Gateway FPD2485W: 24" LCD Beauty or Beast?
by Jarred Walton on February 22, 2007 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Displays
Subjective Evaluation
Given that most users do not have access to hardware display calibration tools, we initially spent some time using the display without ever properly calibrating it in order to gain an impression of how most users would react. We thought we would start with our subjective evaluation before getting to the actual quantitative results.
Having used a Dell 24" LCD for a while now, the first impression we got is that other than a few modified features, there wasn't a huge difference between the Gateway FPD2485W and a Dell 2407WFP - or a 2405FPW for that matter. The addition of HDCP support will be important to some people, but the 2407WFP already has that. The Gateway LCD offers an extra component input, but the Dell LCDs counter by offering integrated flash memory readers. We would also give Dell the advantage when it comes to their On-Screen Displays - and ironically we prefer the 2405FPW OSD to the 2407WFP OSD. So our initial impression is that the Gateway FPD2485W really isn't any better than the existing 24" Dell LCDs, but neither is it worse.
As we used to display more, some of the extra features that Gateway added were noticed. It seems like 1080p support should be a given on any LCD capable of running at 1920x1200 resolution, and many people would like to have 1920x1080 resolution without any stretching. The Dell monitors can run 1080p, but apparently not with HDCP and without doing stretching; the Gateway display can manage HDCP with 1080p at a 1:1 ratio. That seems like a minor consideration, but some people have gotten pretty upset about the lack of unstretched 1080p support on 1920x1200 displays.
One of the other nice aspects about the Gateway LCD is that properly reported all of the standard 16:10 aspect ratio resolutions in its driver (1920x1200, 1680x1050, and 1440x900). At times, we have found it necessary to manually add some of those resolutions on other displays. All of the displays handle those resolutions properly, but frequently only the maximum widescreen resolution shows up with Dell's 24" LCDs.
Other aspects of the display weren't quite as promising. Running non-native resolutions seem to be pretty hit or miss. 1440x900 looked fine - a little blurry, but that's to be expected - but 1680x1050 didn't look good at all. It would probably be sufficient for video content or playing games if you're not too picky, but you definitely want to stick with the native resolution if at all possible. You can always turn off any content stretching if you prefer black bars over poorly stretched content, but the Gateway LCD could definitely benefit from an improved scaling algorithm for 1680x1050 content.
It generally goes without saying that there's always a bit of backlight bleed on LCDs. For the time being, the manufacturers have not yet been able to create an LCD that can fully block all light, so pure black never ends up being completely black. In some instances, this doesn't really matter, and games can actually benefit in our opinion. However, if you're watching a dark movie with the lights out, backlight bleed can be a distraction. The FPD2485W didn't seem to be much worse than other LCDs we've used, but then we noticed that the backlighting tended to be a bit more visible in the corners of our test unit. We took a picture of the display with black content showing to highlight the effect - while the image looks gray, the important aspect is the brighter corners; in person the center is relatively black. The backlight bleed in the corners was definitely worse than elsewhere, but honestly the only time we ever noticed it was when we walked in with the lights out while the "blank screen" screensaver was active. It never bothered us during games or movie watching, but other users might be less forgiving.
Overall, the display provided a good experience, but nothing that we would consider dramatically better than competing offerings. Playing games, watching movies, or simply doing web surfing or office work never presented any difficulties. The display is somewhat brighter than older LCDs like Dell's 2405FPW, but it appears nearly identical to the more recent 2407WFP. (Once you properly adjust the brightness and contrast levels, however, any brightness "advantage" is greatly diminished.) If you already have a 24" widescreen display, there's really no reason to consider upgrading to the Gateway in our opinion, but if you're already on the market for a new 24" display its definitely worthy of consideration.
Now let's take a look at how the display does in actual quantitative testing.
Given that most users do not have access to hardware display calibration tools, we initially spent some time using the display without ever properly calibrating it in order to gain an impression of how most users would react. We thought we would start with our subjective evaluation before getting to the actual quantitative results.
