Well some quick impressions.
The good:
+ It is huge, insane screen real estate.
+ games are amazing if your hardware supports it, I was playing NWN at 2560x1600 4x AA. Nice!
+Stable gamma/color when moving in normal view position. No hide and go seek shadow detail.
+ not really the monitor but Nvidia scaling works perfectly for me (I have seen reports of otherwise) so I can have it stretch, aspect or no scaling and a black bars on all around.
The bad (somewhat).
- Screen has stronger (than my TN screen) more visible anti glare coating. This is not a deal breaker for me on its own.
- one fairly central stuck pixel.
- screen uniformity issues. I can see pretty definite pattern is the screen with light colors. Not the AG coating, but irregularity in the backlight or screen itself, makes a shadow, one corner is very dark.
- H-IPS white glow off angle. I prefered the older panels with the violet glow, this seems much stronger. I had to change my dark wallpaper because it was glowing strongly in corners.
- some black crush at less than painful brightness levels Not viewing angle gamma shift as this is often interpreted as. If you turn down brightness bottom blacks merge. (On Lagom images I see 1-6 as black.
- no controls except backlight and that is very poor control with no feed back and flaky touch sensitive (err... insensitive).
- only one input, only works with computers.
The Ugly ( one issue and it is a deal breaker)
--- Color is garish. Red is oversaturated, as is green at times, some image strong images hurt my eyes because of this. Some shades just plain wrong (sky blues most noticable, and skin tones often way overcooked). Uncorrectable with graphic card settings. No monitor settings to adjust. Color temperature is also too warm. Basically my cheapo TN screen has much better color.
Least objectionable in games, but even there when some radioactive reds appear. Very annoying in movies with everyone having a sun burn.
It is just not worth it to me to buy a calibration device to improve this, when it will only work in some applications (almost none that I use).
Bottom Line
I haven't completely made up my mind, but you get the idea, I am leaning strongly toward sending it back to Dell. Just dreading the upcoming fight to try to get them to cover shipping etc.
Edit: Returned for all reasons stated. Purchase smaller NEC 2490 for about the same price. Quality trumps quantity. Would not recommend this monitor unless you desperately need the extra pixels, even then...
In Contrast, very happy with my 2490; review here.
The good:
+ It is huge, insane screen real estate.
+ games are amazing if your hardware supports it, I was playing NWN at 2560x1600 4x AA. Nice!
+Stable gamma/color when moving in normal view position. No hide and go seek shadow detail.
+ not really the monitor but Nvidia scaling works perfectly for me (I have seen reports of otherwise) so I can have it stretch, aspect or no scaling and a black bars on all around.
The bad (somewhat).
- Screen has stronger (than my TN screen) more visible anti glare coating. This is not a deal breaker for me on its own.
- one fairly central stuck pixel.
- screen uniformity issues. I can see pretty definite pattern is the screen with light colors. Not the AG coating, but irregularity in the backlight or screen itself, makes a shadow, one corner is very dark.
- H-IPS white glow off angle. I prefered the older panels with the violet glow, this seems much stronger. I had to change my dark wallpaper because it was glowing strongly in corners.
- some black crush at less than painful brightness levels Not viewing angle gamma shift as this is often interpreted as. If you turn down brightness bottom blacks merge. (On Lagom images I see 1-6 as black.
- no controls except backlight and that is very poor control with no feed back and flaky touch sensitive (err... insensitive).
- only one input, only works with computers.
The Ugly ( one issue and it is a deal breaker)
--- Color is garish. Red is oversaturated, as is green at times, some image strong images hurt my eyes because of this. Some shades just plain wrong (sky blues most noticable, and skin tones often way overcooked). Uncorrectable with graphic card settings. No monitor settings to adjust. Color temperature is also too warm. Basically my cheapo TN screen has much better color.
Least objectionable in games, but even there when some radioactive reds appear. Very annoying in movies with everyone having a sun burn.
It is just not worth it to me to buy a calibration device to improve this, when it will only work in some applications (almost none that I use).
Bottom Line
I haven't completely made up my mind, but you get the idea, I am leaning strongly toward sending it back to Dell. Just dreading the upcoming fight to try to get them to cover shipping etc.
Edit: Returned for all reasons stated. Purchase smaller NEC 2490 for about the same price. Quality trumps quantity. Would not recommend this monitor unless you desperately need the extra pixels, even then...
In Contrast, very happy with my 2490; review here.
Last edited: