HannsG HL272HPB review

The HannsG HL272HPB certainly looks like a bargain. It’s a 27in TN panel with a 1,920×1,080 Full HD resolution and a choice of analogue and digital inputs for just £180. It even has a three-year onsite warranty.

Initial impressions were good. The HL272HPB has a thin bezel and a glossy black stand. Its curved rear includes VESA mounts for wall mounting, and its 46mm thickness makes it one of the thinnest budget 27in screens we’ve seen. Buttons for the menu are slung underneath the bottom right corner of the screen, marked by embossed icons.

The menu system itself is fairly basic. You get brightness, contrast, ACR (a form of dynamic contrast) and a choice of four presets. PC is the standard mode, but there’s also Movie, which dims brightness and adds more red; Game, which adds a horrible sharpening effect that made Crysis look like a cell-shaded animation; and Eco, which simply dims the backlight. Choosing a preset other than PC disables all other image controls.

There’s a separate area for colour controls, but it’s limited to basic colour temperatures. Options are Cool, Nature and Warm, as well as a User setting that lets you tweak red, green and blue separately. Our calibration software reported 88% compliance with the sRGB standard, but overall we found colours accurate, just not deep enough. In Casino Royale, for example, Le Chiffre’s black suit was washed out, losing definition and shape.

This is par for the course with TN panels. Despite a bright and even backlight, there’s simply too much light bleeding through, which washes out colours and reduces black levels, limiting contrast. The upside is that TN panels have better response times than IPS panels, making games more responsive, but in our gaming tests we missed the contrast of the IPS panels that we’ve recently seen. In Crysis, the jungle wasn’t quite as foreboding without those dark shadows and the beach didn’t seem to glow as much with tropical sunshine.

Still, it’s worth remembering the price. This is a 27in monitor with simple controls and accurate colours that only costs £180. You’re only missing out on contrast and deeper colours. If you really want the biggest screen for your money, the HL272HPB is excellent value and it wins our Budget Buy.