 Terrific Monitor, But Know the Widescreen Basics! |
| Review Date: May 3, 2007 |
| Reviewer: Quantumgravity, |
You can't overstate the difference in going from a 19-inch CRT to a 24-inch LCD. If you use a PC a lot, it'll change your life. That's true for me even though I routinely use two monitors at the same time with an "extended desktop" in Windows XP Pro.
The Dell 2407WFP is an extremely well-though-out, high-quality piece of hardware and I highly recommend it.
But here are some things that you should know about extended-width monitors in general that I tried to find out before I bought this one, but couldn't:
1. If your graphics card is more than a year old and currently supports a monitor with a 4:3 aspect ratio, it probably will NOT correctly support the 16:10 aspect ratio of a widescreen monitor. Instead, it takes a 4x3 image and stretches it to fill the new widescreen. That means that photos will be distorted by being too wide, much like an HDTV does to a normal 4:3 television image.
2. However, it's still worth it even with an older graphics card. Because of the increase in size, you can increase the resolution displayed by your graphics card to 1280 x 1024 or 1600 x 1200. This will still have a "stretched" 4:3 aspect ratio, but you can get a lot more on the screen. For example, Outlook's three columns have enough space that the third preview column is as wide as a normal page. You can see a great many more Excel spreadsheet columns. Programs that will display a variety of items like Paperport have a lot more room to spread out and are MUCH easier to use. Programs that can't take advantage of the increased width as easily--for example Word or Internet Explorer--still look better on this monitor. Everything is still distorted by the stretched width, but you only notice it for photos--and you even get used to that. If you have a traditional monitor next to this LCD like I do, you can move the image to that monitor to eliminate the distortion if you're really curious about the difference. I quit bothering after a while.
3. Newer graphics cards will support true widescreen capability, and then you really have something. Your PC probably came with a smaller widescreen monitor in that case. But don't sweat it if your card is relegated to the 4:3 aspect ratio.
4. It also takes a newer graphics card to support rotating the display to portrait mode, which would be handy for Word and IE documents, for example. The PC graphics card enables and controls that functionality, not the monitor.
5. Playing TV through this monitor is great but you have to be aware of a few things. First, the provided DVI port does not work with 1080i video output by the DVI port of a cable modem. For technical reasons that are over my head, this model does not support interlaced video. Apparently future versions may. Second, the composite ports ARE compatible with the output from a cable box and the resulting TV looks beautiful. There is probably loss from the additional data conversions on each end, but it's not noticeable. What IS noticeable is the fact that PC widescreen monitors like this one ALL have 16:10 aspect ratios, while widescreen TVs ALL have 16:9 aspect ratios. (That probably makes sense to someone, but I haven't met that person yet. It probably has to do with some perceived reduced utility when using PC programs on a monitor that isn't "tall" enough.) When the cable box outputs its video to the monitor, you don't get the slight letterboxing I expected with narrow dark bands at the top and bottom. Instead, the picture stretches vertically to fit the screen, much as it stretches horizontally for the 4:3 output of a PC graphics card. The result is that the picture is about 11% taller than it should be--not terribly noticeable but still there. If you instead route TV to the monitor through a Vista HD-capable PC, this problem will be eliminated. At that point, your PC will have the advantage of being connected to the monitor though the DVI port as well. The only disadvantages are the usual delays and vagaries of Windows over and above the cable box, but Vista is much better than XP in that regard. And of course, Vista gives you DVR capability.
The only "con" specific to this monitor that I could find is that the settings for picture-in-picture and picture-by-picture are not "sticky". Once you set it up the way you want, it works great. But as soon as you change the input source from, say, the TV composite ports to the VGA PC port and back again, you have to start all over again when you activate either feature.
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Fabulous!
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| Review Date: March 17, 2007 |
| Reviewer: John M Flora, Brookland, AR United States |
My wife and I are professional photographers and do a lot of wedding business. We bought a Dell XPS computer in December with this monitor and I'm deeply and profoundly in love with it. At last, I can have a huge display for Photoshop and still have enough screen real estate for the tool palettes on either side.
The monitor also has a built-in memory card reader for all of the popular formats and a bunch of USB ports. The add-on stereo speakers are surprisingly good.
This is a terrific monitor for the money and makes photo editing a pleasure. |
Great Mac/PC and Console Display
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| Review Date: February 8, 2008 |
| Reviewer: S. Ashcraft, |
I was looking for a monitor that I could use with my MacBook Pro and my Xbox 360. I decided to get the 2407WFP-HC because of Dell's great reputation with monitors, the amazing specs, the many video inputs, and great reviews.
I design websites on this monitor, I game on this monitor, and I use this monitor with standard applications: internet and word processing. This monitor can do it all!
If you need this monitor for use with a Mac/PC: I totally recommend this monitor. Especially if you would like to hook up hour console to this baby. I wouldn't recommend this monitor solely for a console display...
