HP VH240A Productivity Monitor: The Cheapest Monitor with Vertical Orientation

INTRODUCTION

The HP VH240A is one of the most selling monitors for productivity. One of the reasons it sells so much is its offering of a fully adjustable stand that makes it a professionals’ favorite. The picture quality and imaging performance is decent, and the monitor is super purposeful for productivity purpose.

DESIGN & AESTHETICS

The design of HP VH240A seems very minimal and understated. From the front, you will notice that the bezels are skinny, so that’s a nice thing if you will build a multiple monitor setup. The bars between the screens will be super thin, so that won’t create much distraction. The bottom is quite thick because that’s where the HP branding goes, and you get the VH240A bagde on the left. You also get a small LED indicator that indicates if the monitor is turned on.

Coming to the stand, it’s the real aspect which makes this monitor sell so much. It’s the only monitor in this price segment that offers a fully adjustable stand. It pivots, swivels, tilts, and goes up-down so you can adjust the monitor the way you want. The adjustments are super seamless and don’t take much effort. The stand has a minimal footprint, which does hold the monitor with a grip on the desk. To be exact, the HP VH240A swivels 180° on both sides with 5° forward and 30° backward tilt. However, the build is not the best. It’s made of plastic that doesn’t give a premium feel. Also, it attracts plenty of dust over time.

PERFORMANCE & PICTURE QUALITY

The HP VH240A houses an IPS panel under the hood. LG manufactures it so you can expect optimum quality there. It seems sharp, colorful, and colors don’t fade when viewed from the sides. Being an IPS, the monitor provides 178-degree wide viewing angles, unlike TN and VA panels. It also supports 8-bit color depth. However, it doesn’t come factory calibrated so if you are going to do color-critical tasks you will need to calibrate this monitor. For color-accurate monitors, refer our article of graphic designing monitors where we have featured a few of your most recommended color-accurate monitors.

The 92ppi gives a great sense of space and clarity on the 24″ screen. The texts appear clear and sharp, which doesn’t make your eyes strain that much. It has a low-blue light mode for better and comfortable visibility in dark environments. If you deal with a lot of texts and documents, consider buying this monitor as it performs excellently well and with the given ergonomics it’s the best in the industry for this price.

The peak brightness of the panel on HP VH240A is 250-nits which is not the best or highest but gets the job done. It does perform well in well-lit rooms, and the anti-glare coating on the screen does a great job in fighting with glares and reflections. As far as darkroom performance is concerned, the HP VH240A doesn’t preserve the blacks well. Although it has 1000:1 static contrast ratio, the blacks appear grey. It doesn’t matter much for a casual user, but those who care about color uniformity will need to see alternatives.

The lowest response time this monitor can achieve is 5ms which is excellent for most tasks, but if you play fast-paced competitive games, this monitor will make you lose over your competitors sitting on a 1ms monitor. The 60Hz refresh rate is standard, which again is a great thing, but if you have been used to high refresh rate screens, this can’t be overclocked like BenQ GW2480. When it comes to input lag, the monitor responds immediately, so there is no virtual lag as such.

FEATURES

The OSD menu is very straight-forward and easy to use. The buttons to control the OSD along with a power button are placed on the back of the monitor. You get picture modes in the menu, one of them is a low blue light mode. If the preset modes don’t suit you, you can adjust the brightness, contrast, and other settings separately.

Apart from that, the monitor houses dual 2 watts speakers which don’t sound great as such, but it should get the job done for alert sounds. There is also an Auto-Sleep mode which shuts down the monitor if inactivity is found.

ERGONOMICS & PORTS

When it comes to ergonomics, the HP VH240A is an excellent monitor. As said, it’s the only monitor in this price-segment to come with a fully adjustable stand. Programmers will find the pivot function to be very handy as the vertical orientation gives them a much better and longer view of code while programming. The stand’s mechanism seems to be of excellent quality that provides effortless adjustments, and it doesn’t need much effort.

The HP VH240A also supports VESA interface 100x100mm for mounting monitor on a custom arm mainly for multiple monitor setups.

On the connectivity front, you get an HDMI and a D-Sub port on the HP VH240A. There is no USB port which could have been super purposeful. The HDMI doesn’t follow the latest standards, but at the same time, it’s okay as the monitor refresh rate is limited to 60Hz and there is no need of latest inputs as the HDMI 1.4 gets the job done.

SPECIFICATIONS

COMPARISON & ALTERNATIVES

Here’s an overview at the alternatives to HP VH240A. When making a purchase, it is always a good practice to look at the options. If your primary requirement is fully adjustable stand, then buy the HP VH240A as it is the only monitor that comes around $100.

23.8″ Full HD IPS	23.8″ Full HD IPS	21.5″ Full HD IPS
5 ms Response Time	5 ms Response Time	4 ms Response Time
60Hz Refresh Rate	60Hz Response Time	75Hz Response Time
N/A	N/A	AMD FreeSync
HDMI	HDMI, DisplayPort	HDMI
Built-in Speakers	Built-in Speakers	N/A
Fully Adjustable Stand	Tilt-only Stand	Tilt-only Stand
VESA Mount Compatible	VESA Mount Compatible	VESA Mount Compatible
Check Price	Check Price	Check Price

For around $100, the HP VH240A is our recommended pick for productivity and basic everyday use for its fully adjustable stand and excellent screen. The BenQ GW2480 is very much identical to the HP VH2480A, and both monitors house the same LG panel, so performance is going to be exact. However, the BenQ GW2480 has Brightness Intelligence feature which automatically adjusts the panel brightness.

The Acer SB220Q is for those who play games. It has slightly lower response time and comes with AMD FreeSync, so it is going to perform marginally better than the other twos.

OVERALL

The HP VH240A is one of the best monitors in the industry for budget buyers. It has got everything a casual office user would expect. The screen is excellent, and the ergonomic stand is super purposeful. Then there is a pair of built-in speakers, although they don’t sound great.

For office use, the HP VH240A is the best monitor to buy. However, gamers should consider alternatives as our contender doesn’t come with FreeSync and Flicker-Free Technology.