HP - 25x 24.5" LED FHD Monitor (HDMI) - Gray/Green

I have had a chance to play around with the HP 25x 24.5" monitor for a week now, and I have enjoyed what I have seen. I paired the monitor with a HP Pavilion Gaming Desktop (Model 690-0024), also from Best Buy. The Pavilion Gaming Desktop comes with an AMD RX580 graphics card, so I was able to take advantage of the monitors Freesync settings. That doesn’t mean NVidia owners can’t still benefit from using this monitor with adaptive sync, just not to the level of Freesync/G-sync. Build Quality/Design Construction and build quality are excellent. The stand the monitor comes with is pretty nice, albeit minimalistic. It is very stable, even with a small footprint. It is height adjustable (max height is ~7.75” from table to the screen image) and can be used to position the monitor in either landscape or portrait. While the stand is pretty understated, the monitor itself has a gamer look. The monitor frame has green ambient lighting along the bottom of the frame (the center 5.5” are illuminated). The image online appears to show the ambient lighting extending all the way across the bottom, but the left and right sides are just translucent green plastic inserts with no lighting. This ambient lighting can be turned off (or dimmed), and in doing so the monitor takes on a more sleek, professional look. I personally like the light, so I have kept it on. Overall the monitor has a clean design and feels very well put together. The brushed plastic in the front looks nice, and the lightly textured plastic for the body doesn’t have a cheap feel. This monitor is definitely at home in a gaming setup but would go just as well in an office/professional setup. The 'frameless' design also helps set it apart – a key feature for me. The bezel edge sits right at 2.5mm thick (checked with caliper), which is pretty slim. There is still a black border around the image on the screen (just under 5mm, so >7mm from bezel edge to the image). This is right on par with my other monitors that are frameless (my other monitors have 1.5mm bezels, but still the same >7mm to the image). This black border is a standard feature/limitation with frameless monitors – its due to the construction of the displays used for monitors. Most gaming monitors carry a large bezel (9-12mm), which isn't so great if you are planning a multi-monitor setup. I only use slim bezel monitors for this very reason (I am now up to 4 monitors for that whole wrap around feeling). Screen Quality The panel itself provides a great picture. At 24.5", 1080p is still a more than adequate resolution to game at. Anything larger, and I would jump to 1440p or 4K. Most graphics cards struggle with 4K 60 @high settings, let alone ultra - so for now 1080 is still very worth it. I had plenty of time to play around with the various settings for the picture quality. I settled with the Gaming Freesync setting, and adjusted the sharpness and brightness to my liking. This panel is actually pretty bright – 400 nits, so using it in a well-lit room should be no problem. The anti-glare matte finish also helps here. I don’t have any glare from the lights at might back or coming through my window. The monitor also has blue light reduction feature. This is something that has been implemented in Windows 10, but its still nice to see it incorporated in the monitor for those that want to isolate the light control to a single panel. In games, with Freesync enabled, the image quality was excellent. I had no frame tearing, or framerate issues. Games I tested were Far Cry 5, Dirt Rally, and Shadow of War. I also played Fortnite, but that only has adaptive sync support. The 1ms (gray to gray) response time is fantastic. Colors look to be fairly accurate, and only required some mild adjustment out of the box. The viewing angle on the monitor is pretty standard for TN (170° horz, 160° vert), and you can't really get much more than that unless you jump to VA or IPS. The screen itself had zero stuck or dead pixels upon startup. I don’t experience any backlight bleed or hot spots. The Jump to 144Hz Before this monitor I only had 75Hz panels. I never really thought there would be a huge difference between 75hz and 144Hz. I was wrong. The amount of microstuttering and blur at 60 or 75hz that I have become numb to is pretty incredible. I guess I was so used to console gaming that jumping up to 75hz on a PC was a big performance jump. The leap from 75hz to 144 though is just as noticeable. The first thing I noticed was how smooth the mouse cursor tracks on the screen compared to my 75’s. Jumping into a game, I didn’t notice a huge bump in perceived performance right away though. In FC5 I was playing the campaign and doing a lot of wandering around. It wasn’t until I got into a firefight that the higher frequency came into play. I was more accurate with my shots and the gameplay looked sharp even with a lot of motion in the scene. With Dirt Rally the scenery whipping by just looked smoother, and created a more immersive experience. If I had 2 more of these monitors I would put them into an Eyefinity setup, and be in heaven. When I went to hook this monitor up, I was concerned that HDMI might not carry Freesync at 144hz, so I hooked it up with a Displayport cable I already had. Apparently, that is no longer the case and HDMI can carry the signal at 144Hz (used to be limited to 120, but times change). For both Displayport and HDMI the Freesync range is 48-144Hz. I did have to manually adjust the monitor frequency to 144Hz in Windows display settings, and in order to enable Freesync I started with the Gaming-Freesync viewing mode. The little things There are a couple of little things about this monitor that I liked that I wanted to point out. First, you can adjust the ambient lighting (off, low, med, high, and breathing). Second, you can turn off the power button LED for nighttime gaming. So if you want, this monitor can be lit up, or blacked out. Nice. The stand can also be removed, and you can mount the monitor via the 100x100mm VESA bolt pattern. Conclusion For those wanting to get into the high frequency panel world, the 25x is a solid option. It has a modest 1080p resolution, which is perfectly fine for me, and most gamers. 1080p keeps the price point low enough to make 144Hz affordable. It will still cost you about the same as a 1440p monitor with a 60-75Hz refresh, but quite a bit cheaper than a 1440p 144Hz panel. The 1080p resolution also allows a low to mid tier GPU to keep up (like my RX580 4GB in my Pavilion desktop), keeping your overall gaming PC budget down. In short, this is a very good entry level gaming monitor. It really shines with its fast refresh time, low GTG time, Freesync support, and quality construction. It also looks pretty cool, which is just icing on the cake. I would recommend this monitor for sure.

