Dell UltraSharp 2001FP Preview: Gaming LCDs for the Masses

LG.Philips LCD LM201U04

Several months ago, we looked at Hitachi's 16ms response time LCD. This monitor was based off the first commercial 16ms panel, AUO's M170EN05. While this panel is good, it has a few adherent flaws to it. The first flaw is, of course, the 262,000 color limitation. Even though 16M colors can be achieved by dithering the pixels (emulated 24-bit), the evidence was clear when comparing our Samsung 172T and the Hitachi CML174 that Samsung had a dominate edge on color reproduction. Granted, AUO is working to fix that, but the limitations of the TN display mode will probably hinder their progress.

Dell's 2001FP is particularly interesting because it uses a 16ms panel that is not manufactured by AUO, the LG.Philips LM201U04. First of all, this panel dramatically increases the pixels on the screen from 1.3M to 1.9M. The second major accomplishment is that LG was able to achieve 16.7M color reproduction as well. Put in simpler terms, this means that each subpixel on the Dell 2001FP can reproduce all 256 shades where as each subpixel on the Hitachi CML174 could only do 64. Ergo the Dell 2001FP reproduces 24-bit color, while the Hitachi CML174 does 18-bit.

The pie gets sweeter the deeper you dig. As we mentioned earlier, the AUO 16ms panel uses a tweaked version of the TN display mode. While this worked great to keep the electric modulation down (that's how it achieves 16ms response times), it does not provide the best characteristics for viewing angle. Due to the orientation of the liquid crystals in the substrate, the IPS mode can tweak a few additional degrees out of the panel. On smaller 15" and 17" panels, this is not completely necessary, but once you start getting up into the 20”+ range, off angle viewing occurs more frequently.

Click to enlarge.

Above is a rough illustration of how the IPS, VA and TN display modes stack up against each other. Special thanks to our friends at LG.Philips for providing the graphics.