jmm5351
05-15-2011, 05:43 PM
I decided to start a new thread about this awesome monitor. I just received my DoubleSight DS-307W about a week and a half ago and might I say it is spectacular. I've decided to do a little review on the monitor because it has been for sale out on the market for months and there is absolutely no information about it (besides what is on DoubleSight's website), not enough pictures, and no reviews yet. I was definitely hesitant to purchase this monitor without the presence of reviews and information available and especially from reading reviews on the earlier models the DS-275W and DS-305W. So here I go.
I have experience with the Dell U2711, and also with the HP ZR24W and I go to school at Penn State and they use a lot of Dell U2211H's in their labs so I am not new to IPS panels. Although this is the first IPS panel that I have owned.
Firstly there are some key differences between the new DS-307W and the older DS-305W. The new DS-307W has added height and swivel adjustments and also built in speakers. The DS-307W supports 1.07 Billion colors (10 bit) but the DS-305W only supports 16.7 Million colors (8 bit). Also the DS-307W has an OSD now, the DS-305W does not. The DS-305W only has a Dual Link DVI. The DS-307W has a Dual Link DVI, 2 VGA, HDMI, Component Video (Y, Pb, Pr), Sound Connector (Red/White), PC Audio In and Out, SPDIF Digital Audio Connector, and has a USB input supposedly just used for future firmware updates (I have not tried using the USB port so I don't know if it will function as a normal USB port). Those are the only differences between the two models, I think correct me if I am wrong.
Doublesight's webpage they claim the monitor is S-IPS but it is not. I took a few pictures of the pixels and you can see that the DS-307W uses H-IPS which doesn't bother me any since H-IPS is a newer variant of S-IPS and H-IPS is suppose to provide more accurate, or better, contrast ratio's over S-IPS and both types basically have the same viewing angles. I do not know how to bring up the service menu of the monitor, I tried almost everything. It doesn't show how to anywhere in the user's manual included with the monitor (The user manual can be downloaded from DoubleSight's webpage, it is too large to attach it here on the forum) so I don't know the model number or who makes the panel. Just know that it's H-IPS. The entire housing of the monitor is all aluminum and also the bezel is aluminum. Its a nice feature to help keep the monitor cool (its like a giant heat sink) and it also looks aesthetically pleasing. As far as the touch buttons go, they are very nice to navigate with. They are super sensitive though but it doesn't make them hard to use. It takes about a minute or so of pressing them to get used to their responsiveness. They are so sensitive that sometimes your finger could be a millimeter from the button and that is enough to activate the touch button. This doesn't happen all the time but sometimes it does. But again I have used many monitors with touch buttons and these are definitely the nicest I have ever used. They press every time you touch it without a hitch. I normally hate using touch buttons because as you all know they are just crummy, but the touch buttons on this monitor are indeed very nice. I did not have another monitor to compare it to, so I used my HP-DM1Z w/AMD-E350 CPU/GPU laptop just so you have an idea. I know this is not an ideal comparison but it is something. The brightness and vibrancy is cranked all the way up on the HP laptop and the brightness on the DS-307W is set at 26%. The height adjustment works very well and it is very easy to adjust the monitor height. It feels very smooth and to put it in other words it feels perfect. Same thing again for the swivel feature, it also feels natural and perfect. DS did a great job with monitor adjustments. My friend has a Dell-U2711 and the DS height adjustment feels better than the Dell. Just more smooth while moving it up or down. The Anti-Glare coating on the monitor seems like it isn't even there which is great. I am not sure if it works or not because my room doesn't have much sunlight at all, but I know the coating seems like its not present on the screen. It doesn't at all change the way how things look when viewing the screen. There is absolutely no input lag or any ghosting at all. NONE! I play Crysis 2, StarCraft II, Civilization V, Call of Duty MW2, and more and the monitor is fantastic. There were no deal/stuck pixels either, the bezel and the DoubleSight logo is securely attached to the monitor and is not going to peel off (I read reviews of people saying this about the earlier models this would occur on some of the monitors with both the bezel and the logo), and text is not too small when viewing webpages on native resolution. I would say it is actually just right. It is a little smaller than a 24" 1080P but not too small that you have to squint or try hard to read text. This monitor also does get very bright and in the OSD you can change the back light brightness, can set the sRGB levels, has preset color temperatures, can change contrast and sharpness, has built in speakers with volume adjustments (I can't say how well they work because I am using other speakers and have a dual link DVI cable connected to the monitor), can change the aspect ratio, it does have a sleep timer you can set, you can change the OSD horizontal and vertical positioning on the screen, how long the OSD menu takes to disappear off the screen, you can turn on/off Dynamic Contrast Ratio, has an Economy Mode, and more(Everything is in the user manual you can download from their site). There is also very minimal back light bleed as you can see from the photo. My room was in complete darkness when I took the picture of the screen to show the back light bleed. It is negligible. But this is what I would expect of a more expensive monitor as this one.
