*** Dell UltraSharp U2410 24" Widescreen LCD Monitor @ £447.99 inc VAT ***

[deano_deano]

I've purchased this model and am very happy, it's a massive upgrade from my previous 19" and no pixel issues here

 

[Stag]

Great information well presented MKay. I've been in the market for a 24" monitor with seemingly similar requirements to you. Looks like Dell have delivered, now can I justify the purchase?

 

[Pete.Dakota]

The current minimum to change to game mode is 4 buttons, up to a maximum of 7 buttons, which is what it takes from sRGB mode.

If this isn't revised with firmware by the time I build my new rig, I won't be buying this monitor.

I really cannot believe it's not just one big, obvious button that has "GAME MODE" imprinted on it.

Remarkably stupid.

 

[Stag]

Are you going to be constantly switching between game modes and sRGB mode then?

 

[Deyvy]

Nice pictures Mkay, I have that exact same wallpaper of the HK night skyline. I'm glad 'again' I didnt post any pictures lol, my amateur attempts would only be embarrassed by your efforts.

Where are you based Mkay? The place where I picked mine up are pretty good, looks like they've dropped their price to match OCUk aswell.

I checked for dead/stuck/hot pixels on mine last night, seems fine. Luckily.

Anyone who has been thinking about moving tothis from the NEC 20", I have and I'm very happy with it. Apart from the obvious picture quality, the stand is pretty amazing, very easy to adjust height/angle etc.

 

[Echo]

If this isn't revised with firmware by the time I build my new rig, I won't be buying this monitor.

I really cannot believe it's not just one big, obvious button that has "GAME MODE" imprinted on it.

Remarkably stupid.

I thought the same for quick contrast adjust on the 2408WFP - seven presses

 

[MKay]

Nice pictures Mkay, I have that exact same wallpaper of the HK night skyline. I'm glad 'again' I didnt post any pictures lol, my amateur attempts would only be embarrassed by your efforts.

I'm sure some would like to see as many pictures as possible, even if it's just to get an idea of how it'll look on their desk based on yours, so post away

Where are you based Mkay? The place where I picked mine up are pretty good, looks like they've dropped their price to match OCUk aswell.

You can actually find them a fair bit cheaper. I'm glad I went with OC now though because, if worst comes to worst, you can still get your money back.. Remember if you buy from auction sites you do not have the same consumer protections

I checked for dead/stuck/hot pixels on mine last night, seems fine. Luckily.

I think they're a much less common issue these days. I was probably just really unlucky..

 

[MKay]

I thought the same for quick contrast adjust on the 2408WFP - seven presses

Brightness in 2 presses, contrast in 3 on the U2410

Simpler would be better, but the reality is it takes all of about 5 seconds to switch modes and it's really just scrolling through a list rather than searching for things hidden in nested menus.. It's annoying at first but its soon second nature.

Of course there's nothing to really stop you permanently running the monitor in Game Mode too.. Then you have zero button presses Although it bypasses some of the processing you could use your Nvidia/ATI graphics card drivers to tweak your visuals..

 

[r0cky]

Now I think about it, this was a lost opportunity by Dell. They allow you to define 3 shortcut keys, but they can only shortcut to Preset Mode, Brightness/Contrast, Auto Adjust, PIP Mode, and Input source.

The demand they'll face for a "1 touch game mode" means, if they could allow shortcuts to actually go to a defined Preset, they could have had a Game Mode with 3 button pushes - 2 if you could disable confirmation.

Let me be the first person to predict they'll add this to a future firmware / revision of the U2410 The current minimum to change to game mode is 4 buttons, up to a maximum of 7 buttons, which is what it takes from sRGB mode.

I was annoyed that I couldn't configure a preset for quickly toggling Game mode on/off (and possibly sRGB - I don't stay in sRGB as it screws up applications that want to put out pure red, like colour anaglyphs etc.)

Otherwise I'm extremely happy with the U2410. But don't install that terrible colour profile on the CDROM, screws up anything that uses that profile.

 

[r0cky]

Of course there's nothing to really stop you permanently running the monitor in Game Mode too.. Then you have zero button presses Although it bypasses some of the processing you could use your Nvidia/ATI graphics card drivers to tweak your visuals..

If you do the correction on the PC, you will be limited by the 24-bit RGB link, and you will loose dynamic range. Shadows will get lost most likely.

Colour correction needs to be done in monitor, where there is additional precision (unless you have more than 24-bit RGB link).

 

[MKay]

If you do the correction on the PC, you will be limited by the 24-bit RGB link, and you will loose dynamic range. Shadows will get lost most likely.

Colour correction needs to be done in monitor, where there is additional precision (unless you have more than 24-bit RGB link).

