By Dariush Derakhshani

So, we all know how important a color-accurate monitor is in making professional-level graphics, right? Right?!? Even at the most basic level, when you’re stalking online for the perfect watch band for your holiday present of a smart watch, you want the orange band you see in the online ad to be what you get when it arrives a few days later. Even if your wife thinks orange doesn’t suit you, and makes you look like “you’re trying too hard.”

Especially as a content developer, you want to know what you’re looking at is an accurate representation of the image. Ever walk into a Best Buy and see multiple screens showing the same content but with wild ranging differences in color? You can’t have that discrepancy working as a pro, especially in collaboration; you need color accuracy. In my own experience, that position has been filled by HP’s 10-bit DreamColor displays for many years now, but not everyone is awash in bitcoins, and justifying a price tag of over $1,200 is sometimes hard to justify, even for a studio professional.

Enter HP’s DreamColor Z24x display at half the price, coming in around $550 online. Yes, DreamColor for half the cost. That’s pretty significant. For the record, I haven’t used a 24-inch monitor since the dark ages; when Lost was the hot TV show. I’ve been fortunate enough to be running at 27-inch and higher, so there was a little shock when I started using the Z24x HP sent me for review. But this is something I quickly got used to.

With my regular 32-inch 4K display still my primary — so I can fit loads of windows all over the place — I used this DreamColor screen as my secondary display, primarily to check output for my Adobe After Effects comps, Adobe Premiere Pro edits and to hold my render view window as I develop shaders and lighting in Autodesk Maya. I felt comfortable knowing the images I shared with my colleagues across town would be seen as I intended them, evening the playing field when working collaboratively (as long as everyone is on the same LUT and color space). Speaking of color spaces, the Z24x hits 100% of sRGB, 99% of AdobeRGB and 96% of DCI P3, which is just slightly under HP’s Z27x DreamColor. It is, however, slightly faster with a 6ms response rate.

The Z24x has a 24-inch IPS panel from LG that exhibits color in 10-bit, like its bigger 27-inch Z27x sibling. This gives you over a billion colors, which I have personally verified by counting them all —that was one, long weekend, I can tell you. Unlike the highest-end DreamColor screens though, the Z24x dithers up from 8-bit to 10-bit (called an 8-bit+FRC). This means it’s better than an 8-bit color display, for sure, but not quite up to real 10-bit, making it color accurate but not color critical. HP’s implementation of dithering is quite good, when subjectively compared to my full 10-bit main display. Frankly, a lot of screens that claim 10-bit may actually be 8-bit+FRC anyway!

While the Z27x gives you 2560×1440 as you expect of most 27inch displays, if not full on 4K, the Z24x is at a comfortable 1920×1200, just enough for a full 1080p image and a little room for a slider or info bar. Being the res snob that I am, I had wondered if that was just too low, but at 24-inches I don’t think you would want a higher resolution, even if you’re sitting only 14-inches away from it. And this is a sentiment echoed by the folks at HP who consulted with so many of their professional clients to build this display. That gives a pixel density of about 94PPI, a bit lower than the 109PPI of the Z27x. This density is about the same as a 1080p HD display at 27-inch, so it’s still crisp and clean.

Viewing angles are good at about 178 degrees, and the screen is matte, with an anti-glare coating, making it easier to stare at without blinking for 10 hours at a clip, as digital artists usually do. Compared to my primary display, this HP’s coating was more matte and still gave me a richer black in comparison, which I liked to see.

Connection options are fairly standard with two DisplayPorts, one HDMI, and one DVI dual link for anyone still living in the past. You also get four USB ports and an analog 3.5mm audio jack if you want to drive some speakers, since you can’t from your phone anymore (Apple, I’m looking at you).

Summing Up
So while 24-inches is a bit small for my tastes for a display, I am seriously impressed at the street price of the Z24x, allowing a lot more pros and semi-pros to get the DreamColor accuracy HP offers at half the price. While I wouldn’t recommend color grading a show on the Z24x, this DreamColor does a nice job of bringing a higher level of color confidence at an attractive price. As a secondary display, the z24x is a nice addition to an artist workflow with budget in mind — or who has a mean, orange-watch-band-hating spouse.

Dariush Derakhshani is a VFX supervisor and educator in Southern California. You can follow his random tweets at @koosh3d.