Tech After Dark

HP's $329 120 Hz Ultrawide: What's the Catch?

HP Series 3 Pro 334wp G2 · $329 · 120 Hz

Ranked #1 of 2 in PC parts & GPUs · 6.6/10

Chapters

  1. Cold open
  2. What it is
  3. What's new
  4. Specs that matter
  5. What reviewers found
  6. The price

Sources

Transcript

Whoa. A thirty-four inch curved ultrawide, for three hundred twenty-nine bucks? Shiny, cheap, and built for spreadsheets. Hold your applause. This is health's Series 3 Pro 334wp G2. Three twenty-nine in the U.S. It's for office laptop people who want one cable to do everything. This is Tech After Dark! We read three launch reports and health's spec page. No hands-on reviews in our pile yet. And no hands here touched it.

Especially yours. Okay, new thing one: a hundred twenty hertz. On an office monitor! The screen redraws a hundred twenty times a second, not sixty. Long spreadsheets scroll smoother. New thing two: one U S B-C cable. Picture, data, and ninety watts of charging. Ninety watts charges most laptops. One cable in, no power brick on the desk. And three: it's a hub! Three U S B-A ports plus U S B-C for your keyboard, mouse, drives.

Rocco, stop eyeing the ports. They're not shiny enough to steal. Fine. The screen itself. How big are we talking? Like two smaller monitors side by side, no bezel in the middle. Curved toward you. Thirty-four forty by fourteen forty. Room for two full documents at once. And the blacks? I heard it's a V A panel! Thirty-five hundred to one contrast. Blacks look deeper than a typical I P S office screen.

But: three hundred nits, eighty-five percent N T S C color, no H D R. Fine for docs, not photo editing. So what are the reviewers saying? Tell me they love it. TechPowerUp calls it an office monitor first. No H D R, no webcam. Their advice: stick to documents and spreadsheets. Okay, okay, that's fair. I mostly do spreadsheets anyway. Of snacks. Pause Hardware says it covers the laptop essentials. LCDProduct calls it a practical productivity tool.

Three twenty-nine in the U.S. So when can I grab one? Health's pages are live in Asia and New Zealand, but none we found gives a ship date. Nova's Catch: no webcam, no Ethernet, and the ports run older five-gigabit speeds. Oh no. So my video-call face still needs its own camera? Dell's Pro 34 Plus: same resolution, same ninety watts, only a hundred hertz. Six ninety-seven at Staples. Twice the price for fewer hertz?

Health takes that one! Lenovo's ThinkVision is five ninety-nine euros, but adds a webcam, wider color and Ethernet. Verdict time! Buy it. Seven point two from me. One cable, one-twenty hertz, done. Six from me. Buy it for office work, skip it for editing. That's a six point six After Dark Score. Where does it land? Number one in P C parts, just above the R O G N U C's six point four. Top of the board!

I want one for my snack spreadsheets. Of course you are. See you next time, Rocco.