Soldato
- Joined
- 12 May 2005
- Posts
- 12,631
I realize there is another thread on the 2007, but I thought I would make a seperate one, just for review purposes.
I am pretty certain everyone knows the main "specs" of the monitor, so I wont bother to go thru that.
Firstly, let me apologize that I do not have a digital camera of any kind, so I can't take photos
Moving right along:
The monitor was shipped with 3 boxes. 1 box containing a book with "information on your monitor" this is basically telling you what regulations the monitor complies with. Second box, is a power cable. 3rd box, is the monitor and everything else.
You get:
Monitor
Base
1x DVI
1x VGA
1X USB
1x UK power cable
1x driver CD (containing the drivers and monitor profile).
The monitor looks quite classy. The stand slips on and off very easily, with a button at the back enabling you to detach it with ease. The stand can be lowered/highered, titled, and swiveled. You can also turn the monitor from Landscape to Portrait (more on this later).
The stand is very stable, despite my actually using 3 videos under each leg to raise it a lil higher (my desk is a bit low for my height).
The monitor comes with the VGA cable attached, I promptly added the DVI cable, as well as Composite and a S-Video cable for my xbox, GC and PS2. The VGA was plugged lovingly in to my 360, the DVI went to my PC.
I unplugged my old 19" CRT from VGA, and put my trusty philips 20" on it. Using the DVI for the Dell. I plopped in the driver CD, and things quickly installed, I then added the colour profile manually, just so windows knows how to manage colours (I do image design, so kinda need to know what colour is what
). It should be noted, that also on the CD is a HTML manual, complete with info on how to care for your monitor, what each button does, and so on. Talking of buttons
There are a few. Input will cycle thru the 4 inputs on the monitor, second will do either PnP or Pip. 3rd will bring up the menu, the next to change the values on the menu, the last button is power. Each button makes a satisfying click when pressed, Menu navigation is a little awkward however you quickly get used to it. Frankly, the amount of options in the menu is astounding, leaving my philps behind. Most important are probablly the color options, of which you can chose mac or PC mode, and or Red or Blue tints, as well as user defined.
Contrast is not available under DVI, but is under the other 3 inputs. I found that 50 brightness is a bit high, I think 40 is a little better. The menu also has a fairly nice array of PIP and PnP options, allowing you to change the location of the PIP (or swap around the places of the windows with both PNP and PIP) and increase the size. This is great if you just want a small lil window for watching TV or a DVD thru.
I mentioned the monitor can go in to portrait mode, this is done simply by "spinning" the monitor on its stand, and then using your graphics card you change to a portrait setting (on my ati, once under advanced, you simply click on rotate). I personally dont use this mode, but may do if I was doing a lot of Word editting.
I know people will probablly ask how does the PS2/Xbox/Cube look thru it.
The cube looks the worst, because it is forced to use composite (UK cubes cant use svideo I dont think) and frankly, it suffers a bit for it. Playing with the sharpness options on the Dell helps.At this number Resident Evil and other games look pretty good! Lowering them is better (around 20 - 30) because it helps to reduce the appeance of pixelation. Though the Xbox looks pretty great. I have tried Street Fighter 3rd strike, using S-Video using the "fill" option. I think the sharpness looks a bit better at around 40 - 70, depending on the game. X-men legends 2 for example, looks good enough to get away with a decent amount of sharpening. It really is dependant on what input you are using, and what game.
It looks more than useable though, infact I use it more than my TV, simply because its less effort than messing around with connections, and since I am sat at my PC anyway.
Xbox 360 looks great BTW, in case anyone was wondering. You do need to turn down the brightness to around 30 - 40 though (using a VGA connection, at 1366x768 with mode set to full) I turned contrast up to 55 and brightness to 40, and helps make Oblivion look beautiful.
Ghosting is very little from what I can see, gaming feels smooth as silk. The colour gradients seem to be pretty much zero on my monitor. I have tested it quite a lot, and you can notice it, VERY slightly, but you literally have to stare at it. If you adjust the brightness down a bit, then it helps a large amount. I have to admit. I use photoshop pretty much 4 hours a day at least, and I have not noticed it once during normal image editting (with gradient masks and so on). I only noticed it on a special test image, when I look very closely at the screen. I have NO dead or lazy pixels, which to me would be far worse.
Backlight bleed is also very little, in fact no corner is worse than another, all being completely uninform. This means shadows look nice and black. (once again, play with the monitors brightness, Dells defaults are a bit to high).
Finally, one last note. I was very disappointed at first that 2x USB ports were on the right of the monitor (2 at the back) because I thought they would be impossible to access since my philips was to the right of it. This is NOT the case! Dell has actually design it so the USB ports are at an angle. with my philips, the 2007's USB arent blocked at all. You can easily plug in USB devices perfectly.
