The Hannspree HF239H is a fantastic 28 Inch LCD Monitor that is one of the best values out there.  For the price of most 24 inch monitors, you can get this 28 inch monitor with superb display quality.

With my middle aged eyes, reading comics on my 22 inch LCD monitor required too much effort so I began to look for a bigger monitor. I wanted something better than the 1680 x 1050 resolution on my current monitor so the next step up was something with at least 1920 x 1200 resolution. I began looking at the current crop of 24 inch monitors when I noticed the 28 inch Hannspree HF289H monitor selling at Best Buy for about the same price as most 24 inch monitors.

This seemed like the perfect monitor for me. Not only did it provide higher resolution but it also provided a much bigger screen for all those pixels. Sometimes text can look too small if you have too high a resolution in too small a screen. With this monitor, you won't have this problem.

I had never heard of Hannspree before but this monitor was getting generally rave reviews on the net so I decided to take a chance and buy it. And I'm glad I did as this is probably the best monitor I have every owned!

I connected the monitor to my IOGear DVI KVM switch box using the DVI-to-HDMI cable. I was concerned about the DVI-to-HDMI cable working with my DVI KVM but it worked without any problems. All 4 of my computer systems worked great with the monitor through the DVI KVM switch. I haven't been able to see if HDCP causes any problems with the DVI KVM switch since I don't have a Blu-ray drive on any of my computers. When Blu-ray drive prices go down I will probably want to test this since this monitor supports HDCP.

My Vista desktop looked stunning on the monitor – colors were vibrant and text was super sharp as expected. HDTV (through my ATI TV Wonder 650) looked gorgeous on the monitor. I'm not a professional photographer so I'm not very picky about color accuracy but from my layman's eyes the Hanspree reproduced photographs well enough out of the box that I didn't feel any need to adjust the colors using the included X-Tune utility.

All the games I've tried look great on it too – I haven't notice any lag during game play. This monitor has a 3ms response time that is supposed to be very good for games. One thing that I noticed is that lower resolution settings like 1680 x 1050 still looked great on the monitor. This is a nice feature since my graphics card is not powerful enough to run some of the newest games at the 1920 x 1200 native resolution of the monitor at a good frame rate. For those games, it's nice to know that I can run the game at a lower resolution and still look great.

For the first couple of weeks I did not see any stuck pixels but I finally noticed one partially stuck pixel on the bottom of the screen that was only noticeable in one situation when the screen had a solid amber color. I haven't noticed it since that one instance. Overall, it's almost perfect and I've been super happy with it.

The monitor was well packaged in a nice box containing the following items:

1. DVI-to-HDMI cable

2. VGA monitor cable

3. Audio cable

4. AC Power cord

5. Monitor stand

6. Quick Start Guide, Product Registration Card, and CD containing X-Tune utility

The monitor stand was made of plastic and metal and felt very solid and heavy and is attached to the monitor through 3 metal screws. Installation of the stand was very simple using the included Allen key wrench although one of the screws seemed to need more strength to tighten than the other two. The stand allows you to adjust the viewing angle 0 to 20 degrees vertically and 0 to 30 degrees horizontally.

The monitor contains the following inputs located on the bottom:

1. 2 HDMI inputs

2. 1 Component Video input

3. 1 PC VGA (D-Sub) input

4. Audio In

5. Headphone Out

6. AC Power

On the right hand side are the following controls:

1. Menu

2. Up

3. Down

4. Select

5. Video Input Select

6. Power On/Off

The control placement was not ideal for me since it's very easy to press the wrong button when adjusting the settings. It's very frustrating trying to move through the on-screen menus while constantly pressing the wrong button. Luckily you only have to adjust the setting once or twice so I don't consider this drawback to be a major flaw.

The next problem I encounter would have been a major flaw if I had not discovered the fix for it on the web. During use I noticed that the monitor would not go into standby mode when my computer went to sleep or had turned off. Instead, the monitor would display a “No Signal Input, Check Video Cable” message.

Luckily, to fix this problem, all you have to do is access Image Setting menu and set the HDMI mode to “PC Mode” and standby will work through the HDMI port. However, I didn't see this menu item anywhere.

It turns out you can enable this menu item if you plug in an HDMI device (such as an up-converting DVD player or a PS3) into the other HDMI port. Once you plug in the device, you can set the HDMI mode to “PC Mode” and remove the device and the setting will stick. Luckily, I have a PS3 and was able to set the HDMI mode and now my monitor goes into standby mode correctly when my computer goes to sleep or turns off.

Since I had a PS3 connected, I decided to test out the image quality on the monitor using the PS3 as a playback device. I immediately noticed that the colors looked flat and washed out. Blacks looked gray instead of black. I went to the Video Settings of the PS3 and set RGB from Limited to Full and now blacks look black and the colors were vibrant. Playing back some Blu-ray video clips looked stunning and games looked great. This monitor can also accept audio through the HDMI cable and using the PS3, I discovered that the built-in speaker's sound quality was not that good. Luckily you can easily connect external speakers through the headphone jacks for better sound.

Summary

This is a fantastic monitor that offers stunning image quality in a super large screen for the price of a smaller monitor. A super value.

Pros

1. Fantastic display quality

2. Large 28 inch screen size

3. Sells for about the same price as many smaller 24 inch LCD monitors

4. Pretty good viewing angles for a TN screen.

5. Accepts multiple inputs (2 HDMI, 1 VGA, 1 Component Video)

Cons

1. Power saving mode does not work with default settings. In order to activate power saving mode, you need to have an HDMI device (PS3 or up-converting DVD player) connected in order to see the menu item.

2. Side controls are less than ideal