HP 34f Curved Display review

Our Verdict

The HP 34f curved brandish is a great example of premium professional and gaming features trickling downwardly to more mainstream models, as the full general purpose 34f boasts excellent color and brightness, adaptive sync capability and a swoon-worthy pattern.

For

Ultra-broad, curved screen
AMD FreeSync
Ergonomic adjustments

Confronting

No speakers
No HDR back up
No Nvidia 1000-Sync support

Tom's Guide Verdict

The HP 34f curved display is a great case of premium professional and gaming features trickling down to more mainstream models, as the general purpose 34f boasts fantabulous color and effulgence, adaptive sync adequacy and a swoon-worthy blueprint.

Pros

+
Ultra-wide, curved screen
+
AMD FreeSync
+
Ergonomic adjustments

Cons

-
No speakers
-
No HDR support
-
No Nvidia G-Sync support

The HP 34f curved display combines an first-class ultrawide panel, better-than-full HD resolution and excellent functioning with a mainstream price and characteristic set that will satisfy fifty-fifty picky shoppers. The spacious 21:9 display can replace a dual-monitor setup, or extend your single monitor for fifty-fifty better productivity, and the feature ready lends itself well to more than demanding uses, like photograph editing or some gaming (albeit limited to 60Hz).

It's not a perfect display, missing HDR support and defective any sort of built-in sound. But as you'll see in our HP 34f Curved Display review, this monitor manages to offering bully overall quality and a premium experience for a toll that's far more mainstream than yous might look at kickoff glance.

HP 34f Curved Brandish pattern

The HP34f has two standout blueprint elements that you'll find the moment you look at it. Starting time this is an ultra widescreen brandish, that stretches 34 inches from corner to corner with a 21:9 aspect ratio. In practical terms, that means i monitor that'due south wide enough to provide an experience like to a dual-monitor setup.

HP 34f Curved Display review — (Paradigm credit: HP)

The other pregnant characteristic is the gentle bend of the display. The HP 34f offers excellent viewing angles for every inch of the screen, even out at the furthest edges, making it great for both piece of work and play. That gentle bend means that you lot will e'er be able to clearly run into details anywhere on the screen, such equally a behemothic information filled spreadsheet. And in gaming it makes for a more immersive feel that extends out into your peripheral vision.

The attached stand up has an open footprint, where the base of operations has a square frame instead of a apartment plate supporting the stand and monitor. That small design choice manages to make the 34f feel less cluttered on the desk, and provides a space for keeping some of the odd and ends that inevitably find their dwelling around your keyboard and monitor.

The stand up provides angle adjustment – tilting back 25 degrees and forward 5 – only no height adjustment or rotation between mural and portrait modes. And thank you to the borderless design (the only existent bezel on this monitor is a narrow mentum that runs forth the bottom of the display), there's no ugly black box effectually the display panel.

HP 34f Curved Display ports and interface

The 34f is controlled by v physical buttons on the underside of the bottom bezel. I is a ability button with an easy to see indicator LED that lets yous know when you've turned the monitor on or off. The additional 4 buttons allow you open the control menu, conform the brightness, alter the color and switch inputs.

The command card offers a number of display adjustments, including effulgence, contrast, color command, input switching, image control (which includes dynamic contrast and FreeSync settings), as well every bit power settings, menu options, and brandish language settings.

What you won't find, however, are some of the more granular controls that you would expect on something similar a gaming monitor. There are no genre-specific presets, no options for on screen crosshairs, or like features. The monitor does, withal, offer the ability to toggle AMD's FreeSync on and off, and adjust the contrast levels to better handle blacks and shadowy hues.

HP 34f Curved Brandish performance

With a WQHD (3440 10 1440) resolution brandish and expert brightness and clarity, the 34f made just virtually everything look great. Watching the trailer to Christopher Nolan's Tenet, I was impressed with how well the display handled the subtle color palette, making everything wait lifelike, from varied skin tones to the fine textile of tailored suits and the tedious motion destruction of car crashes in opposite.

