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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poohbear - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
a 27" lcd monitor review??? you guys should do your research and see what your users actually use, what portion of your demographics actually use a 27" $1000+ monitor? write articles that are practical for your users and that your users would be interested in, no this i have $1000 lying around and then ontop of that i have $700 for an sli or crossfire setup to handle the insanely high resolution for this monitor.i expected more from u guys.
Voo - Saturday, January 23, 2010 - link
Wouldn't that mean that AT also should stop reviewing new CPUs, because the majority of users only buy some cheap Phenoms or core2s?Would be rather boring.. not that you can't (and shouldn't) also review cheaper monitors, but I don't think it has to be a "either or".
Raoul Duke - Saturday, January 23, 2010 - link
As someone looking to replace a 30" LCD I completely disagree. This article had perfect timing for me as I was planning on purchasing the Dell 2709W next week. This was an article I found well written and informative.CSMR - Saturday, January 23, 2010 - link
Modern integrated graphics can handle this monitor. You just need a dual dvi output or displayport (or sufficiently good hdmi I guess).AnnonymousCoward - Saturday, January 23, 2010 - link
I spent $1500 on my 30". Worth every penny. And my car costs less than yours.kmmatney - Saturday, January 23, 2010 - link
I sort of agree. While its great to see reviews of high end monitors, there are also a lot more interesting monitors to review, such as the new e-IPS displays. I bought the new NEC 23" e-IPS display, and I also own a Soyo 24" MVA display. These were both around $300 (and the Soyo is better , btw, but you can't buy it anymore). Would be nice to see a review of the NEC or Viewsonic 23" eIPS displays.Pandamonium - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
Maybe this is idiotic, but what if you mounted a midrange computer to the back of the panel? It shouldn't be too difficult to modify a shim to go between the panel and the stand that can hold a smallish desktop. Maybe I've been struck with the Apple bug, but there's something to be said for minimizing wire clutter. If Apple weren't hell-bent on proprietary video inputs, I'd be looking at the 27" iMac more carefully. So instead I'm trying to figure out how you could do something similar in the PC world.CSMR - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
I wouldn't use apple if you gave me for free, but they do have better video connections than PC, PC makers have all these legacy connections including VGA while apple was quick to DVI and then displayport. They chose a strange displayport plug but that's all you can blame them for.But various PC makers have all-in-ones. I think Sony makes at least one with a good screen.
CSMR - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
Good information about a good product I'll definitely consider. But I was disappointed by novice errors about pixel pitch.Claim: Small pixel pitch makes text hard to read. The windows dpi setting is limited to 96 and 120.
This is a particularly bad error because so many people fall for it. It's important for a tech site to hammer home the right answer here so that people set up their displays right. Smaller dpi always improves text. It doesn't make text smaller because you just adjust the dpi setting to whatever you want. Smaller dpi just gives better-resolved text. XP had problems but since Vista this has worked well in Windows so you shouldn't perpetuate this mistake.
(Now with icons and web images, yes you may get minor artifacts of scaling, but this is becoming less and less of an issue, and the lower the pixel pitch the less of an issue it is.)
JarredWalton - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
The text isn't worse; it's simply smaller, and *that* is indeed harder to read for many people (especially those who are 40 and older).Changing the DPI will help with the text problem, true, but there are all sorts of other artifacts. Take web sites that tend to use a set width (AnandTech and tons of others). You can get big text with a change in DPI, but the images stay the same. It's not an ideal way of working.
Also, if you're working at a 120 DPI, documents and spreadsheets and such don't look the same on other PCs running the default 96 DPI. It's one of those "issues" I glossed over. Icons are another. When I switched, there were all sorts of oddities that I wasn't anticipating; I've mostly come to grips with them, but it would have been nice if the 120 DPI setting had just scaled everything but images "perfectly".
I suppose that ideally I'd want my text DPI set at 192 for some things, but I'd prefer my icons and Windows UI elements to stay at 96, and other areas would be nice to have at 120, and.... You get the point. I think by using the magnification capabilities of Word, Excel, and most browsers I can get around changing the DPI altogether... almost.
Basically, higher DPI (finer dot pitch) is good for some people and in some usage scenarios, and potentially bad in others, depending almost entirely on user preference. In the case of the U2711, I'd almost rather run it at 1920x1080 with sharpness at 60-70% than deal with the DPI stuff... expect I really like 2560 width when you work with large images.