Here are several things I've learned:
1. You must calibrate your color settings to make the monitor look really good. The default calibration is way too bright and not enough contrast. On a Mac, make sure to recalibrate it with the Apple Display Calibrator Assistant (through system preferences>display>color. BE SURE TO ENABLE ADVANCED OPTIONS. I couldn't calibrate it correctly without these options.
2. A digital connection is a must for desktop use. There is a small difference between VGA and DVI - but when it comes to crisp fonts on the computer - make sure you've got a DVI. There is almost no difference with the 360.
3. On the Xbox 360, some games look better than others. I was a little disappointed at first because Halo 3 didn't look as good as I thought it might (it does look really good, just not "breath taking"); but as many know, Halo 3 is not technically HD. On the other hand, Call of Duty 4 looks really good on the 2407WFP-HC. Other than that, gaming with this monitor is excellent. The size of the display is perfect and it looks really good with certain games (others not so much).
4. The Wii is horrendous on this display. Flat-out.
5. 2407WFP-HC doesn't have an audio in/out. This isn't a problem with me, but make sure you will be able to handle this technicality.
6. The 2407WFP-HC is almost obsolete. The 2408WFP is almost here. The specs have already been leaked - the only difference is they are adding HDMI and a second DVI input. If you can't wait and don't really need HDMI I say go ahead and get the 2407WFPs. If you don't know, try waiting. |
Wonderfully sharp picture, with lots of features and a 3 year warranty.
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| Review Date: July 29, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Andrea L. Polk, Southern Oregon |
After weighing out all the pros and cons of the various 24" monitors I settled on three brands: HP, Samsung and Dell. I was purchasing an HP Pavilion Elite desktop and thought I would get the HP monitor until I started reading the specs of each one and comparing warranties. This got me down to Samsung vs. Dell, and frankly, if I'd been able to find a Samsung at the right price I probably would have gotten one of them, but after owning the Dell for two weeks now, I'm glad I didn't buy the Samsung.
I went from a 19" Planar (an excellent product) to the UltraSharp 2407WFP 24" LCD from Dell after reading reviews on Cnet about it. I liked the fact that it could do what the HP does: landscape or portrait (horizontal or vertical viewing), but also the HD resolution capabilities and tons of port options including HDMI.
Going from 19" to 24" didn't seem like that big a deal on paper, but once I saw the difference in person I was amazed. It's incredible! Viewing DVDs or streaming video is a pleasure and editing photos is much easier with the bigger screen.
I did find the factory settings to be a bit too bright for my liking, but the menu was easy to navigate via the button on the front of the monitor.
The monitor arrived directly from Dell and was well packaged. No dead pixels and it works perfectly with the sleep mode associated with my Vista (64-bit) desktop.
I do notice that the monitor dims at times with certain websites. I don't know if that's a function of the monitor or it trying to adjust for color variations with certain websites, but I do not notice it flickering at all, thus I believe it's not a problem with the refresh rate.
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Very Good Monitor
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| Review Date: July 21, 2008 |
| Reviewer: bsautter33, Colorado, United States |
I own three of these monitors setup horizontally on my desk. Each one has worked very well over the last couple years. None had dead pixels out of the box - pristine condition. A big plus in my book. But recently one of them has developed 3 dark pixels in a clump on the screen. It happens to all LCDs. Dell's official replacement policy is Bright: 1 or more, Dark: 6 or more. It's not that bothersome - I use that monitor for viewing movies and TV, so I don't notice it that much. Not to mention the pixels are small in the first place.
Trim is narrow on either side, so I can stick them very close together and have a virtual 5760x1200 pixel screen (very nice). Adjustment is a little tedious. The monitor can be rotated 90 degrees in addition to the height and tilt adjustment. It doesn't "lock" into place at the pure horizontal, so I needed to use a level to make sure it was straight. Movement is a little granular - it would bounce from one point to another an inch away with no in between unless you fiddled with it. There are variations in the maximum height too - one monitor went 1" higher than the others. Nit picks, nothing big.
Performance for gaming is excellent. No ghosting or major lag. Very pleased with them as replacement for my aging CRT. Very bright screen - I had to turn mine down to 45% brightness. All passive - no noise. Menu is a little odd, but you get used to it. Input source is a single button used for rotating selection - no direct buttons. PLENTY of input connectors. I can hook up almost anything with video to it. No HDMI, but that technology became popular after it's release, so I can't blame it for the lack. Color/contrast appears good. I'm sure there are better out there now, but for the money it's a stellar deal.
I've had some minor quirks here and there. Composite input very intermittently causes the display to get garbled when I used my VCR tuner to change channels. Changing channels again fixes the problem. Also sometimes the display will come up with green colored pixels scattered over the screen. Resetting the display will fix it. These could be just isolated issues with my VCR and video card. Either way it's not a big impact on productivity.
Highly recommend it. |
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