Having used a Dell 24" LCD for a while now, the first impression we got is that other than a few modified features, there wasn't a huge difference between the Gateway FPD2485W and a Dell 2407WFP - or a 2405FPW for that matter. The addition of HDCP support will be important to some people, but the 2407WFP already has that. The Gateway LCD offers an extra component input, but the Dell LCDs counter by offering integrated flash memory readers. We would also give Dell the advantage when it comes to their On-Screen Displays - and ironically we prefer the 2405FPW OSD to the 2407WFP OSD. So our initial impression is that the Gateway FPD2485W really isn't any better than the existing 24" Dell LCDs, but neither is it worse.
As we used to display more, some of the extra features that Gateway added were noticed. It seems like 1080p support should be a given on any LCD capable of running at 1920x1200 resolution, and many people would like to have 1920x1080 resolution without any stretching. The Dell monitors can run 1080p, but apparently not with HDCP and without doing stretching; the Gateway display can manage HDCP with 1080p at a 1:1 ratio. That seems like a minor consideration, but some people have gotten pretty upset about the lack of unstretched 1080p support on 1920x1200 displays.
One of the other nice aspects about the Gateway LCD is that properly reported all of the standard 16:10 aspect ratio resolutions in its driver (1920x1200, 1680x1050, and 1440x900). At times, we have found it necessary to manually add some of those resolutions on other displays. All of the displays handle those resolutions properly, but frequently only the maximum widescreen resolution shows up with Dell's 24" LCDs.
Other aspects of the display weren't quite as promising. Running non-native resolutions seem to be pretty hit or miss. 1440x900 looked fine - a little blurry, but that's to be expected - but 1680x1050 didn't look good at all. It would probably be sufficient for video content or playing games if you're not too picky, but you definitely want to stick with the native resolution if at all possible. You can always turn off any content stretching if you prefer black bars over poorly stretched content, but the Gateway LCD could definitely benefit from an improved scaling algorithm for 1680x1050 content.
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| Click to enlarge |
It generally goes without saying that there's always a bit of backlight bleed on LCDs. For the time being, the manufacturers have not yet been able to create an LCD that can fully block all light, so pure black never ends up being completely black. In some instances, this doesn't really matter, and games can actually benefit in our opinion. However, if you're watching a dark movie with the lights out, backlight bleed can be a distraction. The FPD2485W didn't seem to be much worse than other LCDs we've used, but then we noticed that the backlighting tended to be a bit more visible in the corners of our test unit. We took a picture of the display with black content showing to highlight the effect - while the image looks gray, the important aspect is the brighter corners; in person the center is relatively black. The backlight bleed in the corners was definitely worse than elsewhere, but honestly the only time we ever noticed it was when we walked in with the lights out while the "blank screen" screensaver was active. It never bothered us during games or movie watching, but other users might be less forgiving.
Overall, the display provided a good experience, but nothing that we would consider dramatically better than competing offerings. Playing games, watching movies, or simply doing web surfing or office work never presented any difficulties. The display is somewhat brighter than older LCDs like Dell's 2405FPW, but it appears nearly identical to the more recent 2407WFP. (Once you properly adjust the brightness and contrast levels, however, any brightness "advantage" is greatly diminished.) If you already have a 24" widescreen display, there's really no reason to consider upgrading to the Gateway in our opinion, but if you're already on the market for a new 24" display its definitely worthy of consideration.
Now let's take a look at how the display does in actual quantitative testing.
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Justin Case - Thursday, February 22, 2007 - link
As you say, the problem isn't so much the LCDs themselves (with reaction times of 10ms and below, they can do 100 fps), it's the DVI interface. Not because it's digital, just because it's (relatively) slow.The "reaction time" of a CRT isn't zero (unlike what some LCD vendors and tons of clueless retailers claim); in fact, a white-to-black transition takes longer on CRTs than it does on most LCDs. So all this obsession with reaction times ends up hurting consumers, that treat that number as a magical definition of a panel's quality, and completely ignore other (far more relevant) aspects, such as the actual number of displayable colors (without dithering or flipping), color variation with viewing angle, luminance uniformity, etc.
