The online reviews of the HP S2031 20 inch LCD monitor have been far from pristine. More to the fact most reviews of the unit have been mediocre or even poor at best, but when the S2031 recently went on sale for under $100 I felt like I had to check it out.
I had always wanted to add a second monitor to my home office setup and this was the perfect opportunity to do so. So what did I find out? Were the bad reviews of the HP HP S2031 justified?
Updated HP S2031 Fixes Many Reported Problems
One of the more vocal problems people seemed to have with the S2031 had nothing to do with the performance of the monitor itself, instead it had to do with a cosmetic issue, a feature sticker that apparently gave dozens of users a lot of trouble in removing and that often left an ugly mark when they did so.
Lucky for new buyers that devil of a sticker is now gone from the unit entirely, leaving the front casing looking like pristine polished black plastic. The base took a few minutes of head scratching to assemble, as a groove that needed to line up decided not to do so. Finally I got it together though, and the base slid together securely.
Another issue that some people reported was that of poor text and readability. In truth there may be some degree of validity to this. At higher resolutions small text is a bit fuzzy, and no amount of tweaking the settings seemed to fix it when on the VGA connection. DVI however looked much better, so go with that connection method if it is available.
Setup and Ease of Use of the HP S2031
Setup of the unit was easy as well. As mentioned the HP S2031 offers a DVI port and a VGA port, but sadly no speakers (but what do you expect for $99). Power is provided by a standard 110v wall plug.
There was a slight difference in picture when comparing the VGA connection to the DVI connection with some high resolution images, but this was mostly solved by utilizing the provided automatic calibration utility that requires the user to run a program from the install disc while pressing a button on the monitor. The buttons themselves are hidden under the front bezel of the unit and while this makes them a bit more difficult to use it does improve the visual appeal of the unit.
Conclusions
Try as I might however I was unable to get the color saturation of the new HP monitor to look the same as my old Acer sitting next to it on the desk. While this may be more the fault of my Acer than the HP it should still be recommended that any user considering buying a monitor to use in a dual configuration should probably consider buying two identical monitors rather than mixing and matching.
While it is a decent quality and very cheap LCD monitor the HP S2031 is not for everyone.If you are looking at the this monitor as a replacement for an existing CRT monitor or an aging LCD then you will probably be happy with the purchase.
However, for graphics professionals or those with very sensitive eyes the HP S2031 may not be worth it.
Chad Criswell - Chad Criswell is a professional educator and freelance technology writer for numerous online and print publications throughout the United ...
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