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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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.