Here is the link to the photos I took. They were too large to post here on the forum >https://picasaweb.google.com/111445979958668056887/DS307WMonitor?authkey=Gv1sRgCNbj0qD8-ezibA#
The camera that I used made the picture of the monitor look sort of saturated. This is not the monitor it is definitely the camera that I used. It is a Canon PowerShot G9 so it isn't the best camera but a decent one. The colors of the monitor are not the slightest bit over saturated. I added another picture of a screen shot using Windows Snipping tool instead of the camera of the same background image so you can see now that the colors are not saturated. It is the very first image. And I did not use anything fancy to color calibrate this monitor, I just used the native tool that is a feature of Windows 7. The monitor is super close to being perfectly calibrated for color. If you put it next to a monitor that was professionally calibrated, you more than likely wouldn't spot any differences. Included is a picture of my friends U2711 showing the amount of back light bleeding on his monitor. I forgot my camera so he used his. Apparently this is his second monitor because the first one he received he said the back light bleeding was terrible so he got a second one and he said its much better. You can't notice any back light bleeding on his monitor when using it unless it is a black screen.
Let me know if you want any other photos or have any questions, I may have forgot to include something you may want to know about.
I have experience with the Dell U2711, and also with the HP ZR24W and I go to school at Penn State and they use a lot of Dell U2211H's in their labs so I am not new to IPS panels. Although this is the first IPS panel that I have owned.
Firstly there are some key differences between the new DS-307W and the older DS-305W. The new DS-307W has added height and swivel adjustments and also built in speakers. The DS-307W supports 1.07 Billion colors (10 bit) but the DS-305W only supports 16.7 Million colors (8 bit). Also the DS-307W has an OSD now, the DS-305W does not. The DS-305W only has a Dual Link DVI. The DS-307W has a Dual Link DVI, 2 VGA, HDMI, Component Video (Y, Pb, Pr), Sound Connector (Red/White), PC Audio In and Out, SPDIF Digital Audio Connector, and has a USB input supposedly just used for future firmware updates (I have not tried using the USB port so I don't know if it will function as a normal USB port). Those are the only differences between the two models, I think correct me if I am wrong.
