Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7210 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Hanns G
• Model: HG281DP
• Released on: 2008-09-29
• Dimensions: 19.13" h x 26.30" w x 8.31" l, 23.81 pounds
• Display size: 27.5

Manufacturer's Description
The first HannsG 28" widescreen LCD monitor with a viewable area of 27.5". The HG281DP has a stylish glossy black design with a swivel base for an elegant finish. A vista premium monitor with HDMI, Full HD, VGA and audio inputs. It has a maximum resolution of WUXGA 1920 x 1200, a fast response time of 5ms, viewing angles of 160°/160 and 2 x 2.5 watt speakers. No more switching between applications as this monitor is big enough to view at least 2 A4 pages. The specifications make this monitor multi- functional and highly desirable.

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

Excellent
I've been using this monitor for a couple of weeks now and can say that I am really pleased. No dead pixels, hdmi, good quality images, and no ghosting. To stop you from going blind, you will need to lower the brightness and contrast settings. I have my brightness at 70% and contrast at 50%. This is excellent value for money, and you'd be silly to spend the same amount on a 24 inch monitor instead.

Very good, very cheap
The box is huge and so is the monitor. It took about two minutes to set up and, after adjusting the brightness WAY down, worked very nicely indeed. The extra desktop space is huge. The display looks nice, had no dead pixels and the monitor itself looks ok- not just a cheap plastic surround. The image quality was good and the colours were bright- although I am not an expert on picture quality, I think most gamers and casual users would be happy with this screen. It's not as heavy as you might expect and adjusts for height, tilt and turn easily. It came with lots of leads and connectors.

I bought this to game on- Team Fortress 2 looks amazing, as does Civ4. The monitor almost fills my field of vision entirely. You'll probably need to upgrade your graphics card if you're intending to play Crysis at "High detail" settings but my 8800gt seems to handle older games with no problems at 1920x1200.

Caveats:
1 I don't think this screen automatically turns off when the PC is inactive. I left my pc on, unattended, for about 30 mins yesterday and the screen was still on when I came back. You'll need to be careful about this.
2 You'll probably giggle like a fool the first time you turn it on.

Solid budget option
First, the main bad point. The monitor on which I'm writing this review suffers from significant backlight bleed around all four edges, each patch extending in an arc about 3 inches from the border. Movies with plenty of dark scenes are annoyingly unwatchable, so I'm returning this one and hoping I just got a dud. For what it's worth, if this degree of bleed was typical for the HannsG I expect I would have read many more negative reviews, so I remain quietly optimistic about the replacement.

On the plus side, the monitor itself is freaking enormous. It will dominate your desk so make sure you have the real estate to accommodate it. If you're looking for a ridiculously large screen at the lowest possible price you won't be disappointed. I don't know of any other monitor that offers this kind of cost per inch, and I still can't believe it only cost a few hundred quid.

Naturally, of course, at this price you can't expect perfection. The HannsG requires a good fiddle with the settings to get the best picture out of it. Out of the box the brightness was set way too high, and since I recently had laser surgery and am still a little light sensitive the big switch on was a fairly unpleasant experience. After an hour or so of adjustment I managed to fine tune it properly, and while the image quality won't blow you away if you're accustomed to a high-end monitor it's perfectly acceptable for regular users. If you want to do any sort of detailed graphical work, however, I'd recommend you spend your money on a smaller, higher quality monitor.

What I've found from the HannsG is that it's spurred me on to upgrade my system to get the best from it. I'm not much of a gaming fan, but as soon as I got Call of Duty: World at War up on the big screen I felt compelled to splash some cash on a new graphics card. As soon as I stuck on a DVD I felt compelled to order a Blu-Ray player. I'm not sure whether this is a good or a bad thing, but if you're on a tight budget you're going to have to resist the urge to build an expensive HTPC around this thing.

All in all the HannsG is a solid option, and I'd have no problem recommending it to a friend.

**Update**

The replacement monitor arrived (very quickly, I might add) and it's satisfactory. While there is still a small amount of backlight bleed it isn't enough to be off putting while watching DVDs, though it is occasionally noticeable.