To quote an engineer working for a major (high-end) LCD manufacturer: LCDs are still 2-3 years away from catching up with top CRTs in terms of color reproduction. But when 90% of people can't even tell the difference between a 6-bit panel and an 8-bit one, I wonder what incentive the manufacturers have to improve that...
yyrkoon - Friday, February 23, 2007 - link
If we're talking about ghosting / screen lag, I use a 8ms 19" widescreen LCD, and see none. The only real problem I have, is when I'm playing a graphics intensive game, at the monitors native resolution, and my video card ( 7600GT) can not keep up.This is not to say, that some 'lag' does not exist, but in my case, it is not percievable.
Justin Case - Friday, February 23, 2007 - link
Lag is not the same as ghosting. Lag refers to the fact that the frame you are seeing on screen is not the last frame your graphics card rendered. Some flat panels display the image with a delay of 1 or even 2 frames. This is fine for LCD TV sets (as long as the audio is also delayed, by the same amount), but in interactive applications like games it can be a killer.yyrkoon - Friday, February 23, 2007 - link
As I said above, I see none, and seriously, I play Oblivion, F.E.A.R., not to mention a multitude of other games ;)StevenG - Thursday, February 22, 2007 - link
The game I play doesn't support 1280x960 so I play at 1280x1024. Sure there's some distortion, but it doesn't bother me. And the higher res looks much better than 1024x768 (the next lowest supported resolution in the game).Aquila76 - Thursday, February 22, 2007 - link
This is by far one of the worst LCD's for color accuracy, IMO. I bought one at Best Buy a couple weeks ago, and no matter what settings I used, gradients did not look fully smooth. It is what is refered to as a 'gradation' not a banding.Check here for more info: http://lcdresource.com/index.php?option=com_conten...">Gradation v. Banding
Check here for a test: http://lcdresource.com/index.php?option=com_conten...">Gradient Downloads
What's really sad is that the HP L1706 I use at work (came bundled with the PC) does the gradients flawlessly. A $150 display outperforms this $650 one. I noticed this in games and movies a lot, especially when in a dark place, looking at the sky, etc. I ended up returning mine and am waiting for the NEC 24WMGX3 to come out. I loved the size/resolution for my desktop workspace, but the rest was too much for me to stand.
demani - Monday, April 16, 2007 - link
I wish I had seen this review and comments before I bought mine- The gradient thing is horrible. I am trying to see if I can return mine it is so bad. I haven't seen a panel have that much of an issue with gradients in years-and it ruins what would otherwise be a great panel.If only the Dell could dimmed to regular brightness...
Bastiches.
JarredWalton - Thursday, February 22, 2007 - link
Yikes! Glad someone pointed this out. Some things slip through the cracks when you're trying to come up with a good set of display evaluation tools. I had intended to check color gradients but forgot to actually do it. Ummmm... wow. The Gateway FPD2485W is definitely inferior to competing LCDs in this respect. I will try to get a good picture of the result, but have been unable to do so at present. Regardless, there is definitely a lot of banding visible, something that I didn't see at all in a quick test of a Dell 2407WFP. My 2405FPW shows a slight amount of banding, but not as much as the Gateway.To be honest, this isn't something that was really a problem for me during actual use, but that's likely because I don't do a whole lot of gradient work on a day to day basis. I have updated the text accordingly on pages 8 and 9. Thanks, and I will definitely remember to run this sort of test future display reviews!
mcfraggel - Thursday, February 22, 2007 - link
Input lag is a concern for 24" displays and larger. Some displays have more than 50ms delay. Google for it and you'll find quite a lot about it. Shouldn't this be adressed in this review somewhere?Aquila76 - Thursday, February 22, 2007 - link
I didn't notice any input lag. I had my old CRT side by side for a bit to test this and didn't perceive any difference. Note my post below for the deal killer, though.