Doublesight's webpage they claim the monitor is S-IPS but it is not. I took a few pictures of the pixels and you can see that the DS-307W uses H-IPS which doesn't bother me any since H-IPS is a newer variant of S-IPS and H-IPS is suppose to provide more accurate, or better, contrast ratio's over S-IPS and both types basically have the same viewing angles. I do not know how to bring up the service menu of the monitor, I tried almost everything. It doesn't show how to anywhere in the user's manual included with the monitor (The user manual can be downloaded from DoubleSight's webpage, it is too large to attach it here on the forum) so I don't know the model number or who makes the panel. Just know that it's H-IPS. The entire housing of the monitor is all aluminum and also the bezel is aluminum. Its a nice feature to help keep the monitor cool (its like a giant heat sink) and it also looks aesthetically pleasing. As far as the touch buttons go, they are very nice to navigate with. They are super sensitive though but it doesn't make them hard to use. It takes about a minute or so of pressing them to get used to their responsiveness. They are so sensitive that sometimes your finger could be a millimeter from the button and that is enough to activate the touch button. This doesn't happen all the time but sometimes it does. But again I have used many monitors with touch buttons and these are definitely the nicest I have ever used. They press every time you touch it without a hitch. I normally hate using touch buttons because as you all know they are just crummy, but the touch buttons on this monitor are indeed very nice. I did not have another monitor to compare it to, so I used my HP-DM1Z w/AMD-E350 CPU/GPU laptop just so you have an idea. I know this is not an ideal comparison but it is something. The brightness and vibrancy is cranked all the way up on the HP laptop and the brightness on the DS-307W is set at 26%. The height adjustment works very well and it is very easy to adjust the monitor height. It feels very smooth and to put it in other words it feels perfect. Same thing again for the swivel feature, it also feels natural and perfect. DS did a great job with monitor adjustments. My friend has a Dell-U2711 and the DS height adjustment feels better than the Dell. Just more smooth while moving it up or down. The Anti-Glare coating on the monitor seems like it isn't even there which is great. I am not sure if it works or not because my room doesn't have much sunlight at all, but I know the coating seems like its not present on the screen. It doesn't at all change the way how things look when viewing the screen. There is absolutely no input lag or any ghosting at all. NONE! I play Crysis 2, StarCraft II, Civilization V, Call of Duty MW2, and more and the monitor is fantastic. There were no deal/stuck pixels either, the bezel and the DoubleSight logo is securely attached to the monitor and is not going to peel off (I read reviews of people saying this about the earlier models this would occur on some of the monitors with both the bezel and the logo), and text is not too small when viewing webpages on native resolution. I would say it is actually just right. It is a little smaller than a 24" 1080P but not too small that you have to squint or try hard to read text. This monitor also does get very bright and in the OSD you can change the back light brightness, can set the sRGB levels, has preset color temperatures, can change contrast and sharpness, has built in speakers with volume adjustments (I can't say how well they work because I am using other speakers and have a dual link DVI cable connected to the monitor), can change the aspect ratio, it does have a sleep timer you can set, you can change the OSD horizontal and vertical positioning on the screen, how long the OSD menu takes to disappear off the screen, you can turn on/off Dynamic Contrast Ratio, has an Economy Mode, and more(Everything is in the user manual you can download from their site). There is also very minimal back light bleed as you can see from the photo. My room was in complete darkness when I took the picture of the screen to show the back light bleed. It is negligible. But this is what I would expect of a more expensive monitor as this one.
Here is the link to the photos I took. They were too large to post here on the forum >https://picasaweb.google.com/111445979958668056887/DS307WMonitor?authkey=Gv1sRgCNbj0qD8-ezibA#
The camera that I used made the picture of the monitor look sort of saturated. This is not the monitor it is definitely the camera that I used. It is a Canon PowerShot G9 so it isn't the best camera but a decent one. The colors of the monitor are not the slightest bit over saturated. I added another picture of a screen shot using Windows Snipping tool instead of the camera of the same background image so you can see now that the colors are not saturated. It is the very first image. And I did not use anything fancy to color calibrate this monitor, I just used the native tool that is a feature of Windows 7. The monitor is super close to being perfectly calibrated for color. If you put it next to a monitor that was professionally calibrated, you more than likely wouldn't spot any differences. Included is a picture of my friends U2711 showing the amount of back light bleeding on his monitor. I forgot my camera so he used his. Apparently this is his second monitor because the first one he received he said the back light bleeding was terrible so he got a second one and he said its much better. You can't notice any back light bleeding on his monitor when using it unless it is a black screen.
Let me know if you want any other photos or have any questions, I may have forgot to include something you may want to know about.