The LCD Buyers Guide

[adamsleath]

nice to hear a comment on the dell 2407-hc; i've heard/read the HC version is good.

[MaxxxRacer]

nice to hear a comment on the dell 2407-hc; i've heard/read the HC version is good.

Kohan69 is going to bring his 2405 over and we will compare.

Mini-Review of the Dell 2407WFP-HC 24" Display


Black Level
The default brightness is too high for me, but when I turn down the brightness you loose alot of detail in blacks. For instance, at 10 brightness I wasnt able to see a difference between RGB 0,0,0 and RGB 15,15,15. It took until RGB 16,16,16 for me to see it. I turned the brightness back up to 50 and then I could see the difference between RGB 0,0,0 and RGB 3,3,3 which is quite good (only professional CRTs are able to give the difference between RGB 0,0,0 and 1,1,1, or with LCD at full brightness).

After that bit of testing I did the compromise of having the brigthness at 40 which allows me to see the change in blacks at RGB 6,6,6.

White Level
I havn't done a white level callibration yet, but I will try that tonight.

Backlight Bleeding
The backlight has very little bleeding, only a small amount in the upper right and lower corners. Even then its only noticeable on an entirely black screen. What I did notice though is that the bleeding in the lower right looked a little purple.

When watching a 2:3 movie, the backlight bleeding is NOT noticeable in the upper and lower letterboxes.



Color Temperature
By default the color temperature is too cold. Dell does not give exact values for what the color temperature is, just normal, warm, cold. Odly enough it has both a Mac and Windows color temperature. The MAC color temperature (which it was set to by default) is colder than the Windows settings.

After calibration of the display the colors are much warmer

Color Reproduction
As expected, the color reproduction on the 2407WFP-HC is great. I looked through some of my high res digital photographs and all of them looked superb. How accurate are the colors? Honestly I can't tell you because my coloromiter does not give the delta values of all the colors. I would have to spend another 350 dollars on a Lacie Blue Eye Pro 2 for that, which I would like to get, but since I dont make a living out of photography, wont be happening anytime soon.

Viewing Angles
The viewing angles on the 2407WFP-HC are very good, but not as good as on my Viewsonic VP930B. I noticed the colors wash out a little when looking at the display from the right side. That said, the overal color and gamma distortion at wide viewing angles is minimal and will only be an issue if you do photo editing at 170 degree viewing angles. And if you do that, someone should smack you upside the head.


OSD
The OSD on the dell is great. Its MUCH better than the ghetto OSD that Viewsonic used on the VP930B. It gives you just about every option you could think of and if you go into the maintinence menu (power down display, hold down "menu" and "+" while powering on and then press "-") you have even more options. I will take a picture of the maintinence menu in the next few days.

Picture In Picture
PIP and PBP works well, but is kinda confusing to get working right the first time. Alas it seems that VGA/DVI PIP is still not working which is a real shame. No surfing the net while playing Xbox 360 for me. I havnt had time to test the image quality of the PIP inputs, but I can say that PBP does not look very good due to the squishing (I had the resolution at 1920x1200 and it squished it down to a normal aspect ratio).

Ghosting
Ghosting is not noticeable at all in anything i viewed. I played some Halo, Gears of War, and watched some movies; Both HD-DVD and regular dvd. At no time did I notice any ghosting. I am not as sensitive to it as some people are, but I did not notice anything.

Input LAG
While I did not measure the input lag, there was no percievable input lag with the 2407WFP-HC

The Stand
The stand is very sturdy, but there is some play in the mouting mechanism between the stand and the panel. This is due to the quick release feature of the LCD. Personally, I would prefer to have the LCD hard mounted to the base, but its not up to me. While shaking my desk the display wobbled a little but settled down quickly.

The height adjustment works great, allowing the display to get less than 1 inch off the surface of the desk and up to 5.5 inches (bottom edge of monitor). Lifting the display up is completely effortless unless you lower the display to the bottom where it locks in place. To be honest, even my 6'4" friend found the 5.5 inches to be stupidly high and is only useful for rotating the dispaly into portrait mode.

The swivel works great and is very smooth, but sadly it lacks a lock point in the center to tell you where the display should be rotated for dead center. I would love it if it had this feature, but its not the end of the world.

Rotating the screen into portrait mode is a little tricky, but can be done relatively quickly one you get the hang if it. The problem is that the display does not raise up high enough to be able to roate it the whole 90 dgrees. It makes it about 80 degrees before corner hits the desk. The solution is to tilt the display backwards a bit (it has a front back pivot feauture) while rotating it. While in portrait mode the LCD looks 9 feet tall and is kinda rediculous. A side note: It appears that dell does not include software to auto-rotate the display into portrait mode. Personally, I dont care, but some may be upset about this.

I think that about sums up my mini-review.


If anyone is interested in the calibration profile for the 2407WFP-HC, just hit me up on PM and I will email it to you.

[Soulburner]

Nice quick-review Maxx, but one question:

Input LAG
While I did not measure the input lag, there was no percievable input lag with the 2407WFP-HC

Which mouse are you using? That makes all the difference.

I would agree on most of the things being similar on the BenQ FP241W with the exception that it has a more solid stand, probably the most solid of any LCD I have seen. It doesn't look like it in the pictures but...it weighs a ton for its size. It's density and shape ensure your monitor is staying put. Plus the adjustability is just awesome.

Other than that, no ghosting that I can see, great colors, brightness and contrast after calibration, though I had to turn the brightness down a few notches because it is just too bright. Viewing angle is good but some slight color/gamma shifting is noticeable from size to side about 45 degrees out.

[MaxxxRacer]

Nice quick-review Maxx, but one question:

Which mouse are you using? That makes all the difference.

I use an old logitech dual sensor optical mouse. Its a usb mouse but on I have it on the PS2 port as I dont like to have my input devices on the USB bus.


One thing I did notice is that when the screen moves real fast (playing CS:S) there is some tearing (from refresh rate). When I get home I will turn up the refresh rate and see what happens. Hopefully it goes away. I never had this issue with my VP930B. It MIGHT also be a framerate issue as my FPS in CS:S was around 50 or lower at 1920x1200.

Oh, I do have one huge complaint with the monitor. The included USB uplink cable is WAY WAY WAY too short. I have my computer off to the side and the USB cable doesnt reach. The DVI cable was also too short, but I just used the monster DVI cable that Viewsonic included with the VP930B.

[rodman]

MaxxxRacer, do you notice any image blurring during fast paced games like FEAR or Need for Speed carbon ect..

If you notice image tearing enable Vsync, thats what it's there for

[qgshadow]

Hi guys, i am currently looking for a good lcd monitor 20-22 inch widescreen , Around 600$CND tax in or maybe more(it depends if theres a big gap of quality for little money:P) . currently i use a sony g520 excellent crt monitor but i think i need a change now, some nice widescreen would be great :P

thanks for all your help.

Congrats for that thread!!