends to the bezel – black is the best color for an LCD bezel, and if it’s dull enough to refrain from reflecting ambient light so much the better. The stand looks cool with a silver and black color tone. However the swivel action on the stand is quite hard, and a couple of days of err, swiveling didn’t loosen things much. The control buttons aren’t backlit or color indicated and fiddling with them in dim lighting is a hit and miss affair. The slight indentation in the centre of the stand is quite useful for keeping utilitarian knickknacks like pencils, erasers or screwdrivers.

DisplayMate’s Intensity Range Check showed a lot of indiscernible grey squares a – this be speaks a poor contrast ratio. We faced no issues with the 16-shade ramp test, but in the 256-color ramp test we had issues with the variation in intensity of colors green and grey. The movie test revealed slightly less color rendition and contrast in most HD clips (compared to the Dell and Samsung monitors of the same size). In F.E.A>R I had issues with contrast where the enemies in dark khaki uniforms were virtually invisible when in shadowy areas. This is a serious put off for any gamer especially when playing dark atmosphere games.

All in all the L2208w is a costly proposition, both on your wallet and your visual senses. It’s a great looking monitor that corrects some of the flaws Dell’s SP 2208 WFP design, but also detracts a lot on the performance front. With the exception of the extreme rarity of you being a die hard fan of HP fan, give this one a miss.