HP intros a slew of monitors, including curved, 5K and 3D models
HP just announced a boatload of new monitors here at CES and impressively, they seem to combine every big tech buzzword from the past few years. On the one hand, the company is showing off a pair of curved displays, which we already know are going to be huge at this year's show. Meanwhile, the company also unveiled its first 4K monitors, available in two sizes, along with its inaugural 5K model. Finally, HP is showing off a virtual reality display that works with 3D glasses, of all things -- a nice throwback to CES 2010.
Let's start with the weird one first. The Zvr Virtual Reality Display is a 23.6-inch, full HD monitor, with a three-dimensional display that requires passive 3D glasses. As for the "virtual reality" part? There's a stylus allowing you to move, rotate and otherwise manipulate onscreen objects. Meanwhile, four cameras mounted to the top of the unit track your head motions, and can detect what you're looking at. What all this means, then, is not only can you view things in 3D, but you can also flip them around and view these holograms from all angles. In short, it's precisely the sort of "blended reality" experience that HP has been promising we'd see more of. That doesn't mean, though, that a device like this is destined for your home. Rather, once it ships this spring, HP expects it to be used in schools, design studios and engineering labs -- basically, any place where people might be doing things with their hands. In classrooms, for instance, students might use this to dissect a frog, instead of having to touch a real thing. A designer, meanwhile, might want to play around with a prototype they haven't actually printed yet. You get the idea.
And now, normal stuff. Starting with the curved models, there's a 27-inch and 34-inch version, each of which will be available for business users too under different names. The 34-incher, the Envy 34c ($999, April), has 3,440 x 1,440 resolution with a wide 21:9 aspect ratio, allowing you to lay a lot of windows out side by side, without the need for dual monitors. In addition, it has dual HDMI sockets and a DisplayPort, with one of those HDMI connections doubling as an MHL port for playing content off a mobile device. In contrast, the 27-inch model, dubbed the Pavilion 27c, is less exciting. This tops out at regular ol' 1080p resolution, with a more normal 16:9 aspect ratio. Ports include VGA and HDMI with MHL support. That guy's available now, priced at $399.
Moving on, HP's 4K panel comes in two sizes: the 27-inch Z27s ($749, January) and the 23.8-inch Z24s ($549, April). Both have a 3,840 x 2,160, 16:9 panel with 1.07 billion colors. On the exterior, they each have a four-way stand that pivots between landscape and portrait modes, and a port selection that includes DisplayPort, DVI, HDMI, Mini-DisplayPort, MHL and three USB 3.0 sockets. Then there's that 5K number, the Z27q, which has a 5,120 x 2,880, 300-nit IPS display. To put that in perspective, that's 14.7 million pixels, or seven times the resolution of full HD. Like its 4K siblings, the Z27q supports over a billion colors, along with all the same ports. In addition, all the 4K and 5K monitors have picture-in-picture and picture-by-picture modes to help you make the most of those extra pixels. Though this isn't the first standalone 5K display we've seen, we're glad more are cropping up; not everyone can justify buying a Retina display iMac just to get that caliber screen. If you're interested, the Z27q arrives in March with a price of $1,299.