I acquired this monitor specifically for the purpose of gaming, pairing it with an AMD Ryzen 5-Series gaming desktop. This is supposed to be a good match, because the FreeSync feature of the monitor is designed to reduced stuttering delays adapting the display refresh rate by syncing with the AMD Radeon RX 580 4GB graphics processor. The monitor's top refresh rate is 144 Hz, faster than any monitor I have ever owned, which should be excellent for gaming. The same is true for the response time of 1 millisecond. The only instructions that came with the monitor were some pictures for how to assemble and plug in the monitor. These instructions were not really necessary because it was extremely simple to affix the monitor to the stand (no tools required) and it was obvious where to plug in the power cord and the included HDMI cable. The monitor also has a connection for DisplayPort, but the cable was not included. Consistent with current trends, a real manual explaining the monitor's features was not provided; you must obtain it from HP's website. Although unnecessary for basic use, you will probably want it to learn how to use the front bezel function buttons and menu system. Fortunately, I had recently obtained another HP monitor and had already learned how to use these not-very-intuitive buttons. Save yourself some trouble and get yourself a manual at http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c06081133 . Not having owned a 144 Hz monitor before, I wanted to test this feature, and did so at the testufo site, https://www.testufo.com/ . This site shows what moving images look like at different refresh rates, with the highest refresh rate image at the top of the display. Unfortunately, my initial attempt showed a top refresh rate of only 60 Hz. And then I read another review that said you need the DisplayPort connection for the 144 Hz rate because HDMI will not support it. But further investigation showed that the problem was not in the hardware but in the fact that Windows 10 did not set the rate to 144 Hz on plug-and-play. I had to go into the advanced display properties to this. After I did, the 144 Hz image did display and of course was pretty darn clear compared to slower refresh rates. Now, somewhat puzzling were two messages I occasionally received from the testufo site: STUTTER WARNING: Browser Stutter Detected (1+) MAJOR STUTTERING: Browser Stuttering is Occurring (11+) These messages appeared every so often when I simply moved my mouse around, pointing to different tabs in my browser. When these messages displayed, the testufo programmed recommended closing all additional browser tabs and running programs. I did, but the messages warning messages persisted. This is puzzling because, in theory, the FreeSync feature is supposed to prevent stuttering. But the messages indicated otherwise. I'm not sure, though, whether these messages should raise genuine concern. Their regular appearance looked suspicious—is this just a ploy by the site to as a way to endorse other monitors and GPUs? I did not notice any stuttering under real game-playing conditions. My real-life test of the monitor was with the game Shroud of the Avatar. I should confess that my heavy gaming days ended with Ultima VI, long before Ultima Online and other MMORPGs came into vogue. I've seen my sons play the most recent, graphically-intense online games, so I have some idea of what they look like, but I have not had first-hand experience with them until I recently acquired Shroud of the Avatar and therefore cannot compare other experiences. That said, I found the graphics for this game to be stunningly beautiful, so I do think that this is an excellent gaming monitor. Shortcomings, beyond the arcane function buttons and lack of a DisplayPort cord, are the lack of speakers. Granted, anyone who wants good-quality audio for gaming is going to use either headphones or a good set of powered, external speakers. So this is not a deal-breaker. I found it amusing, though, that the display contains a 1/8" audio output jack. Why bother? Surely your computer has the same jack, so why not plug your headphones into that one instead of your monitor? (You have to go into the Windows sound control panel to change the audio output to the monitor to do this.) For fun, I tried both the jack on my computer and the monitor to see if I could detect a difference. Nope. Both were fine. A final comment is on the aesthetics and viewing angles of the monitor. I like the overall look of the monitor, including the green LED light, designed to match the LED light on the gaming desktop (photo included). If green isn't your thing, maybe you won't like this. Personally, although I'm keep on red and blue LEDs, I also like green, and I like the pairing with the desktop LED. The specs on this monitor claim that the horizontal viewing angle is 160 degrees, and, indeed, the image on the monitor looked fine from either side off-center. But, by accident while on the floor, I discovered that the colors were highly distorted at 170 degree vertical (the listed vertical viewing angle). I have included photos to show this. So if you are on your floor doing yoga or something, don't expect images on the monitor to look right. If you are gaming, though, hopefully you will not be on the floor, so this should not be an issue.

