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Review of Dell Ultrasharp 2407WFP 24" Widescreen LCD
Published January 2nd, 2007
Introduction
This screen has had a lot of complaints. Ever since the first A00 revision came out people have been complaining about banding issues, backlighting problems and dead/stuck pixels. We decided to find out how this screen fairs at the current revision and therefore placed the order. This review is not sponsored by anyone. All photos (except the first one displaying the monitor) are taken with a low quality camera.
Technical data
- Size: 24 inches (60.96cm from corner to corner)
- Native resolution: 1920x1200 WUXGA (16:10)
- Response time: 16ms black to white and 6ms grey to grey
- Weight: 8.3 kg
- Inputs: DVI-D (HDCP) / VGA / Component / SVHS / Composite
- Additional features: 2 x USB 2.0 / Memory card reader
Reviewed sample is of revision A03.
First impressions
This is an expensive LCD; therefore first impressions can make or brake a deal. At the current price situation, you can get a 22" LCD for half the price of this model. You would get two inches less viewing space and more importantly, fewer pixels to work with.
Unpacking this screen first revealed the stand which had to be removed in order to get to the actual panel. Mounting the panel on the stand was very easy, after lining up the panel with the stand the panel sort of clicks into place. The native resolution is 1920x1200 (compared to 1280x1024 on a standard 19" panel) which is the same vertical resolution as most 20" 4:3 LCDs but horizontally there are 320 more pixels. This may not sound as very much but compared to a standard 20" screen this one feels a lot bigger.
The brightness is excellent. We had to turn it down because the standard setting was too bright. Text is very sharp and with additional font smoothing it looks great.
Looking at the back of the monitor reveals a sticker that informs us that this is a revision A03. This revision is said to fix a lot of the previous problems. The question is, does it?
Known problems
We'll go through all known problems we have been able to find mostly browsing the Dell forums.
Banding issues
According to a lot of users, older revisions of this panel suffer from banding which makes smooth gradient patterns look choppy. Horizontally this particular screen has very slight banding. It is very hard to see even when displaying a test pattern covering the whole screen. There are three different image modes: Desktop, multimedia and gaming. The banding problem is definitely worse in multimedia and gaming mode but there really isn't any need to change from the default desktop mode.
You would have to be very picky to dismiss this LCD just because of this problem but we understand that some users would. We have never seen any banding when using a real world application like image editing or in games. We cannot detect any vertical banding at all.
Backlight bleeding
This is according to our findings the biggest problem with this panel. Displaying a black background reveals the backlight problem mostly in the corners. However, this is a problem with most LCD panels today and we do not think its any worse than most other panels. If you are used to watching a movie on a CRT monitor or TV then this is going to look horrible. Because this screen has an aspect ratio of 16:10 there will be black borders when watching a 16:9 widescreen movie and if these borders aren't completely black then it's going to be quite annoying.
Dead/stuck pixels
This is a huge problem with LCD screens today. We cannot accept any dead or stuck pixels on a monitor that will be used in every day work. Imagine having to look at one of these pixels all day while working in Word, extremely annoying. Having said that, this screen has exactly zero dead or stuck pixels. We were much relived after discovering this because we would have tried to get a replacement if any dead or stuck pixels were found.
Component video input problems (Displaying HD content)
Unfortunately we have no way of testing this due to the lack of HD sources. We know that the Xbox 360 had problems displaying 1080p over component but because we don't have access to an Xbox at the moment we cannot test it. This review may be updated once we can test an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3.
We have tested 480p and 1080i using a Playstation 2 (Tourist Trophy can output 1080i). 480p was also tested using a Gamecube. Initial thoughts about the image quality were that it's worse than a standard HD Ready LCD TV. We cannot determine whether it's due to low quality cabling or just bad upscaling hardware in the monitor.
To the right is a photo displaying the sky in Tourist Trophy, the game is running in 1080i. We do not know if the problem is due to the PS2 being quite old or if this is a problem with this perticular monitor.
Bad image quality on SVHS/Composite input
Yes, it is pretty bad. There was some sort of interference when connecting our Playstation 2 to the composite input and the image quality were not up to par. SVHS was slightly better. Again, we do not know if this is due to the screen or bad quality cables. Anyway, it works but you'll get a better result using a regular CRT TV.
Ghosting
We have never been able to detect any ghosting while playing games using this screen. A strange thing we noticed though was that playing DVDs in VLC (www.videolan.org) resulted in tearing. This effect looks like the images has been cut in two and the pieces have been patched together again. The strange thing is when using Windows Media Player 11, this problem disappeared.
Screen leans horizontal
We were quite surprised to see that one of the Dell forum members was indeed correct when writing about this model leaning. Our screen leaned about 0.5 cm to the right. We were however able to correct the leaning by slightly pressing down on the upper left corner of the screen.
Various OSD problems
It is said that this screen incorrectly reports various HD resolutions in the on screen display. When a Gamecube is connected through the component input and set to 480p the screen correctly identifies this and gives you three scale options: Fill, aspect and 1:1 pixel mapping. The screen also correctly identifies 1080i from a PS2.
Dell support
When you're buying something that costs as much as this screen does you will want to have good phone support. We got the chance to test the Dell support because we noticed a couple of days after we ordered the monitor that Dell had lowered the price by 30% instead of the 25% we had received. We called the Dell support expecting them to tell us that there was nothing that could be done. Instead we were greeted by a very nice and helpful lady/woman/girl who had no problems lowering the price by 30% because we hadn't received it yet. Over all, an excellent experience!
Additional photos
Conclusion
This LCD is excellent if you will be displaying HD content. Playing games using this screen is an awesome experience. Just make sure you've got a graphics card that can output 1920x1200 with an acceptable frame rate. Our Geforce 7600GT manages to produce a great result in Half-life 2 but struggles with Neverwinter Nights 2. You can choose a lower 16:10 resolution but the image quality will suffer.
We've got mixed feelings about using this screen as a TV. We tested upscaled 720p TV and it would look great if it wasn't for the backlighting issues. Too bad that the SVHS/Composite input produces such poor image quality; this makes the screen less usable as a TV replacement. Watching movies in 1080i or 1080p on this screen is spectacular.
So, can we recommend this LCD? We will certainly not send our sample back to Dell but that is mostly because we'll use it connected to a PC outputting its native resolution. If you are looking for a screen to use for work and casual gaming then go ahead and purchase this monitor. Dell has a very aggressive pricing, especially when they offer 25% off. If you however are looking for a cheaper widescreen gaming LCD then you can probably find better alternatives in the 22" or lower range.
Updated Information
According to our findings, using this perticular monitor and revision, it will accept a 1080p signal from a Playstation 3 using a hdmi to DVI-D adapter. The monitor will however scale the image to 16:10 and there is no way to change it. The image still looks great but why Dell included the pixelmap feature in the menus just to disable it when it's really needed is beyond us. The same can be said hooking up an Xbox 360 to the VGA input.