HP LP3065

High-resolution widescreen TFTs are slowly gaining ground, but the likes of the LP3065 are still the exception. With its 30in diagonal, this ultra-high-resolution display offers 2,560 x 1,600 pixels - that's roughly twice that of other mainstream displays we've seen, with the exception of Dell's UltraSharp 3007WFP.

The HP is based on a panel from the same manufacturer as the Dell, but the LP3065 sports the second-generation version. The monitor as a whole shares some of the same foibles too, primarily a near-total lack of adjustment controls - you only get input-select and brightness up/down buttons. If you want to make other adjustments, you need to do them via your graphics card driver or third-party calibration software.

To use the LP3065 at full resolution, you also need a graphics card with a dual-link DVI output, which many cards don't provide. We used an Nvidia Quadro FX 4500 plugged into one of the three dual-link inputs the monitor provides, all of which support HDCP.

If you're thinking of using one of these as your everyday display, think twice, as the size of the screen and the sheer Desktop area is a little overwhelming. Casually maximise a browser window, for instance, and many websites fall to pieces, with paragraphs of text stretched into a single line.

For photo editing and CAD work, though, you can never have too much resolution, and using the LP3065 as a secondary application-specific display gives productivity a huge boost. In Photoshop Lightroom, for example, it made whittling down a large batch of shots a breeze; and in a 3ds Max session, it gives you a resolution of almost 1,280 x 800 in each pane of a four-viewport setup. It's absolute bliss.

Native colour-gamut coverage is a very good 92% of NTSC, although if you're looking for a colour-accurate monitor the LP3065 isn't it, as the lack of adjustments makes hardware calibration tricky. For routine photographic tasks, though, its basic quality makes it more than acceptable: linearity is excellent and the rated contrast ratio of 1,000:1 gives bright whites and solid blacks.

It's not for everyone, but for any design application that requires high resolution, the LP3065 is superb.

Author: David Fearon