This is a decent monitor for gaming. It's one of the smoothest I've used so far thanks to 144hz refresh and 1 ms response time. But... it has some issues. Most noticable/annoying is it has severe backlight bleed through. It is not too noticeable while playing games, but on dark menu screens, watching movies, or a dark wallpaper of your desktop, it stands out like a sore thumb. Another issue is the led lighting, or lack thereof. The stock picture for this monitor will have you believe the whole bottom of the monitor lights up a cool led green. The truth is only the center part does. On top of that, the sides look like cheap greenish plastic that's not even close to the same color as the green led. Luckily you can disable the led altogether to achieve a more uniform look. There are some things I really like about this monitor. For starters, 144hz works over HDMI. This is true on both my RX 580, and GTX 1080. Another great feature is that the monitor height is adjustable. You can raise it about 4 inches. This is great for me because it brings to monitor up to eye level. This means less stress on the neck. This also allows you to use the display in portrait mode by raising and rotating the screen. *Note: The picture I added was taken using an LCD screen tester online using solid black in fullscreen mode.

I didn't expect much since it was kind of a budget screen ($249 on sale) and the color green threw me off the few times I scrolled by it on the website. It was the only one they had available, so I bought it not expecting much. BTW, this is a secondary screen to my gaming MSI GS75 laptop. (no drops in fps while gaming fyi) First off, while I was checking out at the store I noticed on the back of the box it said "Adaptive Sync" and it showed the FreeSync and G-SYNC logos. I pointed it out and the guy at the register was like, "Nah, G-Sync screens are expensive. This only has FreeSync." I got home and unboxed it and saw the NVIDIA G-SYNC logo sticker by the power LED. Okay. Used the HDMI that came with it, went to NVIDIA control panel and no G-Sync. Okay. No problem. BUT.. I did some research and ended up purchasing a Thunderbolt 3 to Display Port connection. Once I connected that, BOOM! G-SYNC shows in NVIDIA panel!!! I activated it. See picture on review. So yes, you can use FreeSync or G-SYNC. Games look amazing on here on any setting, though. This screen really blew me away for the price and how good it looks. It's great! I haven't been able to stop playing PC games on it because it's so good.

