HP E27m G4 QHD USB-C Conferencing Monitor

Since 2020, it has rapidly become a virtual world for many office workers. The HP E27m G4 QHD USB-C Conferencing Monitor ($549) is built for the age of videoconferencing with all the connectivity you'd want in a productivity monitor, plus a pop-up webcam, dual microphones, and powerful stereo speakers. Its onscreen display (OSD) controls are a bit dated, but that's the only issue we encountered, and a minor one at that. The E27m is a great fit for a home office, a small conference room, or a workplace desk. It easily qualifies for a PCMag Editors' Choice award.

A Display for the Teleconferencing Era

Spending two years in the grip of the pandemic has changed how we live and work. One of the few good things to come out of the ordeal is the mainstreaming of videoconferencing. I've remotely attended a graduation, a memorial service, a Thanksgiving celebration, classes, self-help groups, and numerous work meetings including live product demos from half a world away. While the pandemic may be subsiding (hopefully!), remote meetings are still gaining momentum.

The E27m monitor offers a 27-inch in-plane switching (IPS) screen with QHD (2,560-by-1,440-pixel) resolution, yielding a density of 108 pixels per inch (ppi), which should be fine for any typical business task as well as light photo or video editing. The screen is larger and has higher resolution than its 1080p sibling the HP E24m G4 FHD USB-C Conferencing Monitor. Another conferencing monitor we tested concurrently with the E27m and E24m, the Asus BE279QSK, splits the difference with the 27-inch-diagonal screen size of the larger HP but the 1,920-by-1,080-pixel resolution of the smaller one. At 81ppi, the Asus' pixel density is at the lower limit of what we expect for this size of display. (All else being equal, the higher the pixel density, the sharper the image.)

Apart from screen size and resolution, the E27m has essentially the same feature set as the E24m. It's headlined by its videoconferencing gear: a 5-megapixel pop-up, tilt-adjustable (through a 25-degree range) webcam with Windows Hello support, dual echo-canceling microphones, and twin 5-watt stereo speakers. Like the E24m, the E27m is Zoom-certified, meeting or exceeding all of that conferencing company's requirements in a series of more than 200 benchmarks that test a monitor's video and audio chops. Using the E27m in a few Zoom calls, my own video feed looked better than what I get from the webcams of my Lenovo ThinkPad T490 and my personal laptop, an HP Pavilion Aero. Audio seemed clear and crisp.

Enclosed in a black chassis, the E27m attaches to a silver-colored stand. (There are holes for a VESA mount, not included, should you want to mount the display on a wall or movable arm.) A 2-inch bottom bezel houses the speakers. The webcam hides on the back of the chassis, flush with the top of the monitor when not in use. It's easy to pull it up for a conference and push it back down when you're done.

The stand consists of a sturdy rectangular base supporting a vertical shaft, with a hole at the bottom through which you can snake cables. It offers all the standard ergonomic features. You can adjust the display's height by up to 5.9 inches, an unusually wide range, and tilt its top up to 5 degrees toward or 23 degrees away from you. You can swivel the screen 90 degrees in either direction and pivot it between landscape and portrait modes in either direction as well.

The E27m has all the features (primarily a wide selection of ports) found in USB-C hub or docking-station monitors such as the HP E24d. You can connect the monitor to a laptop via the former's USB-C port, through which the E27m can provide up to 65 watts to charge the laptop via USB Power Delivery and receive data or video through the port's DisplayPort Over USB Alternative Mode. You can connect peripherals such as a mouse, keyboard, or external drive to any of four USB 3.1 Type-A downstream ports.

Other ports include one HDMI port, DisplayPort-in and DisplayPort-out connectors, and an RJ-45 Ethernet jack. The latter lets you connect the E27m to a LAN to provide connectivity when Wi-Fi is spotty or nonexistent. When an HP laptop is connected to the monitor over a USB-C connection, the Ethernet link enables your IT department to perform setup, administrative, and security tasks remotely.

Among the network management features supported by the E27m are PXE Boot, LAN/WLAN switching, WoL, and MAC address pass-through. The first (Preboot eXecution Environment) allows a computer to boot directly from the network. LAN/WLAN switching automatically switches between Ethernet and WiFi. Wake-on-LAN (WoL) enables a computer to be woken up remotely from a low-power state. And the MAC address pass-through function lets the laptop bypass the monitor/dock's MAC address so it can be uniquely identified on the network with its own MAC. These functions will only work for “in-band” notebook power states (the notebook cannot be turned off and still be accessed via the monitor).

There are two sets of small control buttons on the display's bottom edge. The four on the left, labeled with icons in front, turn the speakers and microphone on or off and control speaker volume. The four buttons on the right (to the left of the power button) that control the onscreen display are unlabeled; I frequently pressed the wrong button when trying to change a setting and had to backtrack. Mini-joystick controllers like that of the Dell UltraSharp 27 USB-C Hub Monitor are easier and more intuitive to use.

HP covers the E27m in the U.S. with a three-year warranty, which is typical for business displays. Philips adds a fourth year to the likes of its Philips Brilliance 279P1 docking-station monitor.

Testing the E27m: Full RGB Color Coverage, Good Contrast

I tested the HP E27m G4's brightness, contrast ratio, and color accuracy using our standard test gear: a Klein K-80 colorimeter, a Murideo SIX-G signal generator, and Portrait Displays' CalMAN 5 calibration software.

HP rates the E27m's luminance at 300 nits (candelas per square meter), and it came in a little below that—251 nits—in my testing. That's still bright enough for most any business purpose, unless maybe you're working with photos or video. The E27m did slightly better than its rated 1,000:1 contrast ratio, tallying a 1,054:1 score. (See how we test monitors.)

According to HP, the E27m covers 99% of the sRGB color space. In my tests using the default (neutral color) mode, it effectively matched that, covering 98.7% of sRGB. It also provided 78.1% coverage of the wider Adobe RGB color space and 80.5% of DCI-P3, a color space geared to digital video.

In subjective viewing of our standard suite of test images, photos looked sharp, and colors seemed accurate. Colors in video clips looked vivid, and detail showed reasonably well in both bright and dark areas.

Videoconferencing With Style

The HP E27m G4 is suitable for a variety of teleconferencing scenarios: homes, home offices, business work areas, conference rooms. Its webcam and microphone are superior to the typical laptop audiovisual gear, proving their mettle in our video-call testing, and its speakers pump out loud yet clear sound. The panel provides good coverage of the sRGB color space and packs all the connectivity of a USB docking-station monitor: USB connectivity (and the ability to power or charge your laptop), multiple video inputs, and Ethernet. Finally, it has all the ergonomic features you'd expect.

If you're working in a tight physical space or with a more limited budget, you should consider the HP E24m, which offers most of what you get with the E27m with a smaller, lower-resolution screen at a considerably lower price. Otherwise, we strongly recommend the HP E27m G4, an easy pick as a PCMag Editors' Choice among productivity monitors.