get a u2311 now or wait for BenQ XL2410

I would just like to add to what has been said above. When reviewing monitors the reviewer has to consider how the model compares to CURRENT models on the market at a given price range and user sector. The performance, features and aesthetics etc. are marked often with a 'star rating', percentage or some other sort of scale that 'marks' the monitor on these given attributes relative to what else is currently available. A good review will give a balanced opinion and a broad perspective in the writing that allows you to judge the pros and cons for yourself without trying to interpret some sort of score at the end. One problem I have as a reviewer is how to scale my scores - what I consider a 'high score' may not be what other reviewers consider a 'high score'. Consider the degree classifications at university for example - 70% is a 'first class' mark but some people would think 7/10 is a poor score to see in a review.

The reviews on my website are always very well balanced and it is abundantly clear from the resources available on the site that OLED technology is something that we find really very exciting. This certainly wouldn't be the case if LCD was anywhere near a perfect technology. By the same token CRT technology is far, far from perfect and is often viewed through rose-tinted glasses. In some respects, such as responsiveness, contrast and colour accuracy it seems that a lot of LCD models take some steps back. But in other areas such as sharpness, physical space, visibility of the screen when struck by external lights and viewing comfort CRTs are far from perfect for many people. The image quality is of course a very important aspect of a 'proper' monitor review and is something we take very seriously. Whilst we compare every monitor side by side with a high-end CRT and high-end RGB-LED backlit VA panel LCD we realise that such products are not in direct competition with a lot of the screens we review.

sunama said:
all the research I did suggested that the DELL U2311H's main problem is poor uniformity. Not once did I read a comment which stated that it had washed out colours and that this monitor lacked the vibrancy for video/gaming.
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The colours aren't to be described as 'washed out' because it simply isn't true. This would infer that colours are overly dull compared to how they should be displayed, usually due to excessive gamma. The variety of shades within the sRGB colour space that the U2311H displays is very good indeed - but it doesn't go beyond that. It's all related to the colour gamut as has been explained umpteen times. Unfortunately the true extent to which this affects the image is often only realised if you have used a number of panels that accurately display sRGB and others that accurately display Adobe RGB+. Did you not read our U2211H review? Some quotes for you:

"Although the vibrancy wasn’t quite as intense as some of the broad-gamut IPS monitors we’ve used we can’t fault the U2211H for displaying natural and accurate colours within the sRGB colour space."

"Standard gamut means that some colours are less vibrant than we would like in games and movies"
 
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PCM2 said:
When reviewing monitors the reviewer has to consider how the model compares to CURRENT models on the market at a given price range and user sector.
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I hear what you saying and this is the reason why I compared the DELL with the DGM.

The Dell (normal price: £260) vs DGM (£225, 3 years ago).
I felt that the DELL should have had an advantage as it was using newer technology and was pricier. I expected the DELL to be sharper than both my monitors (which it was) and I expected it to be ahead of the DGM, in terms of colour/vibrancy. This is my big gripe with this monitor - it got beat.

It is possible to view CRT tech with rose-tinted spectacles, however, this is not the case with me. I was using a CRT every single day, for about 12 hrs/day. I pointed out the fact that for text, DELL was the sharpest of all 3 monitors and left the CRT for dead when it came to displaying text. Unfortunately, when viewing video/graphics, the CRT (and the DGM) was so far ahead of the DELL, the DELL's technicians who developed this monitor, would've been embarrassed had they been in the same room as me, when I was doing the side-by-side comparison.

What I did not expect was that my 3 yr old DGM was better. For me to buy an equivalent to the DGM in 2010 (VA monitor, 16:10 ratio, 0 dead pixel, top quality screen), would probably cost me a lot more than the £225 which I paid 3 years ago. This is what I am finding very difficult to get my head around. Also, having read so many reviews of this screen, not a single person pointed out that when it comes to colour vibrancy, this monitor is poor.

In saying all this, the new Benq VA screen, which is probably the only other mid-range screen worth buying (in 2010), seems to offer better black and greater vibrancy than the DELL. The Benq may actually be the better monitor and at £170, is priced in accordance with my older DGM monitor. The problem with the Benq is that the QC is extremely poor and there are too many stories on the internet of buyers being sold Benq monitors which are defective (ie. ghosting, tinting, poor uniformity, ghosting, etc). Perhaps if the QC improves over the next few months, this monitor will be a "killer" and should wipe the floor with all sub £300 monitors currently on the market.

The acid test of any monitor is when you place 2 monitors side-by-side. On their own, any monitor can look "ok", but placing it next to another monitor is what highlights a monitor's strengths and weaknesses.
 