With AMD FreeSync you'll enjoy judder-free gaming, provided you have an AMD graphics bill of fare. Using the Nvidia GTX 1080 carte du jour in our test PC, I experienced some pretty dramatic screen tearing.

When playing Hitman 2, the display offered bright colors and subdued tones, depending upon the level. When I was in the sundrenched city of Sapienza, the ocean was vivid bluish, the grass was verdant light-green, and explosions were bright orange and yellow.

Playing a less enervating game, like the cartoony Borderlands 2, I enjoyed vivid colors and fast-paced action every bit I palled effectually with a cantankerous robot and battled snow monsters and a range of ruffians. Just with my Nvidia graphics card – which isn't uniform with the monitor'south AMD FreeSync – I experienced frequent screen violent.

HP 34f Curved Display lab test results

The HP 34f curved monitor is a nifty example of the technology seen in pricey professional person displays and gaming monitors coming down to more full general use products. While the 34f'south price does put it on the pricier cease of the general use spectrum, information technology's definitely not made to compete with monitors similar the Acer PEO Series ProDesigner PE320QK, which is made for designers and visual professionals, or the LG 38GL950G UltraGear, which is a high-cease gaming brandish.

Nonetheless, as a curved monitor boasting decent resolution, 60Hz refresh rates and AMD FreeSync, the comparison is still a valid 1. In fact, in our lab testing, the HP 34f performed admirably, even when stacked confronting these more expensive, and supposedly higher-caliber monitors.

The brightness is excellent, measuring an average of 296.8 nits according to our Klein K-10A colorimeter. That's amend than both the Acer Predator X34 (261 nits) and the Acer PEO Series ProDesigner PE320QK (237 nits). But the LG 38GL950G UltraGear offers much higher brightness (544.four nits) along with HDR support – which the HP 34f doesn't offer.

The 34f also covers well in a higher place 100% of the sRGB color gamut. (Don't be confused by numbers of higher than 100%, that simply ways that information technology offers more than colour back up than the sRGB color space calls for.) In our testing, the HP 34f reproduced 115.6% of the sRGB space, improve than both the Acer Predator X34 (98.9%) and the Acer PE320QK (108.vii%), but falling behind the gamer-oriented LG 38GL950G UltraGear (148.9%).

Colour accuracy was likewise great, with a delta-E rating of 0.07. With 0 being a perfect score, this indicates almost no deviation from flawless color. While any rating under 0.two is first-class, this still edges ahead of competing monitors, like the LG 38GL950G UltraGear (0.24) and even the superb Acer PE320QK (0.09) which comes factory calibrated and is designed for colour-disquisitional professional use. Past comparing, the generally nifty Acer Predator X34 (1.77) looks downright inaccurate, despite offer amend-than-average color accuracy itself.

Lastly, nosotros measured the HP 34f's lag time, measuring the interval between a signal sent and its appearance onscreen. The HP managed a decent 10.iii milliseconds. That's slower than the Acer Predator X34 (9.7 ms), but quicker than another gaming monitor, the Alienware AW3418DW (12.9ms). While gaming isn't the primary focus of the HP 34f, it'south definitely no slouch if you want to occasionally attempt out the latest titles.

HP 34f Curved Display: Verdict

Between the splendid performance and solid feature set, the HP 34f curved display is a pretty skillful option for anyone that wants a wider screen, a more immersive viewing feel, and a monitor that tin handle everything from homework assignments to the latest games.

As an ultrawide 34-inch monitor with a curved blueprint and WQHD resolution, the HP 34f curved display is well-nigh notable for what information technology doesn't have: a premium toll. It wasn't long ago that curved panels were relegated to gaming monitors similar the Acer Predator X34 and the LG 38GL950G UltraGear, offering more immersive gaming, only charging an arm and a leg to do it. When so many curved monitors sell for much more than, the HP 34f'due south reasonable sub-$500 price is a breath of fresh air.

Brian Westover is an Editor at Tom's Guide, roofing everything from TVs to the latest PCs. Prior to joining Tom'southward Guide, he wrote for TopTenReviews and PCMag.