I am looking for Portrait Mode LCD Monitors but having no luck finding many on the web.

January 30, 2011 9:28 AM

I am looking for Portrait Mode LCD Monitors but having no luck finding many on the web.

Hi everyone,

Recently, a friend of mine gave me his HP w2207h monitor which rotates 90 degrees into portrait mode. Since the first use I've fallen in love with it. Reading forums & magazine sites is way more fun right now that everything loads like a newspaper page. It almost makes my 27" obsolete.

I am looking to purchase at least two of these as gifts to friends in the web development/photography industry but I am falling short of finding any of these portrait monitors on the web. It seems like this particular model is no longer available and the new one Amazon has listed does not mention anything about the portrait mode.

Any thoughts? Do these monitors have a short lifespan so they are not mass produced?

Thanks!

posted by bostonhill to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

Maybe you're using the wrong search term.

rotating lcd monitor seems to have a lot of hits.
posted by zamboni at 9:36 AM on January 30, 2011

Best answer: Go here: NewEgg do the Advanced Search, and search under Stand Adjustments for Pivot. There are tons there.
posted by deezil at 9:46 AM on January 30, 2011

I've used a few, but I've always found that subpixel rendering (MS Cleartype, etc) just isn't desinged with this in mind - as the pixels are all wrong.

Does anyone know of monitor designed for portrait mode where the pixels are actually aligned normally?
posted by TravellingDen at 9:59 AM on January 30, 2011

You can turn pretty much any monitor using a VESA mount or stand, like this one or or this one.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 10:21 AM on January 30, 2011

Best answer: nthing everyone else that says "pivot" is what you need to be looking for. I have a Dell Ultrasharp 19" here from nigh on 8 years ago that pivots, and a lot of the higher-end screens (Dell Ultrasharp, equivalent HP, etc.) have 'em too.

one thing to consider: are you looking specifically for one that does the automagic resolution switching? according to HP, all you need to do on yours to activate 90/180º mode is rotate it, and Windows will figure it out (assuming the drivers are installed). I'm not sure what you'd want to search for to get that. any monitor that has a stand with pivoting will physically turn, but you/they may have to go into their display settings to make it actually work.

a specific (HP, higher-end) screen that has the pivot feature (but I think not the automatic switching whatnot yours has) is the ZR24w (and its little 21.5" brother, the ZR22w). there are, of course, many others.

TravellingDan: dunno about Windows, but in most Linux distributions you can set how your pixels are constructed in the monitor. there's a ClearType tuner available - you may be able to adjust that setting using it.
posted by mrg at 10:54 AM on January 30, 2011

Yeah.. I thought about the tuner - but I think those are just for the order and don't necessarily take into account gemoetry - i recall trying it on a 17" Dell Ultrasharp and I couldn't get anything that looked nice (windows XP SP2 - a couple years ago)

Just something to be aware of I guess - if anyone finds the text fuzzy in portrait, disable cleartype and see if it improves - it definitely worsens things if it's not matched with the monitor.
posted by TravellingDen at 12:25 PM on January 30, 2011

Most higher end Dell monitors pivot to portrait mode; drivers support that. Lot's of others do as well. I have one landscape monitor and one portrait, and I agree it's awesome. I do all of my document work on the portrait. There is a pretty significant downside, tho...my portrait monitor (like many) is 900x1440, and apparently there are a *lot* of web sites that assume a horizontal resolution of at least 1024.
posted by kjs3 at 7:17 PM on January 30, 2011