Have you actually checked the visual effect the U2410 sRGB mode has on images? At least on mine the sRGB mode gives dark greys a dithered look (easily visible on squares in the lagom.nl black test), it makes the first 6 or so squares on that same black test invisible, and it tends to "dull" the picture more than I'd like too, and it doesn't totally solve the wide gamut - it just makes it a bit better. Still better than the alternatives, but not perfect

Whilst the "ideal" is colour correction inside the monitor, if you don't have a huge need to be colour accurate for printing purposes (and I'm going to hazard a guess and say many gamers don't ) then there's no harm using the best hardware calibration of all - your own eyes and what looks good to you. In that regard something like the digital vibrance control on the Nvidia control panel, along with careful tweaking of the colour brightness, seem to have a greater impact in reducing the wide gamut issue than sRGB seems to anyway, at least if you don't care about being colour accurate for printing. I think people who don't do colour printing etc really shouldn't ignore "Custom Color" mode and the adjustments it makes available either. It really does provide some nice controls, and offers the chance to solve most of the issues people would have with wide gamut displays. I should maybe add a bit to the wide gamut post I made to say that

 

[slimsymeat]

What does the PS3 and 360 look like..? is there any smudging on fast moving objects? What about the interpolation on 720p games?
Thanks

 

[Baddass]

Will keep you posted but I have a u2410 with me now for testing. Full review over next couple of wks on tftcentral

 

[MKay]

Well, I saw a different U2410 (from a non-Overclockers source). This issue doesn't seem too common, and nobody who's ordered from OC seems to have had the problem, which is a good sign.. so don't be too concerned by this, it's more just something to keep in mind It's something HP LP2475W owners will know well as a small number of them have had this problem too - the dreaded left green, right pink tint - easily visible to the naked eye on lighter backgrounds. To better demonstrate it, this is what it looks like with saturation boosted to +88 inside Photoshop (since it's more difficult to capture on camera). Remember this is boosted to demonstrate the problem. It's more mild than this, but is still easily visible and highly annoying on lighter backgrounds.

EDIT The 1st pic shows before and after adjustments now. Apparently, if you bump the brightness way up, you can turn down certain green/pink values to minimize the issue. It's still present and you'd still need to create your own sRGB and Adobe profiles, and (as you can see) it's still not as smooth as the other U2410 even after adjustments. But it should mean in mild cases, with careful tweaking, it may mean some people can live with the issue..

Now compare this to the monitor I got from Overclockers.. OC's is FAR more consistent and does NOT have the issue. Although, when boosted like this, it has a pink tint, the white colour looks perfect to the naked eye and has no visible tint when not boosted! (should've made that clearer). These pictures simply have any colours present in the white background boosted to show inconsistencies.. So some pink = fine, other colours like green = bad

The Overclockers one had visibly better colours to the naked eye too - The other U2410 (with the green and pink tint) is noticeably brighter using the same settings, and the colours just didn't compare even with the brightness turned down. I had a look at its calibration report and it was worse too - Which wasn't news to me as my eyes could easily see the difference.

Baddass.. if you do a review of this panel could you PLEASE mention the green pink tint issue associated with these LG panels? Companies like Dell ought to be ashamed of themselves for shipping monitors like this, even if it is a small minority, especially when it's so well known from the HP monitors so it's not something Dell couldn't have been aware of it. Worse - they're calibrating these things in a factory, so there's NO EXCUSE - Whoever's sitting calibrating these at the factory will EASILY spot the problem.. so why are they out there on the market?

I'm sure it's as much an annoyance for companies like Overclockers, who'd get more returns based on it if they land with a batch that has the green and pink problem, as it will be for end users who get stuck with such monitors.. Luckily there are no other reports of this here yet

Whilst you could, in theory, just keep changing these panels with Dell, until you get a good one, it's a PITA people would rather not have..

 

[slimsymeat]

Just ordered one, I'm well excited, though my girlfriend isn't. .. lol ...

 

[Ashfield]

ordered 2. cant wait

 

[_SBradley_]

MKay, any chance you could scan/photograph the calibration report(s)? I'm interested to see what information you get and how they differ, so that I can compare with mine when I finally get it. Thanks!

 

[MKay]

MKay, any chance you could scan/photograph the calibration report(s)? I'm interested to see what information you get and how they differ, so that I can compare with mine when I finally get it. Thanks!

Yes.. I'll do this tonight, although the callibration report will only hint at "slightly" worse figures.. The difference is pretty noticeable in person. Edit - btw (due to the lack of other reports) I think the tint problem seems somewhat rare thankfully.. so don't worry about it too much, just something to keep in mind Dell will swap it under their warranty. My beef with them is some of them are making it out into the market in the first place..

 

[MKay]

Ok, the first report is a normal "good" U2410 monitor from Overclockers
This monitor had no tint problems and excellent colours..

This U2410 has the same Green pink tint issues as some HP LP2475w monitors..

Some values are higher for the tinted monitor, and there are also some which are lower.. overall it tends to suggest that the 2nd monitor (the green pink tint one) isn't as accurate or as consistent, in terms of colours.

What's going to be amusing is, if enough people gather together factory reports of tinted monitors, it's not entirely unlikely you could predict which monitors will suffer the issue just from looking at the reports.. Although, because most calibration devices only work on a small portion of the screen, it doesn't necessarily mean that these reports will turn out to be a good indicator of which screens suffer the problem.. I suppose time will tell there. Thankfully the problem doesn't seem that common.

I would guess that, if you have good consistency in your background white (IE no tint), it's likely you'd have one where the majority of values on both Adobe and sRGB are below 2, and where almost no values peak above 3. For end users I think you're looking for as many values as close to each other as possible. You'd maybe rather have a graph that was all 2's, rather than one which had mostly 2's but with some 0's and some 4's. Lower might mean more accurate, in terms of "ideal" colours, but it might be bad news if it's surrounded by many much higher values, as that tells you the colours on the screen are less consistent.. I haven't heard anyone who's bought a U2410 from OC complain about the tint issue though, which is a very good sign, ..at least if you're buying one from Overclockers right now

 

[_SBradley_]

Wow, there's a significant difference between the two reports... I'm slightly scared of ordering one, in case I get a "bad" one.

Thanks for doing the scans!