Monitors with wide aspect ratios provide plenty of room for viewing browser windows, documents, spreadsheets, photos, and other applications cheek by jowl. There are times, however, when a vertical orientation is more desirable—when you’re editing a digital portrait, reviewing long documents such as contracts or legal briefs), or working on programming code, for example. Unfortunately, most displays.stick stubbornly to their landscape orientation.
But some recent monitors can pivot between landscape and portrait modes—a welcome sight indeed. We examined three such models: HP’s 23-inch EliteDisplay E231, Samsung’s 27-inch Series 7 S27C750P, and NEC’s 29-inch MultiSync EA294WMi. Despite their shared promise of pivoting flexibility, however, the monitors vary considerably in their design quality and image quality.
[h=HP EliteDisplay E231]2[/h]Utilitarian best describes HP’s EliteDisplay E231. This 23-inch, LED-backlit, TN (twisted nematic) display has has a nonreflective screen with a native resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels. It connects to your PC via DisplayPort (version 1.1, so you get no support for multistream transport), DVI, or VGA.
Sexy it isn’t. The E231’s sturdy, black-plastic bezel—0.5 inch wide on the sides and 0.75 inch wide along the top and the bottom—calls to mind a set of horn-rimmed glasses. Five physical buttons on the front adjust brightness or contrast and interact with the on-screen menus. A USB 2.0 hub provides one upstream and two downstream ports.
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