Display Enlightment by NCX

Out of the box, or by default, the HP 25f and 24 Envy's Response Time or overdrive setting is preset to Level 1 while the HP 25 er and es have theirs preset to Off, just like the HP 27CW, 25XW and 27XW I reviewed in 2015 and 2016.  The 24 Envy, 25er and 25es all offer extremely similar performance, the main difference being that the 24 Envy and 25f can natively overclock 75hz and support AMD Free-Sync.  HP still has not learned to preset their monitors to use the best overdrive setting, but they did speed up the pixel response times and reduce the color streaking of the 25f significantly versus the older models best settings, but only when the 25f's Level 4 Response Time setting is selected.  When Response Time Level 4 is selected the 25f is obviously faster than the older models, is completely overshoot ghosting free, and only suffers from very light amounts of color streaking.  The HP struggles with fast yellow and white streaking the most, but this is normal for AHVA/IPS/PLS.  The Level 5 Response Time setting is useless since it causes very obvious overshoot ghosting which appears in the form of transparent colored, dark or white glow or shadows on things which move across the screen.

The 25f is not as fast as a high end 60hz TN panel like the BenQ Zowie RL2460, but is only slightly slower, and offers vastly superior image quality, especially when viewed properly.  The HP 25f is also the only AHVA/IPS/PLS panel I've tested which rivals the 1200$ Acer XB321HK (60hz 4K AUO AHVA panel with G-Sync), which along with the HP, should satisfy all but those who want to use 144hz monitors.  Here's a comparison of monitors ranging from 150$ US to 700$.


Here's how to activate Free-Sync with the Xbox One X, and here's how to with compatible AMD and Nvidia graphics cards.