 David Cohen's MyMac.com Review |
| Review Date: January 22, 2006 |
| Reviewer: Tim E Robertson, Battle Creek, Mi United States |
What's the best thing about going into an Apple store? The hordes of black-shirted dudes with gleaming iPods round their necks? The Genius Bar answering any and every question that might come up in the Apple universe? Well, in my book it's the rows of Macs with those killer large TFT screens. Even if a lowly Mac Mini is out on display, it will be connected to a gleaming Apple Cinema Display, and even the iMac G5s seem to favour the 20" models. As for the Power Macs, a pair of 24" or 30" screens seems to be the only way to truly show off Final Cut Pro or Logic.
Cinema Displays are killer cool, with their gleaming aluminium cases and fabulous industrial design. They are priced as a premium product, and they look like they are worth every penny but that doesn't make it any easier to afford one. I'd always thought that I would never be able to aspire to such a fine window to OS X. However, I have recently discovered that this is not the case. This technology is now available to us mere mortals, for little more than half the price that Apple charges.
Come Over to the Dark Side
You see, there is only one supplier of 20" 1680x1050 resolution panels that manufactures in volume - LG.Philips. Accordingly, Dell's 20" 2005FPW panel uses exactly the same LCD panel as Apple's 20" Cinema Display. Dell prices for monitors start out somewhat less expensive than Apple, but are frequently discounted by massive percentages, something Apple is not known for.
I needed to replace the 17" Acer panel I was using on my Power Mac G5. It showed poor colour registration and some fuzziness, principally because it only had a captive analogue connector, and no DVI input. It was playing havoc with my digital photography work, and was quite uncomfortable to use for long periods. I decided to get a DVI display, and when I got wind that Dell had a sale on their widescreen displays, I got my credit card revved. Three days later, a courier delivered my new screen.
Now, with Dell you get good value, a three-year warranty and industrial design that is firmly placed in the mid-nineties. The 2005FPW is dressed in a plastic shell in standard Dell dark grey, with the occasional silver highlight. However, build quality is very good, and the monitor ships with a robust grey and silver stand with cable management and height adjustment. The stand also allows the display to be rotated through ninety degrees to display a portrait image, though I have not tried this myself as I do not have enough vertical room on my desk. I believe this functionality will work without additional software on any Mac that is running OS X 10.4 Tiger and has an ATI graphics card.
As well as this feature, the monitor is stuffed with other goodies as well. There are four inputs (DVI, VGA, RGB and Composite) as well as a plethora of display modes, including a very funky picture-in-picture mode, which allows TV monitoring or multiple PCs to be used in you have them cabled correctly. The monitor has four USB ports, and acts as a USB hub - two are on the back and two are on the side. Dell also throws in power, DVI and VGA cables in the box but as you might expect on a higher-end product, none of the cables are captive to the monitor.
The only thing that is missing are speakers. I personally see this as no great loss, as monitor speakers are rarely of good quality. Dell will send a media bar with speakers as an add on to the monitor if required,
Yada, Yada, Yada - What Does It Look Like?
In a word & superb! Connected via DVI, a bright and clear image of my Tiger desktop is displayed, and running through the calibration screens shows that no changes are necessary. Backlighting is strong and even across the display, and contrast looks fine. DVD and video playback shows little smearing to my jaded eyes, though I have to admit I am not a big movie watcher while I sit in front of my computer. Of course, DVDs play back in the 16:9 aspect ratio they were designed for, and the excellent contrast ratio means that blacks look black and a 'washed-out' image is not seen.
I do play the occasional game, though, so I fired up Halo to see how the Dell performed. After adjusting the monitor to display the image in the centre of the screen rather than stretching it to fill the display, I was pleased to see that here too the image was bright and showed little ghosting.
What I was really pleased with was the way this display affects my workflow. In Photoshop, you can push the took palettes to the edge of the screen while working on a large representation of your image, browsing images is a much nicer experience as well, and iPhoto really works best on a widescreen display. The Finder takes on a new ease of use as it is easier to drag and drop between two windows that you can actually see, and applications like Mail, iTunes or NetNewsWire really benefit from the extra real estate.
