Dell UltraSharp U2711: Quality has a Price
by Jarred Walton on January 22, 2010 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Displays
Resolution Support and OSD
While the ideal solution is to run your LCD at the native resolution, there are times when you might want to use something lower. With the fine 0.233mm dot pitch and 2560x1440 native resolution, running at something lower becomes even more likely. We tested the VGA, HDMI, DisplayPort, and DVI connections to see how the U2711 would handle non-native resolutions (note that we didn't test component or composite video). The OSD provides three aspect ratio options: Fill (use the entire LCD, with stretching), Aspect (fill as much of the LCD as possible but avoid stretching), or 1:1 (no stretching at all).
The vast majority of resolutions work exactly as you would expect. 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x800, 1280x960, 1280x1024, 1440x900, 1600x1200, 1680x1050, 1920x1200, and 2560x1440 showed no problems at all. Also, when using a VGA connection, every resolution we tried worked properly. Shift to the digital connections and we did encounter a few minor issues.
Starting with DVI, both 720p and 1080p filled the whole LCD regardless of the aspect ratio setting. This isn't terrible, since the image will still maintain the correct aspect ratio, but it does mean that the 1:1 setting failed to work in this instance. We also encountered some oddities with 720p and 1080p using an HDMI cable at times, but those problems appear to be more of a laptop driver issue than something in the U2711. On one laptop, 720p output always looked blurry, and the 1:1 setting didn't actually map to 1280x720 pixels as far as we could tell. In general, though, these common widescreen resolutions still worked well.
The resolutions where we had the most problems are all less common resolutions. On DVI, 1280x768 didn't have the correct aspect ratio, with black bars on all sides. 1360x768 stretched horizontally but not vertically on "Fill", making for a very skewed result, "Aspect" left borders on all four sides, but "1:1" worked properly. 1792x1344, 1800x1440, 1856x1392, and 1920x1440 all did an "aspect" stretch, regardless of OSD setting.
HDMI didn't show as many resolutions, probably because we had to use a different computer as the source (a laptop). Again, "odd" resolutions caused some incorrect behavior, but we don't really fault Dell. 1152x648 and 1776x1000 (underscanned 720p and 1080p, respectively) have a black border at all times, and like the DVI connection 1360x768 was squashed vertically unless you use the "1:1" setting. DisplayPort behavior was the same as HDMI. Note also that the HDMI connection didn't allow us to select resolutions above 2048x1152 (a 16:9 resolution). 2048x1152 was also the maximum resolution we could use on a VGA connection. We're not sure if the limitation was with our test laptop or if it's inherent with the U2711, as we don't have any HDMI connections that we're sure will properly handle 2560x1440.
In general, all but a few uncommon resolutions worked well. Something else we really liked was the "Sharpness" setting when we were using something other than the native resolution. The default setting of "50" appears to pass the signal on without molesting it, but as you move towards 0 the display becomes a bit blurrier and increasing towards 100 will apply a mild to moderate sharpening filter. Running at 1680x1050 with sharpness set at 70, you have to look very closely to notice that the LCD isn't running at its native resolution. Other LCDs have a similar feature, but on many displays the sharpness setting is only active if you use an analog connection (i.e. VGA).
The OSD
For the sake of completeness, here's a gallery of all the OSD settings. Yes, there are a ton of options. We like that Dell allows you to customize the "quick jump" buttons, but we wish they had allowed us to make one of the settings "Aspect Ratio" rather than limiting the choices to "Preset Modes", "Brightness/Contrast", "Input Source", or "Mode". There's really not much to say about the OSD: it works as expected.
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ninjackn - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
The color gamut issues stems from issues with applications not using ICC profiles. It was a huge problem in windows XP because so few applications cared to use color profiles. It's gotten a lot better with windows vista/7 (or with OSX) but it still pops up from time to time, specifically with all those images on the web missing color information.Here's a website that shows what i'm talking about:
http://www.gballard.net/psd/go_live_page_profile/e...">http://www.gballard.net/psd/go_live_page_profile/e...
