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HannsG HZ281

HannsG HZ281
  • Manufacturer: HannsG (www.hannsg.com)
  • Pros: Huge 27.5in screen; sensibly priced; TV-like appearance; HDMI port; good colour fidelity using default settings
  • Cons: Limited viewing angle; worryingly wobbly; limited connectivity; below average contrast; so-so sound quality
  • Price: £279
  • Star rating: 2

Hannspree may be most well known for making fun kids TVs wrapped in novelty giraffe, elephant and monkey suits, but you’ll find no such wackiness here. Instead the Hanns.G HZ281 is a rather sober-looking monitor, wrapping glossy black plastic around a 27.5in twisted nematic (TN) LCD with so-so specs at a reasonable price.

In practice that means you get a maximum resolution of 1,920 x 1,200 pixels, 800:1 contrast ratio and the minimum of connectivity options: one HDMI port, one VGA port, one DVI port and one analogue audio input. As you’d expect for the £231.31 asking price, build-quality is fair rather than brilliant. The monitor sits uncomfortably on its insubstantial base, making the screen wobble alarmingly when you brush it with your hands.

Setting up the HZ281 is fairly straightforward, although the control buttons are hidden out of sight on the bottom of the display, forcing you to use them by touch rather than sight. You also won’t be surprised to learn than the white-on-green UI gives you few options to choose from: there are just three colour presets, for example – cool, warm and nature – although there is a user configurable option too.

Unfortunately, that’s largely where the good stuff ends. The HZ281HPB is capable of delivering reasonable colour fidelity, especially with skin tones, but it’s relatively poor contrast makes it difficult to pick out details in darker areas of the picture and the decidedly weird X-Contrast dynamic contrast tool doesn’t help; we found it just progressively darkened the picture until we could barely see anything at all.

Movie and games performance is disappointing. Although the HZ281’s 3ms response time sounds good on paper, it doesn’t guarantee you’ll get smooth playback in practice, with 1080p HD movie clips suffering the most. Your ears will also strain to hear the sound through the two 2W speakers, which managed to be both tinny and muffled at the same time. Not a great recipe then for laid-back movie viewing, despite the HZ281’s enormous size.

This product is part of our 27in monitors group test group product review. Other products in this group are:

 

Acer S273HL

  • Star rating: 4

 

Benq M2700HD

  • Star rating: 3

 

Dell UltraSharp U2711

  • Editors ChoiceStar rating: 5

 

NEC MultiSync PA271W

  • Star rating: 5

 

ViewSonic VX2739wm

  • Star rating: 4

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