I was in the market to improve my work-from-home setup and wanted to occasionally binge-watch on a bigger monitor, but did not want to spend over 200 bucks. I found the HP 25x on sale for ~180 and am pleased with it for work, viewing, and now gaming use. I was upgrading from a 17 inch LCD that uses VGA connection and was finding that between that and my 15inch laptop display, I needed more space for my applications. The 24.5 inch HP monitor feels large enough for all my spreadsheets and Zoom windows, but isn't too big or TV-like on my desk. I've connected it to both my work Dell and personal Macbook Air without issues*. The colors are crisp and my monitor had no dead pixels. As with most displays like this, the best viewing angle is straight ahead and it doesn't look as great when tilted too far up or down. I have since bought a gaming PC which I connect to the 25x with DisplayPort and the graphics look incredible on it. Gsync works great and I feel like I'm fully able to take advantage of the graphics card. One notable aesthetic feature about this monitor is the green light on the bottom. There's a green plastic strip all around the bottom bezel, but only the center part lights up. I like it as-is, but it looks different on the packaging/picture. I do wish it had a more HDMI ports (only 1 each of HDMI and DisplayPort). The monitor includes an HDMI cable, so if you want to use the second port, you'll need a DisplayPort cable or DisplayPort-to-HDMI adaptor for your other machine. Overall, I'd wait for this monitor to go on discount, but it's a great-performing monitor that can tackle a variety of uses. *Macbook Air has some issues when displaying Netflix movies in fullscreen, but can be resolved with some Chrome setting changes

I play FPS games at a competitive level. This monitor is amazing! The sharpness and clarity, paired with the 144hz refresh rate make this a steal at the current price. Perfect for those wanting a high refresh rate, without the high price tag. Great appeal too with the LED lighting and option therein. If you're wanting a solid monitor with Mini-Display Port / HDMI and zero frame stutter or lag then this is the monitor for you. Works great with PC / MAC / XB1 / PS4. Would definitely recommend! Im currently looking at purchasing a second one for a dual monitor set up for streaming / gaming. Two thumbs up!

I’ve had this monitor for around half a year. I have had no problems but when I first got it I expected all of the green material to light up-which it doesn’t. One thing I like about this monitor is you can turn off the strip of green lighting at the bottom.

I previous ordered an MSI curved monitor, it had 8 dead pixels across the screen. So I went back to best buy and got an exchange, so I waited another week like an idiot only for the new monitor to have a dead and a stuck pixel that made tasks unbearable. This display had zero dead/stuck pixels and I was so happy because the trash MSI had manufactured made me think that all monitors were defective like the 100% defective product rate in my case. Out of the box the colors are good, or they could be improved further to one's liking. The on-screen menu is intuitive and not bad to use, but takes a day to be comfortable with. There are 10 viewing modes, free-sync/gaming, photo, movie, night light, reading light, blue light filter and others. I got this monitor for $180 so it was quite a bargain. However, the tn panel does have interesting viewing angles as the monitor must be faced directly and perfectly toward you. I say this because with the night light on, it is most visible as some portions of the screen look orange and others do not. The 1ms response time was scary at first because I used i to play rainbow siege in-game and I looked at a light source and the screen started flickering around the light source. This has not happened again so I pay it no mind. GSYNC COMPATIBLE. I did not know that this screen was gsync compatible until I went to the nvidia control panel. Not even Amazon, or even the box that the monitor came in said gsync compatible. To turn it on you need to activate freesync through the OSD. And when I have the gsync indicator on, it shows on screen during siege or witcher 3 that gsync is on. And oh my goodness, witcher 3 looks beautiful on this monitor. The ambient light is only on the center part and not on the sides as advertised, it can be turned off and has some modes that affect its brightness and a breathing mode. For 180 dollars, I would definitely recommend this monitor to someone.