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>> Hi everyone this is Eric Franklin from cnet.com and today we're looking at the HP 2009M. The HP's black bezel and 20-inch screen are strikingly glossy and not surprisingly fingerprint magnets. The rectangular metallic silver foot stand is smooth to the touch and the display wobbles quite a bit when knocked from the sides. Although the panel doesn't swivel independently of the stand, the stand rests on a small button on the bottom of the foot stand which protrudes slightly. The small button, which allows the whole display to rotate 360 degrees, is a useful, low cost way of implementing panel swiveling. Also the stand is removable and the display wall mountable. Connection options limited to DVI and VGA are fairly easy to access, though the stand blocks the DVI and the speaker cable cords just a bit. The transparent power button on the far right glows turquoise when powered on, and there are four OSD buttons aligned to the left. Unfortunately, the interface is not as intuitive as we'd like. The source button also doubles as the volume up button, but to increase the volume you must first press the audio button before you adjust the volume. The OSD manual includes controls for brightness, contrast and color temperature, including SRGB and you can adjust the color by changing the red, green and blue values individually. The HP 2009M includes built-in speakers on the bottom rear corners of the display. The speakers produce a decent volume, however, the sound lacks bass and unfortunately there's no way to adjust the bass. We found that the HP performed better in the 9500K color temperature than the 6500K color temperature. White text on black look fine at 9500K, but had a distracting yellowish hue at the 6500K color temperature. We were pleasantly surprised at the lack of ghosting in movies; and although the colors look full they didn't have the same kind of pop we desired. In a power consumption test, the HP 2009M has a small 0.51 watt power draw on standby; but it's own default power draw was higher than we like for a 20-inch monitor at 30.55 watts compared to the 21.5 inch Lenovo L215 which only do 28.71 watts. Based on our formula the HP 2009M would cost you $9.46 per year compared to a Lenovo which would cost you $8.93 per year. The HP 2009M has a street price of $180 bucks but retailers sell it for as low as $130 bucks. Compared to the similarly priced LG Flattron [assumed spelling] W53 TQ, the HP has many of the same features and is evenly matched in performance. We recommend the HP, however, due to a slightly lower price, more intuitive OSD and lower power consumption. Once again this is Eric Franklin and this has been the First Look at the HP 2009M.
