Dell UltraSharp U2711: Quality has a Price
by Jarred Walton on January 22, 2010 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Displays
Dell U2711 - Near Professional Quality at a Pro-Am Price
If you're a professional image or video editor, it's possible that the U2711 will fall a bit short. Specifically, we've seen better color accuracy, especially after calibration. For the price, we'd recommend looking at HP's LP3065, or one of the other 30" S-IPS displays. However, the U2711 does win out in quite a few areas. If you want a fine dot pitch, there's no better desktop LCD right now. The U2711 also supports 30-bit deep color with 12-bit internal processing; most displays with 30-bit color output cost twice as much! Look at the HP DreamColor LP2480zx for example: $1800 online and it's a 24" 1920x1200 LCD. (Note that we haven't tested that particular LCD; for the price we would hope color accuracy is better than the U2711, but we can't say for sure.)
Since the U2711 uses an IPS panel, viewing angles are a non-issue. Off-angle viewing isn't perfect, but it's far better than what you get from any TN panel and as good as any LCD on the market. Color quality and accuracy on IPS panels are also very good, and given the various compromises you can make we feel IPS is the best overall solution for LCDs right now. Very likely we won't get anything better until OLEDs, SEDs, or some other display technology takes over, and right now the cost of larger OLED solutions is prohibitively high.
Another great feature on the U2711 is the large number of video input options. HDMI, DisplayPort, and two dual-link DVI connections will be the preferred method of connecting, but you can also use VGA, component, or composite video. The ability to handle lower resolutions very well is a definite plus, though with a decent GPU you can often let the graphics chip do the scaling and not worry about shortcomings in the LCD's scaler. The problem with LCD scalers is that they also add a bit of latency. We don't know how much, but we do know that the U2711 has about 15ms more latency than other IPS displays that we've tested in the past. The latency may also come from the 12-bit internal color processing, but that would be part of the scaling hardware. Having seven different video inputs is going to be overkill for just about every potential user, but we could certainly see situations where using two or three of the inputs is feasible, e.g. PC, HDTV, and gaming console. The U2711 supports an optional audio bar along with audio out, but in either case you'll be limited to 2-channel audio, so you might want to look somewhere else for an ideal home theater display.
Aspiring imaging or video professional looking for a capable display will find the U2711 is a great option. We've seen better color accuracy, true, but few displays offer out-of-box colors that are anywhere close to this good. Dell guarantees every U2711 will have a Delta E of less than 5.0 without any extra calibration, and our test unit delivered an extremely good result of 2.24 (average Delta E). Buying a separate colorimeter and software will set you back another $200-$300, though you could then use just about any IPS or PVA LCD. The U2711 also delivered very good color uniformity. I still like the larger 30" LCDs, but then I have access to a colorimeter, I only need one video input, and I prefer a larger dot pitch.
We suspect "true" professionals will still prefer more expensive solutions that can achieve a Delta E of less than 2.0 for every color patch, but that's a very small market. If you're wondering if you might notice the colors where the U2711 "only" scores ~4.0, then you likely don't need to worry about it. In fact, we think most professionals would only "see" the problem if they had access to a colorimeter; you really won't notice any problems with the uncalibrated results using your naked eye.
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Bottom line is that if you're looking for a large LCD with lots of features, a high resolution, great colors, and what we feel is the best current LCD panel technology, the Dell U2711 should be at the top of your list. $1050 isn't chump change by any stretch of the imagination, but you won't find quality like this in a sub-$500 LCD. In fact, the only real competition right now comes from the 30" S-IPS panels that have been around for several years. If you want something a little smaller, or if you have a need for 30-bit color support, the U2711 is a better buy than anything else currently on the market. This is a great high resolution display that delivers on the quality and features fronts, and we're pleased to award the Dell U2711 our Gold Editors' Choice award.
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FlyTexas - Sunday, January 24, 2010 - link
The difference between .225 and .233 is minor, but that wasn't really my point.The 30" panels are quite a bit larger than the 27" panel here, with a higher resolution, for the same money. The 30" Dell also uses a IPS panel, and while not quite as good as this new one, it is pretty close. Close enough for most people anyway.
Actually, if you want to talk about most people, the 28" HannsG LCD is perhaps the current bargin, I picked up one for my parents before Christmas for $288 from NewEgg. Not as good as the Dell panels, but plenty good for most people.
