Z
Zinn
Guest
Well my Dell 2407 A02 finally came and I thought I'd share some of the ups and downs of it with my fellow [H]'ers.
1) This monitor is bright, I mean really bright. I never thought I'd do this with an LCD, but I actually turned the brightness down a notch.
2) At the default brightness, the contrast suffers a bit. Turning the brightness down brought the contrast to the same level of the 2005FPW which is what I'm used to. The contrast is fine like this.
3) Colors are fairly accurate. Look for any banding in the images (click the thumbnails for fullsized)
Anyway, there is little to no banding. It's not perfect, but even in this "synthetic" test I had to really look for banding, so in the wild, it won't be noticable. (My camera is actually making it look worse than it actually appears to the eye)
4) Blurry text? Not with this panel:
5) The Xbox 360 looks great connected to the 2407 via the VGA cable. One caveat, the aspect ratio on the 360 is slightly wider. If you want to run in aspect mode, there is a very tiny horizontal band on the top and bottom of the screen. The problem is that you can't run in aspect mode and keep your sanity. There is massive screen tearing in aspect mode, at least at 1280x768. So you'll end up needing to run in Fill mode.
In terms of the difference in aspect ratio, this is negligible (equal to the difference between the Xbox 360's 1920x1080 and the 2407's 1920x1200) -- you will not notice the image being stretched vertically because the difference is too small. But this is worth mentioning as it could potentially impact your experience running in aspect mode at different resolutions. (Side note: aspect mode worked fine for me on the 2005FPW... does anyone know if it works on the 2007FPW? If so, it may be the resolution difference that is tripping the monitor scaling up.)
Bottom line is, Xbox 360 looks great at 1280x768 stretch mode, but forget about gaming over VGA in aspect mode.
6) Non-native resolution scaling over DVI and over VGA looks great. I verified this by playing several Xbox 360 and PC games at non-native resolutions. Of course you'll want to run native if you can, but the scaling is a bit better than on the 2005fpw.
7) I cannot detect any ghosting on this monitor.
8) The backlight is great on this monitor, with minimal bleeding and both sides evenly lit. It looks much more even than it did on my 2005fpw which itself had remarkably low bleeding.
I'm too lazy to get a fully black screen, so you'll have to pretend that prompt isn't on the left side causing CCD bleed on my camera and obscuring the fact that there is minimal bleeding on the left edge of the panel as well.
9) No dead pixels... I've never seen any on a Dell monitor, but of course this is luck of the draw.
Playing games and watching videos on this monitor is truly a pleasure. The pixels seem a little bigger (in addition to there being more of them) than on a 20" 1680x1050 panel, so I can sit a little farther back which is more comfortable. I really have no major complaints, and for the price, it was a great deal. Dell is still running it right now I think. I would highly recommend this monitor, and coming from a 2005fpw with high expectations for widescreen gaming on my Xbox 360, I am thoroughly satisfied.
Dell 2407 FPW rev. A02 Pros
- Cheap for its size class
- Vibrant colors, great contrast, even lighting, sharp pixels
- Huge resolution
- No ghosting, great for gaming
- 3 year base warranty
- Built in USB and card reader (like you're ever gonna use that)
Cons
- Too bright by default, needed adjustment to look its best
- Useless component inputs (see below)
1) This monitor is bright, I mean really bright. I never thought I'd do this with an LCD, but I actually turned the brightness down a notch.
2) At the default brightness, the contrast suffers a bit. Turning the brightness down brought the contrast to the same level of the 2005FPW which is what I'm used to. The contrast is fine like this.
3) Colors are fairly accurate. Look for any banding in the images (click the thumbnails for fullsized)
Anyway, there is little to no banding. It's not perfect, but even in this "synthetic" test I had to really look for banding, so in the wild, it won't be noticable. (My camera is actually making it look worse than it actually appears to the eye)
4) Blurry text? Not with this panel:
5) The Xbox 360 looks great connected to the 2407 via the VGA cable. One caveat, the aspect ratio on the 360 is slightly wider. If you want to run in aspect mode, there is a very tiny horizontal band on the top and bottom of the screen. The problem is that you can't run in aspect mode and keep your sanity. There is massive screen tearing in aspect mode, at least at 1280x768. So you'll end up needing to run in Fill mode.
In terms of the difference in aspect ratio, this is negligible (equal to the difference between the Xbox 360's 1920x1080 and the 2407's 1920x1200) -- you will not notice the image being stretched vertically because the difference is too small. But this is worth mentioning as it could potentially impact your experience running in aspect mode at different resolutions. (Side note: aspect mode worked fine for me on the 2005FPW... does anyone know if it works on the 2007FPW? If so, it may be the resolution difference that is tripping the monitor scaling up.)
Bottom line is, Xbox 360 looks great at 1280x768 stretch mode, but forget about gaming over VGA in aspect mode.
6) Non-native resolution scaling over DVI and over VGA looks great. I verified this by playing several Xbox 360 and PC games at non-native resolutions. Of course you'll want to run native if you can, but the scaling is a bit better than on the 2005fpw.
7) I cannot detect any ghosting on this monitor.
8) The backlight is great on this monitor, with minimal bleeding and both sides evenly lit. It looks much more even than it did on my 2005fpw which itself had remarkably low bleeding.
I'm too lazy to get a fully black screen, so you'll have to pretend that prompt isn't on the left side causing CCD bleed on my camera and obscuring the fact that there is minimal bleeding on the left edge of the panel as well.
9) No dead pixels... I've never seen any on a Dell monitor, but of course this is luck of the draw.
Playing games and watching videos on this monitor is truly a pleasure. The pixels seem a little bigger (in addition to there being more of them) than on a 20" 1680x1050 panel, so I can sit a little farther back which is more comfortable. I really have no major complaints, and for the price, it was a great deal. Dell is still running it right now I think. I would highly recommend this monitor, and coming from a 2005fpw with high expectations for widescreen gaming on my Xbox 360, I am thoroughly satisfied.
Dell 2407 FPW rev. A02 Pros
- Cheap for its size class
- Vibrant colors, great contrast, even lighting, sharp pixels
- Huge resolution
- No ghosting, great for gaming
- 3 year base warranty
- Built in USB and card reader (like you're ever gonna use that)
Cons
- Too bright by default, needed adjustment to look its best
- Useless component inputs (see below)