HP Z27q 27-inch 5K Professional Monitor Review

OSD Setup And Calibration

The OSD is extensive but as the Z27q is calibrated at the factory, adjustment options are limited. We'll walk you through the monitor's features now.

OSD Tour

There aren't many more options here than a typical display, but HP has divided them up into nine sub-menus. The first one, Luminance, contains only a brightness slider.

The Color Control menu offers four picture modes and three white point presets. In the default mode, Custom RGB, you can adjust RGB sliders to dial in the grayscale to your preference. That mode also has some color issues, which we'll show you on page six. The top three options, sRGB, AdobeRGB and BT.709 are pretty accurate, but only allow you to change brightness. By selecting Color Preset Information you can view the gamut coordinates in x,y or 'u,'v formats.

Here are the white point controls. They have 256 steps so precision is high. We were able to achieve a perfect D65 balance in the Custom RGB mode, however they won't help fix the color gamut errors.

In the Input Control menu you'll have to make sure DP Hot-Plug Detection is set to Always On and the DisplayPort Mode is set to 1.2, so the Z27q's full resolution capability is recognized by your computer's video driver.

Black Stretch is a low-end gamma control but it is grayed out when running at 5120x2880. Image Scaling has Fill-to-Screen, Fill-to-Aspect and Pixel-for-Pixel options. Choose the first one to scale all images to the monitor's native resolution.

Power options regulate sleep modes and timers, power-on recall of settings and inputs, and the front bezel power LED.

OSD Control lets you set the transparency level and timeout of the menu. It always appears in the lower right corner and cannot be moved. OSD Messages refers to various signal and color mode warnings that pop up when you make changes. You can turn these off if you wish.

Four of the bezel keys can be programmed to provide quick access to certain monitor functions. They're best used for things like brightness and picture mode.

The Management menu lets you turn DDC/CI support on or off and can reset the Z27q back to its factory configuration.

The OSD is available in 10 languages.

The Information screen provides resolution and refresh rates along with the current color preset. We like the backlight hour indicator; most displays require a trip to the service menu for that bit of info.

Calibration

Calibration is only possible in the Custom RGB mode and then only the white point can be adjusted. We were able to achieve excellent grayscale tracking doing this but encountered some errors in the color gamut tests. Page six has a full explanation of our findings. The most accurate mode is sRGB, which measured to near-perfection. Below are the recommended settings for Custom RGB along with brightness settings for the most commonly used output levels.