Display Enlightment by NCX

The semi-glossy Dell S2418H (75hz with AMD Free-Sync), almost-glossy/Low Haze coated Dell S2419H*, HP 25er/25es (non-overclock-able 2016 models; they're the same aside from the casing color), 25CW/25XW (2015 models; they're the same aside from the casing color), HP 25f (75hz & AMD Free-Sync) and semi-glossy HP 24 Envy (75hz with AMD Free-Sync) are the best glossy monitors.  The HP 25er/es are slightly more accurate than the CW/F/XW monitors, but the er/es monitors can't overclock, and their contrast, along with the 25-27 CW/XW monitors needs to be turned down to 75 from 80 to get rid of the green tint when viewing light grey shades such as those found in the Lagom White Saturation Test.

The HP 25f offers a few improvements over the older HP 25-27 CW/er/es/XW monitors, those being the inclusion of AMD Free-Sync, a native 75hz refresh rate, properly preset contrast (no need to drop the contrast from 80 to 75), faster pixel response times (Response Time Level 4) and vastly higher maximum brightness which makes the 25f suitable for use in very brightly lit environments.  Overall the 25f is slightly less accurate than the 25er and 25es monitors I tested in 2016, has a less accurate color gamut which prevents it from being able to display some colors as accurately as the older models, and the 25f I tested suffered from very obvious back-light bleed in the bottom left corner.

The Dell S2418H, S2419H and HP 24 Envy use a semi-glossy coating which looks a bit washed out under bright lighting, and is best used with bias lighting, or lights placed behind the display*.  The HP comes with a VESA adapter, and has slightly better image quality (full sRGB color space coverage >99% vs 93-94% for the Dell) than the Dell S2418 and HP 25f.

HP 24 Envy with ceiling light vs HP 24 Envy with bias light (light placed behind the display).  Images are from my Steemit article Display Brightness & Room Lighting: The Importance Of Light.  YouTube Version.

The Dell S2418H, S2419H and HP 24 Envy suffer from the following issue:

Some models display static interlace patterns, not linked to motion and observed when the monitor is simply displaying a static image as well. Some shades may appear as faint horizontal bands of a slightly lighter and slightly darker version of the intended shade. We did observe static interlace patterns on this model, with some light and medium blue, yellow and orange shades in particular showing this. The horizontal bands were reasonably faint and not everyone would notice or find them bothersome. Curiously, if you reduced the refresh rate to 50Hz they became even more faint. Increasing the refresh rate much beyond 60Hz (refer to a note on ‘overclocking’ in the next section) made these extremely obvious.