B3an - Saturday, January 23, 2010 - link
Err yes it would. Incase you have not realised, most people do not have insanely perfect eyesight. The dot pitch on the Dell 3008 would still be kind of small for most users. Let alone this display.Having said that i would like to the day when LCD monitors have dot pitches of 2 or 3 times as much as this Dell. So the display clarity is perrrfect and non-native resolutions would also look perfect. You also would not need AA in games anymore because of how tiny each screen pixel would be.
But also have Windows automatically detect this and increase the DPI to compensate so text is just as readable.
DanaGoyette - Saturday, January 23, 2010 - link
http://members.ping.de/~sven/dpi.html">http://members.ping.de/~sven/dpi.html -- handy javascript DPI calculator. Looks like this LCD is only 108 DPI.I've always thought of reviews that say, "oh no, high dpi means fonts will be tiny!" as "reviewer fail" -- high DPI only means fonts are tiny if you don't have your OS set to correct DPI. In fact, Windows 7 now sets a correct (or at least, rounded down to the next 25% scaling) on high-dpi displays.
I have a laptop with a 1920x1200, 15.4" LCD (147dpi), and it's awesomely wonderful for my eyes -- I can run HL2DM at native resolution, and not need antialiasing. When reading text, it's "halfway to paper" (printers give at least 300 dpi). The only downside to high-dpi is that some apps do break under DPI scaling.
Unfortunately, not even ONE single desktop LCD vendor has a display with equivalent DPI rating -- in fact, many are even lower than 96 dpi! At 19 inches, 1440x900 and 1280x1024 are both around 89 DPI -- on such displays, I can easily see the individual subpixels, and such displays can give me headaches.
If I wanted a second monitor, I'd have to pay tons of money for another laptop lcd and and lcd controller board!
Also, can anyone vouch for how it compares to that HP DreamColor LCD?
FlyTexas - Sunday, January 24, 2010 - link
Even Windows 7 doesn't really fix the DPI problem, simply because so many programs are poorly coded and don't understand anything other than standard Windows DPI settings...I used to use a pair of Dell 27" displays simply because I wanted 1920x1200 at that panel size under Windows XP to allow me to see anything. Not all of us are 23 years old with perfect vision you know. :)
With Windows 7, I moved to a pair of the Dell 30" displays because they handle the resolution better, even if it isn't perfect. That, combined with 200% scaling in IE8 and I'm mostly happy.
The reason for these displays was for work purposes (work paid for them, thankfully), I can comfortably display 2 side by side pages in MS Word and they are almost exactly real size, as compared to a physical piece of paper.
The resolution isn't there, but it is good enough for editing. The benefits in gaming are just a side bonus. :)
The downsize is that too many programs (Quickbooks is a good example) just were not designed for these displays and really don't take advantage of them, nor do they scale the interface up so you're looking at tiny icons...
What do I really want?
How about a pair of 40" OLED panels running at 10240x6400. That is about 300dpi and is 4x the resolution of these 30" panels, with better display technology.
Now how much would that cost me today? ;)
BTW, that resolution is over 65 million pixels, compared to the 4 million pixels on current 30" panels (and 2 million in a 1080P display). What kind of video card would be needed to drive that?!?
The0ne - Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - link
Your first sentence is enough for anyone not to fiddle around with the DPI setting :) Thx.Gholam - Saturday, January 23, 2010 - link
And then again, people who take 22" widescreens and set them to 1024x768 greatly outnumber those who want higher DPI.dszc - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
It baffles me that Microsoft, even with Windows 7, has not yet properly addressed the display size issue. Their "font scaling" simply works very poorly or not at all on many apps. This is an OS issue. Very sad.DanaGoyette - Saturday, January 23, 2010 - link
Er, by "if I wanted another LCD", I mean, if I wanted another LCD with similar DPI rating -- otherwise, a window 4 inches tall on the laptop LCD would be 6 inches tall on the desktop LCD.Gholam - Saturday, January 23, 2010 - link
Buy a used IBM T221 - 3840x2400 resolution in 22.2 inches, .1245mm pixel pitch.Iketh - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
A good example of games that really benefit from smaller dot pitches are flight simulators. CRTs still give the best picture for these, but this Dell monitor helps close the gap.