HP Envy 32 inch Computer Monitor Review

 

Depending on your work, the time needed in front of the computer and the amount of multitasking, most people often reach a dilemma. Dual-monitor setup or one big screen monitor?
Well..it depends. Some studies have reached some conclusions (maybe hastily) that a dual-monitor setup may be more harmful than a single monitor. The reasons are the shifting attention, loss of productivity while multitasking, neck strains and more.
In the meantime a lot of users use multi-screen setups and argue that productivity isn’t impaired. Most say that you focus on one monitor and the rest of the monitors run tasks that need some supervision and minimizing and maximizing them constantly would create frustration and a loss of productivity.

No matter on which side you’re on, we will focus on some different reasons why a uni-screen is a good option. First of all it occupies less space: a huge desk with lots of monitors may sound appealing at a certain age, but if having a family or a smaller home, a single, big monitor may be a better idea.
If you’re a gamer, a bigger monitor often translates into greater frame-rate, better 3D gaming compatibility and even watching a movie would be better on a larger screen.
So, if you wish to purchase a single, large screen monitor or create a multi-large-screen setup – we don’t judge-, the HP Envy 32 inch monitor may prove to be a great option.
Note: HP Envy is a product made from the collaboration of HP with Beats Electronics.

Design
The HP Envy is bigger and looks quite different than your usual monitors. It features a semi-gloss finish, a matte screen (does a great job with reflections), thin bezels and there are two speakers on the sides of the display. The monitor is 32-inches and the side speakers further add to the wide monitor impression.
On the right side of the back panel you can find 2 HDMI ports (one is MHL HDMI) and one DisplayPort; on the left side of the back panel rest two USB 2.0 ports, one 3.5mm jack input, a DC Power connector and an audio input.

On the right side of the monitor there are 3 OSD buttons: Menu, Plus (increase adjustments levels or open the audio menu), Minus (decrease adjustments levels or select the next active input port – like HDMI, MHL/HDMI or DisplayPort)
Underneath the monitor, on the right there is the Power button and on the left, there is a volume dial that features two actions, rotation for increasing and decreasing the volume and you can press the button upward to mute or unmute the audio.
A nice extra feature is the remote controller. It features all the control buttons found on the monitor (Power, OSD, Audio) and overall we found it better and faster than the built-in buttons on most monitors.

The aluminium base support has an elegant design, but it lacks adjustability. You can only vertical tilt the monitor from -5 to 25 degrees; also there is no pivot.
Note: The HP Envy can be mounted on the wall, being VESA compatible.
One of the main focuses for this monitor is obviously the speakers and they are really good. The sound is very clear, you can easily distinguish different instruments and we can definitely say that it may even be better than what you can find on more expensive TVs.

Still, it’s not perfect, the Beats Audio feature is nothing more than a software equalizer optimized for playing the higher and lower quality sound, but does tend to ignore the middle ground. But let’s not forget we are talking about monitor speakers.
Note: The HP Envy is PC and MAC compatible.

Display and Image Quality
HP Envy features a 32″ QUAD HD AWVA+ panel display with a 2560x1440p resolution, 16.7 million colours, 10,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio and 3000:1 static contrast ratio. The viewing angles are 178 degrees vertical and 178 degrees horizontal and the response time is 7ms (we expected a lower response time).
Note: AMVA+ stands for advance multi-domain vertical alignment panel.
If before calibrating some colours looked a bit unnatural and the gamma was too high for white, after calibrating the monitor to meet our needs, the situation changed.

We saw that this monitor can render some pretty amazing images (even if it’s not an IPS). It’s true that the contrast fell to about 2300:1, but the the colours were consistent and clear and the whites were brighter, but the blacks could have been deeper.
While playing games, the fact that the refresh rate is 60 Hz can make a difference. Although fast-moving scenes were rendered without much ghosting or blurring, a higher refresh rate would have been better.

Still, the display is pretty good, we liked the accuracy of colours, the rich details and even though it’s not an IPS monitor, movies looked amazing and it may even be enough for some graphic designers (though a 4k IPS is better).

Power Consumption
If brightness is set to 150cd/m^2 (which is ideal), the monitors has a power consumption of 30w.

Conclusion
At first we were quite confused by the lack of attention this monitor received, since HP Envy is a decent 32 inch computer monitor, delivers a good image quality, high quality sound and it isn’t overpriced, but historically speaking, HP gained a somewhat bad reputation as the company made some bad decisions over the years, so people may be reticent when purchasing a HP product.
Even if the HP Envy is not the perfect monitor, if looking for a larger single, high quality monitor, then the HP Envy offers great value for the money.