Looking Inside the Box
Not surprisingly, the box is not the most exciting thing in the world and it gives you the impression that you are buying some offshore brand. Rest assured that this is still a (refurbished) HP product in there.
For some strange reason, though, whoever loaded my particular box deserves a little chastising. For whatever reason, they decided to place the LCD upside down in the box. The bottom was on top. Normally, this wouldn’t that big of a deal, but I did notice some minor cosmetic damage (scuffs) on the top of the monitor. I can’t say for sure, but this damage may have been caused by the packing process (or it may have been there already).
Getting past this minor hiccup, I was pleasantly surprised to see what was included in the box. Whereas new retail versions of monitors can come with a bunch of relatively useless documentation and not much in terms of accessories, the refurbished TS-20W7 supplied me both the VGA and the 3.5mm audio cable. There was no DVI cable, unfortunately.
Aside from the cables, I found a remarkably brief quick start guide, the power cable, and the base. And that’s it. This is (almost) everything you need and nothing you don’t.
The Risk of Refurbished LCD Monitors
As mentioned above, there were some minor scuff marks at the top of the monitor. Thankfully, there was no visible damage on the front face of the LCD, so unless you’re particularly anal about having impeccably perfect gadgetry, those scuffs won’t bother you at all. What would bother you, however, are dead and stuck pixels. The unit that I got seemed to be in good shape and I didn’t notice any dead or stuck pixels, but you do run that risk when you go for debranded and refurbished merchandise.
More specifically, the Geeks.com website says that LCD displays “may have cosmetic imperfections that appear as small bright or dark spots. This is common to all LCD displays used in products by all vendor [sic] and is not specific to any vendor or brand.” The page goes on to state that up to eight of these “dot defects” fall into the acceptable range. You should really take this into consideration when looking at refurbished LCDs.
Getting Connected
Setting everything up was a breeze. After sliding the monitor into its included base, I proceeded to make the necessary connections with my computer. There are no drivers involved, so the whole experience was plug-and-play. Choose between VGA and DVI (or both), connect the audio cable, and you’re good to go.
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