HP LP3065: A new contender for the 30" throne

Closing Thoughts

A large 30" LCD is definitely a luxury that only a few people are willing to afford, but if you have the money and other hardware necessary, using a computer takes on a whole new dimension with such a display. Games can feel even more immersive, but truthfully we find the extra screen size to be more useful outside of gaming situations. The ability to have numerous applications open without the need to overlap windows can increase productivity for example, and it's also possible to have two or three different versions of a document open at the same time for easy side-by-side comparisons.

All other things being equal - and in our testing we would have to say that the Dell 3007WFP and HP LP3065 are in a dead heat - price and features are going to usually be the determining factors on what LCD people want to buy. In the features department, we definitely give the edge to HP, but this will really only matter to people who plan on using more than one computer with the display. Otherwise, you could basically purchase either of these LCDs and be happy.

What about price? Looking online, current prices on the Dell 3007WFPHC and HP LP3065 are the same: $1699. HP currently offers a $40 mail-in rebate, and Dell has frequent sales that drop the price of their 30" LCDs by as much as several hundred dollars. If one of the displays is substantially cheaper, we would recommend saving money. Just keep in mind that a dual-link DVI KVM switch can cost several hundred dollars, so if that feature is something you would find useful we really can't see any reason to get any 30" LCD other than the HP LP3065.

We had a conversation recently about which company was better: HP or Dell? One person commented very simply: "Oh, HP is much better!" When we asked why, he gave the tongue-in-cheek response, "Because my wife works for HP." That's a pretty fair summary of the situation in our book. If you have any reasons or relations that make you prefer one company over the other, either 30" LCD will work very well. If you don't have any preference, we would purchase the HP simply because those extra DVI inputs could prove useful, if not immediately then at some point during the life of the display.

Is a 30" LCD the best display on the market? That really depends on what you plan on doing with your computer. If you like to run numerous applications at the same time, the added real estate can prove handy. Games and movies also look really nice on a large display, although as we mentioned on the Dell 3007WFP review HDCP support on dual-link DVI is currently not possible. Hopefully that never becomes an issue, and as long as Hollywood doesn't begin enabling the ICT (Image Constraint Token), it shouldn't be a problem. If you want to have a multipurpose display, however, we would seriously consider a 1080p LCD HDTV as an alternative. Some of those LCD TVs might not fit very well on a computer desk, but then some of them aren't much larger than the 30" LP3065.

It was interesting to hear from HP about the reasons current 30" LCDs don't have on-screen displays or support for non-dual-link inputs. While plenty of people will be happy with the displays as is, we are definitely interested in seeing next-generation 30" displays that have improved circuitry to allow for other resolutions and input options, along with an OSD. The small pixel size on the 2560x1600 panel seems to allow lower resolutions to run without feeling quite as blurry as they do on other LCDs. Perhaps that's simply because the scaling is being done on the GPU rather than on the display itself, but owners of the latest generation gaming consoles would probably like to be able to use one of these displays as well, especially in situations like college dorms where having multiple displays often isn't possible. However, until we see such 30" displays, we would rate the HP LP3065 as the best shipping 30" LCD, even if it's only by a small margin of victory.