PCM2, your point about the rating of monitors had come across my mind whilst I was reading a lot of reviews the past month.

It's somewhat difficult to do direct comparisons of monitors purely based on the final rating of a monitor as standards change. A reviewer may give X monitor 4/5, but a year down the road (where technology usually has progressed), the same monitor if reviewed then would probably get 2/5. This is especially true of the fast paced monitor market and computers in general.

To give a real world example, I was looking at the LG W2442PA review by Prad, written over a year ago. It's rated very highly for a TN monitor, however I was unsure if anything else that's newer and has come out since (i.e. the Samsung B2340H) was better than it or not.

Maybe we should all call it a day and get something like the Sony GDM-FW900 and wait until OLEDs come out :)
 
sunama said:
The acid test of any monitor is when you place 2 monitors side-by-side. On their own, any monitor can look "ok", but placing it next to another monitor is what highlights a monitor's strengths and weaknesses.
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Absolutely! That's why we always have a high-end CRT and Samsung XL24 (the broadest colour gamut available in LCD form and much broader than any CRT) to hand when reviewing monitors. Your expectations of the U2311H were understandably high due to all of the hype and freshness surrounding the technology. It seems you can now appreciate that there are some areas where the VA panels in your DGM and (if unaffected by quality issues) EW2420 simply outshine any other monitor in the price range. In terms of fluidity of motion and responsiveness they certainly are lacking something and the consistency of colours is a little behind comparable IPS panels. Out of interest - does your DGM monitor have an AG coating and how 'aggressive' is it compared to the U2311H?
 
fonkydevil said:
... wide gamut is currently not supported by Win7 (let alone anterior versions), and very few applications (like Photoshop or Firefox) manage it properly if set properly.

Displaying sRGB applications on a wide gamut monitor resulted in totally erroneous, oversaturated, "leaking" colours, especially red.

Given all this, I fail to understand how going to a wide gamut display will improve anything,
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I'm not expert when it comes to broad gamut and standard gamut. I judge a screen by what I see. I couldn't are less about the specifications as these can be faked. LCD TV screens offer some whopping specifications, yet in real viewing, generally fall short of the quality which Plasma offers, at a given price-point. This may have changed, but a few months ago when I was reading about plasma vs LCD, LCD was still in 2nd place (especially with SD material).

I don't even know if my DGM is wide gamut or standard. All I know is that the vibrancy is only marginally behind that of my CRT.

PCM2 said:
"Although the vibrancy wasn’t quite as intense as some of the broad-gamut IPS monitors we’ve used we can’t fault the U2211H for displaying natural and accurate colours within the sRGB colour space."

"Standard gamut means that some colours are less vibrant than we would like in games and movies"
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Unfortunately, I never read those quotes, however, even if I had, I think I still would've bought the DELL, simply because the lack of vibrancy wasn't highlighted enough, by different reviewers.

Also, would a broad gamut really be noticeable, compared to a monitor with a standard gamut, in games or videos? fonkydevil seems to be suggesting that the problem of lack of vibrancy may not actually be related to the colour gamut.
 
sunama said:
Also, would a broad gamut really be noticeable, compared to a monitor with a standard gamut, in games or videos? fonkydevil seems to be suggesting that the problem of lack of vibrancy may not actually be related to the colour gamut.
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Sometimes people think they can read a lot about things on the internet and gague exactly how things are in the 'real world' from this. As you have discovered the subjective nature of monitors makes it very difficult to argue that one montior is 'de facto' better than another for a varied task such as 'gaming'.

The point I think fonkydevil was trying to make was that most games and the like were created using the sRGB colour space as this is currently where most display technology is at. From my vast experience with broad gamut monitors and 'standard gamut' monitors, often in close succession, I can tell you that things are never so clear-cut in reality. In a lot of games the extra vibrancy that a broad colour gamut gives is more than welcome as it adds an extra 'layer' of immersiveness to the experience. In most cases that we've come across the added vibrancy does not cause garish levels of oversaturation and does not compromise more subtle pastel shades either. In some cases, such as Dragon Rising (one of my collegues is quite particular about a certain natural look on this title) the gamma in-game adjusted to slightly mute some greens so that they don't edge too much into the 'oversaturated' category. In most cases the extra lushness and vividness makes the fires, explosions, forests, car paint jobs, plastic materials etc. etc. look much more lively. Undoubtedly things would be even better if the broad gamut of a given monitor was natively supported (and one day, when OLEDs become a widespread standard, I'm sure it will be) but even today some people can get extra enjoyment out of their games on a broad-gamut monitor. It is also worth remembering that the artists themselves often have these wonderful ideas in their head and perhaps even try to mimic certain scenes from the real world. When people refer to 'what the artist intended' they are often actually referring to 'what the artist was able to conjur up given the restrictions that apply'. The real world certainly doesn't restrict itself to an sRGB colour space.

sunama said:
No AG coating. Its glossy. And I've never had an issue with reflections. The same cannot be said about the DELL (even though it has an anti glare coating).
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That also makes things look comparatively vibrant. As explained above though I am in no doubt that the colour gamut is playing a significant part in this too.
 