The Bottom Line
Of course, it makes sense that the extra screen real estate that a 1680x1050 display gives you will improve your computing experience, and it s a no-brainer if the price is right. Here in the UK, you can pick up a decent, brand name 17" 1280x1024 4:3 ratio panel for around £170, or US$300. A 19" 4:3 panel will give you the same resolution for around £240, or US$425. This panel lists with Dell at £507 (US$900), which is £40 less than the price for a 20" Apple Cinema Display. However, I got it from Dell at £325 (US$575), substantially less than the Apple product. I am lead to believe from some of the posts I see online that in the US, rebates can bring the price below the $400 mark!
I can remember just a few years ago that 17" CRTs or 15" TFT flat panels were priced at just over £300. The fact that for a little more you can today get such a fantastic display amazes me. As you spend all of your computing time looking at your monitor, and such a device should last longer than your current Macintosh, I feel that these displays represent excellent value for money.
MyMac Rating:
At this sort of price, I have no hesitation at all at giving the Dell UltraSharp 2005FPW 20" Widescreen Display a mark of five out five.
5 out of 5 |
This is one beautiful monitor
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| Review Date: September 14, 2005 |
| Reviewer: Isaac B. Powell, your house |
I write this review while using this gorgeous monitor... I am a bit of a hardware snob - I've really only been impressed with the flatscreen monitors that Apple has put out. Until i bought this one (it took some impressive online reviews to convince me) - and i am more than really impressed with it!
The colours are so clean and bright - at first it kind of looks surreal, there is almost no loss of colour or brightness at a range of angles (and it is amazingly bright). it raises up and down, swivels 90 degrees (in case you want to view two pages vertically) has a heap of inputs, and is quite attractive also.
So, for anyone who wants a good widescreen monitor (a really good one!) get this baby! You will not be disappointed at all! And i really do mean that. |
awesome picture for a resonable price.. buggy software
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| Review Date: August 12, 2005 |
| Reviewer: R. Kelkar, USA |
Just bought a brand new one off eBay for about 375 bucks. Lovin it. Im getting rid of my original Dell FP17in. INterestingly, I am running both on a dual monitor card and the differences in clarity owing to the contract ratio are amazing. (I am cheating a bit because the old on is running off analog and this one has the DVI interface.)
I love the fact that it has a 4 port USB hub on the monitor, as that helps me from having to fumble behind the desktop.
Excellent reproduction of bright and dark colors. Love the fact that it can be rotated, but havent really used the feature much.
Cons:
- Not really a fault of the monitor, but several applications cant really take advantage of the wide aspect ratio hence its a waste of white space at times.
Never thought Dell could make a decent cheap monitor to compete with Samsung, but they did it again. |
Dell 2005 FPW
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| Review Date: November 13, 2005 |
| Reviewer: Sazar, Austin, TX |
I bought this monitor a week ago from Amazon when the price was listed @ $549, which is a pretty decent price I think considering everything.
The monitor I got was a newer revision and had excellent quality. No dead pixels, very limited backlight bleed and excellent packaging. Delivery was prompt.
The monitor is very easy to "put together" and the stand and the swivel/raise features really add to the overall feel of the system. I moved from a 19" crt and while it seems to be about the same size, it adds a tremendous amount of desktop viewing space by virtue of being wide. Smaller than I thought it was going to, it is still a big step up for me.
Color reproduction is excellent and FEAR and Half Life 2 play flawlessly. No ghosting. PBP/PIP features help and I am able to connect my XBOX directly and picture quality is pretty good.
Complementing my X2 4400+, 2GB Corsair XMS Pro, AIW x800xt card very nicely. The tv output from my AIW is well reproduced and now I can use the widescreen format without stretching issues as were evident on my CRT.
Highly recommended. |
great monitor
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| Review Date: December 9, 2005 |
| Reviewer: R. Stokes, Seattle, WA USA |
Having been an admirer of Apple's Cinema displays for some time, I noted in an online review that this uses the same panel as the Apple 20" widescreen monitor.
I purchased one 6 months ago and can highly recommend it for software development and gaming.
Some things to note - it supports PIP but you cant use PIP with VGA and DVI at the same time.
For best results your graphics card should support 1680 x1050 resolution preferably with DVI output |
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