I hope someone finds this useful.
DA
I am pretty certain everyone knows the main "specs" of the monitor, so I wont bother to go thru that.
Firstly, let me apologize that I do not have a digital camera of any kind, so I can't take photos
Moving right along:
The monitor was shipped with 3 boxes. 1 box containing a book with "information on your monitor" this is basically telling you what regulations the monitor complies with. Second box, is a power cable. 3rd box, is the monitor and everything else.
You get:
Monitor
Base
1x DVI
1x VGA
1X USB
1x UK power cable
1x driver CD (containing the drivers and monitor profile).
The monitor looks quite classy. The stand slips on and off very easily, with a button at the back enabling you to detach it with ease. The stand can be lowered/highered, titled, and swiveled. You can also turn the monitor from Landscape to Portrait (more on this later).
The stand is very stable, despite my actually using 3 videos under each leg to raise it a lil higher (my desk is a bit low for my height).
The monitor comes with the VGA cable attached, I promptly added the DVI cable, as well as Composite and a S-Video cable for my xbox, GC and PS2. The VGA was plugged lovingly in to my 360, the DVI went to my PC.
I unplugged my old 19" CRT from VGA, and put my trusty philips 20" on it. Using the DVI for the Dell. I plopped in the driver CD, and things quickly installed, I then added the colour profile manually, just so windows knows how to manage colours (I do image design, so kinda need to know what colour is what
). It should be noted, that also on the CD is a HTML manual, complete with info on how to care for your monitor, what each button does, and so on. Talking of buttonsThere are a few. Input will cycle thru the 4 inputs on the monitor, second will do either PnP or Pip. 3rd will bring up the menu, the next to change the values on the menu, the last button is power. Each button makes a satisfying click when pressed, Menu navigation is a little awkward however you quickly get used to it. Frankly, the amount of options in the menu is astounding, leaving my philps behind. Most important are probablly the color options, of which you can chose mac or PC mode, and or Red or Blue tints, as well as user defined.
Contrast is not available under DVI, but is under the other 3 inputs. I found that 50 brightness is a bit high, I think 40 is a little better. The menu also has a fairly nice array of PIP and PnP options, allowing you to change the location of the PIP (or swap around the places of the windows with both PNP and PIP) and increase the size. This is great if you just want a small lil window for watching TV or a DVD thru.
I mentioned the monitor can go in to portrait mode, this is done simply by "spinning" the monitor on its stand, and then using your graphics card you change to a portrait setting (on my ati, once under advanced, you simply click on rotate). I personally dont use this mode, but may do if I was doing a lot of Word editting.
I know people will probablly ask how does the PS2/Xbox/Cube look thru it.
The cube looks the worst, because it is forced to use composite (UK cubes cant use svideo I dont think) and frankly, it suffers a bit for it. Playing with the sharpness options on the Dell helps.At this number Resident Evil and other games look pretty good! Lowering them is better (around 20 - 30) because it helps to reduce the appeance of pixelation. Though the Xbox looks pretty great. I have tried Street Fighter 3rd strike, using S-Video using the "fill" option. I think the sharpness looks a bit better at around 40 - 70, depending on the game. X-men legends 2 for example, looks good enough to get away with a decent amount of sharpening. It really is dependant on what input you are using, and what game.
It looks more than useable though, infact I use it more than my TV, simply because its less effort than messing around with connections, and since I am sat at my PC anyway.
Xbox 360 looks great BTW, in case anyone was wondering. You do need to turn down the brightness to around 30 - 40 though (using a VGA connection, at 1366x768 with mode set to full) I turned contrast up to 55 and brightness to 40, and helps make Oblivion look beautiful.
Ghosting is very little from what I can see, gaming feels smooth as silk. The colour gradients seem to be pretty much zero on my monitor. I have tested it quite a lot, and you can notice it, VERY slightly, but you literally have to stare at it. If you adjust the brightness down a bit, then it helps a large amount. I have to admit. I use photoshop pretty much 4 hours a day at least, and I have not noticed it once during normal image editting (with gradient masks and so on). I only noticed it on a special test image, when I look very closely at the screen. I have NO dead or lazy pixels, which to me would be far worse.
Backlight bleed is also very little, in fact no corner is worse than another, all being completely uninform. This means shadows look nice and black. (once again, play with the monitors brightness, Dells defaults are a bit to high).
Finally, one last note. I was very disappointed at first that 2x USB ports were on the right of the monitor (2 at the back) because I thought they would be impossible to access since my philips was to the right of it. This is NOT the case! Dell has actually design it so the USB ports are at an angle. with my philips, the 2007's USB arent blocked at all. You can easily plug in USB devices perfectly.
I hope someone finds this useful.
DA