About the wide gamut.

I am indeed not an expert in color spaces and how they display. Worse, I have never seen a wide gamut display with my own eyes.

What I know is that a lot of the people (on hardforum.com) who purchased the U2410 complained about the rendering of a wide gamut monitor with applications that don't support it.
The less demanding indeed actually liked how games and movies dispayed, but most people felt it was unnatural and artificial. Mostly everyone uses the sRGB emulation on this display. From the pictures I saw, Win7 desktop did look ugly in wide gamut.

At the time, before Win7 was out I even joined the choir on MS forums ranting for a native support of wide gamut, I could not understand how wide gamut "technology" had been out for so long and not supported by 2010 software.

With regards to the color distorsion when displaying a sRGB application on a wide gamut, I never took the time to dig the maths, but there are strict scientific rules that explain what happens when you display a color space on another (different) one.
 
My previous post (particularly the very first paragraph) says all that needs to be said on the matter. Some people like it, some people don't. There are some cases (some games) where things look a bit out of place. I find adjusting the in-game gamma preferable to using sRGB emulation mode, however, as the experience just isn't the same otherwise. It is a bit ahead of its time and I can't wait for proper broad gamut support in applications (as I said, OLED technology should push us towards this) but it's clearly something that sunama finds pleasing. I was simply empathising with his viewpoint by inputting my various experiences.

fonkydevil said:
From the pictures I saw, Win7 desktop did look ugly in wide gamut.
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You've never seen anything for yourself (to make your own mind up) other than a picture of a broad gamut display, taken with presumably an sRGB camera, outputted on an sRGB display. Fantastic! :p
 
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my bleed is bad i think, you can really see it on blacks, and it mocks me, i know its there. while im watching stuff, the other corners have small about of bleed, but not as bad as that left bottom corner. or am wrong, coz it depends where you view it from, if you go under it it sort of goes away, but its there at eye level.
 
PCM2 said:
My previous post (particularly the very first paragraph) says all that needs to be said on the matter. Some people like it, some people don't. There are some cases (some games) where things look a bit out of place.
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:rolleyes:

I understand there is no need to argue, since you said all that needs to be said (sigh). Then I'll just report some things that don't need to be said, by other people who have seen it with their own eyes.

Best exposé I could find about wide gamut display :
http://www.artstorm.net/journal/2009/07/color-management-wide-gamut-dell-2408/

A much briefer one
http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=723315

Then an illustration from an actual user of the U2410
http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1034712195&postcount=803

Of course some people may not be bugged by the oversaturation of wide gamut displays, and some actually prefer it, but there is much to it than just a matter of tastes.
PCM2 I'd be interested in reading some of your reviews, if you do'nt mind ginving a few links.

Also Sunama's DGM is standard gamut (sRGB). I could not find info about his CRT.
 
I am not trying to argue with anything that has been said on those links, honestly. Those links simply discuss the implications of broad gamut on the vast majority of applications that have been designed within narrower colour spaces. This has already been highlighted by my previous posts which you seem to have read very selectively, misunderstood or outright ignored. That's why I said there was nothing else to say on the matter - nothing new is being discussed here and we're going round in circles. The fact you have acknowledged that it is a matter of taste or preference is very important - as I've said I think everyone would be happier if broad gamuts were properly supported and I have no doubt that they will be in a few years time.

Where did you find out the information about the colour gamut of his monitor? I know it uses a M240UW01 V0 panel and was cheapo but this thread suggests a 'broader' gamut - http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17807842. It could well be that, as I've said previously, it's a case of glossiness bringing out the extra vibrancy. The EW2420 has a semi-glossy display, 8-bits per pixel and standard gamut but the level of vibrancy is excellent. The high contrast of PVA panels also helps to bring this out. His CRT monitor is also glossy and 'high contrast' so I'm sure this helps the image look more vivid. I have no doubt whatsoever that sunama would find broad gamut appealing as he finds the U2311H 'washed out' despite it displaying sRGB images very much as they were intended (but not necessarily envisaged).
 
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