JarredWalton - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
Okay, I read through that, tried it on Firefox 3.5.7, IE8, and Safari 4. I get the problem now... it's not having a wide color gamut LCD, but rather viewing images that have an ICC profile in applications that don't respect those profiles, right?In terms of internet publishing, I'd have to agree that we need to standardize, and since sRGB is already the standard there's no point in going elsewhere. For an imaging professional where the content isn't going on the web, though, wouldn't you want the better color space? I always "save for web" if I'm going to post an image online, and that strips out any ICC profile information (AFAIK).
I need to go play with this on the U2711 with and without a monitor profile (and using sRGB and Adobe RGB) to see what effect - if any - it has on the experience. Stay tuned....
CSMR - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
Save for web should give an sRGB label and does with Photoshop CS3. No point in stipping it out.FF is color managed. As soon as IE becomes color-managed it will be fine to use any color spaces in web images. Microsoft has been fairly good about color management of late, so hopefully in IE9, fingers crossed.
velis - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
To me, this monitor is more interesting from a different viewpoint:It's one of the rare few monitors that offer 2560 resolution at less than 30" size. And even this one only has 109 DPI resolution.
If this monitor was 22 - 24" in size, I'd buy it without second thought.
Of course you need to run Word at 150% magnification, but the fonts look just awesome with so many pixels available to render them. Not to mention games. A "fairly powerful" graphics card is needed though.
The only problem is that current display managers, be it Windows or Linux are all still raster ones and can't really adapt well to increased DPI displays.
Perhaps if more monitors like this would show up on the market, MS and Linux gurus would finally develop true vector user interfaces. Then we could have 150, 200 and even more DPI displays. I'm wondering how many more years before displays catch up to what printers had some 20 years ago already.
CSMR - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
High dpi is very useable, even with normal pixel pitches 120dpi can be a good option. But yes vector graphics would make the benefit of higher dpi displays even greater.There is vector support in WPF since Vista so Windows is getting there at least.
Plus modern applications (including OS) tend to have raster graphics at various dpis, I think often including 150, so that is improving even without vector graphics.
But the fact is most people don't need very high dpi so we have to wait for the cost to come down. Also for displayport to become common once dvi reaches its limit and that will take a while.
dasgib - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
I'm really curious about to know if the matte displays of the U2711 has the known "anti-glare effect" which many people complain about on 24" IPS monitors (like the HP LP2475w and Dell U2410)?I don't like glossy displays (as most people do), but I had to send the stated HP display back because of that anti-glare effect.
MadMan007 - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
I have the HP and it's not bad as far as anti-glare coating although not the best I've seen - that would be a Samsung but sadly it was TN. It helps to sit a reasonable distance away, like a mere 2 feet or more. Every single Dell I've seen is far worse in terms of grainy anti-glare which is a shame because it means I can't consider Dell monitors at all, it just drives me too crazy to see whites all sandy-sparkly-grainy. It really makes me wonder how more Dell users don't even notice it at all.Maybe they've gotten better though? I'd sure like to know.
dasgib - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
I just asked Jarred about this via email. Hopefully we get an answer soon :)JarredWalton - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
I haven't noticed any negative effects from the anti-glare coating. I use a Dell 3007WFP normally and haven't ever noticed a problem there either. Mostly, I see the "grainy effect" on cheap TN panels, but maybe I'm just one of those people that isn't bothered by what you're referring to. Anyway, FWIW I feel the U2711 has the same appearance as the 3007WFP and I enjoy the picture. I don't notice "more graininess" or anything like that.MadMan007 - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
There may be some confusion here over the word 'graininess.' It is not a screen-door effect, pixel pitch by-product or defect in the actual image. It is the screen coating itself - it's not 'grainy' per se in the way a film might be grainy, it's 'sparkly' is my best word for it. Another way to describe it is if you took some sand and lightly dusted the screen surface with it - the image itself looks fine but there's always this layer above it that has its own effect on the image. It makes things 'sparkly' -tiny random dots of coloration across the specturm. For some people it may blend together, I don't know, but I can't see how it's possible to miss entirely. Dell's anti-glare is known to be heavby and particularly prone to this effect which is why it's brought up. Check out forum threads about Dell monitors and you'll find plenty of people noting it.Now someone who uses a Dell monitor all the time may get used to it especially if they never have another monitor next to it. But Jarred you surely have seen a variety of screens. Have you ever set them up side-by-side with your Dell? What about a laptop screen if you have one? Or if you have access to a glossy screen at least to compare, they by nature will not have any anti-glare coating problem.