HP Series 7 Pro 732xk monitor review: A game-changer for big-screen productivity

Sometimes it's not enough for a PC monitor to be big. Sometimes it needs to be beautiful and well-connected, too. And that's before you even consider the key elements such as image quality or color accuracy. HP's latest 32-inch business monitor, the Series 7 Pro 732xk, isn't content to simply tick every one of these boxes – this is one of the best value monitors I've seen in recent years.

Aside from a few quibbles, which will mostly irk the lunchtime or post-work gaming crowd, the spoiler here is that HP has done an amazing job. It delivers all the essentials and also goes above and beyond in one key way: it supports hardware calibration. For around £700, that's unheard of, and it allows you to calibrate and maintain its color-accurate performance for the entirety of its working career.

HP Series 7 Pro 732xk monitor: Design & Features

The 732xk is a 31.5in monitor with a standard 4K, 3,840 x 2,160 pixel resolution. The panel of choice is an IPS Black variant with a matte anti-glare coating, and this, according to HP, promises a peak brightness of 450cd/m2 in SDR mode, a 2,700:1 contrast ratio, and an unusually broad color coverage of 99% for both DCI-P3 and Adobe RGB. It also gets a VESA DisplayHDR 400 certification, which, as per usual, suggests that HDR is present, but the panel doesn't get bright enough to do anything exciting with HDR content. Still, for around £700 – these kinds of panel specifications are about as good as it gets.

It's really quite a striking model, too. The heavy metal base slots elegantly into the slender black and silver stand, and the panel itself both feels really solid and looks great. The acres of brushed silver, gentle curves, and relatively slender profile make for a really good-looking monitor. For the money, it's probably one of the prettiest we've had on our desk to date.

The adjustable stand is superb, too. It moves through its 150mm range of height adjustment smoothly, and you only need a single hand to get it just so – there's no wobble or unsteadiness at all. There's plenty of scope for tilt and swivel, and the panel rotates around into portrait mode in either direction. Even the cable management – a traditional afterthought for many manufacturers – is good. It's just a simple square of plastic though, which you have to slot the cables, but unlike other designs that snag or pinch the cables when you try to move the panel to the extent of its adjustment, this just works. Kudos, HP.

HP has more than just image quality on its mind with the 732xk, however. Connectivity is top of the agenda, and that's why you'll find a healthy supply of ports around the back in addition to a built-in KVM switch. All of the ports are rear-facing, so there's no scrabbling around – just rotate the monitor around a touch, find the port you're after, and slot the cable home.

The HDMI 2.1 and full-sized DisplayPort 1.4 inputs are flanked by a DisplayPort output for daisy-chaining a second monitor, and there's also a Thunderbolt 4 USB-C input, which supports DisplayPort Alt video inputs, Thunderbolt 4, and also provides 100W of power delivery. You also get a secondary Thunderbolt 4 USB-C port for daisychaining duties. A secondary upstream USB-C connects to a second computer, and both of the upstream USB-C ports power up 4 USB-A ports at the rear, and a single USB-C port.

It's good to see PBP and PIP functions, too. These make life easier when using two machines side by side – or just keeping up with the football while you work on a particularly pressing presentation.

The on-screen display is a really good example, too. The menus use simple, sensibly-sized light grey text on a dark background, and the directional buttons at the rear make it easy to delve through the menus and adjust the features as required. There's no show or pizzazz, just useful features and key information – current resolution, refresh rates, and enabled modes – exposed in a sensible menu system. There's lots of fine adjustability, too.

Install the HP Display Center software – this is Windows-only at the time of writing – and you can adjust the 732xk's features and swap between color modes without having to reach around behind the monitor and prod buttons.

It's here that you can also recalibrate the various factory presets or create up to three of your own. It's worth noting that this feature didn't work during our testing, but this is almost certainly because we use an OEM X-Rite i1Display colorimeter. We encountered similar issues with BenQ's calibration software, and support was added in a recent software update. We've emailed to check whether support is planned.

HP Series 7 Pro 732xk monitor: Display quality

The Series 7 Pro 732xk more than lives up to its quoted specifications. And in terms of color accuracy, it puts in an excellent performance. If you can't be bothered to read the whole of this section, then all you need to know is that the 732xk produces images that are sharp and color accurate in both SDR and HDR.

Turn on the monitor, and the default color space is Display P3 – but you can use the menus to quickly switch to any of the factory-calibrated color modes. HP provides Display P3, sRGB, and Adobe RGB. There's no DCI-P3 mode, but that will be no great loss for most users.

Gamut coverage is excellent. We tested the monitor in each of its factory-calibrated modes, and our colorimeter showed 100% Adobe RGB coverage, 96% P3, and 100% of sRGB.

Image quality is excellent across the board, too. The IPS Black panel keeps contrast over 2000:1, and color accuracy is excellent with an average Delta E of 1 or less in all of the factory-calibrated modes. Brightness tops out around 400cd. This is as good as we've seen from a sub-£1,000 monitor in recent times.

Backlight uniformity is a regular bugbear for these types of edge-lit IPS monitors, and the HP is no exception. We measured the panel's brightness and contrast across 25 points on its panel, and the result was that the panel's lower left corner dropped below the recommended tolerance levels. Look closely, and you can see that the lower left and right flanks of the monitor are dimmer than the central section. Even here, though, the deviations are relatively well controlled: brightness dips by no more than 12% in those areas, and that's better than some similarly priced monitors we've seen.

In terms of HDR performance, the VESA DisplayHDR 600 certification suggests that the 732xk might actually do a passable job with HDR – and it does. The lack of Mini-LED or full-array local dimming means that there isn't the dynamic range of pricier panels, but the 732xk offers a decent-looking HDR image nonetheless. Brightness peaked at around 670cd/m2 for smaller highlights, and combined with the panel's wide color gamut and accuracy, it produced a really watchable rendition of HDR content.

If there's a chink in the 732xk's armour, it's motion clarity – this just isn't a strong point of the IPS Black panel. It's the price you pay for the increased contrast ratio and improved overall image over standard IPS panels. That said, it's not something that will bother most users for everyday use – or for watching video content. Fire up a game, however, and the detail on moving objects is smeared and blurry even with the panel at its maximum 120Hz refresh rate.

Increasing the panel's overdrive settings does provide a subtle improvement, but in contrast to most overdrive settings we've seen on rival monitors, the 732xk's four settings only make a very subtle difference. This is sensible. HP has provided a maximum overdrive setting that doesn't absolutely destroy the image quality by adding lots of inverse ghosting – instead, it provides a usable range of overdrive settings that don't introduce excessive visual nasties. Kudos.

HP Series 7 Pro 732xk monitor: Is it worth it?

This is not a cheap monitor by any stretch, but the Series 7 Pro 732xk more than justifies its price. The only sticking point here is the motion clarity – but unless gaming is high up your list of priorities, you'll be unlikely to care. And if it's just for the occasional bout of casual gaming, you still may not be too bothered.

For the money, though, the overall balance here is incredibly well-judged. Balancing big-screen productivity needs with superb image quality, oodles of connectivity, and ample adjustability in a downright gorgeous package is no mean feat. HP has made it look easy.

HP Series 7 Pro 732xk monitor specifications