Sooo now that i have this monitor i'll edit this post with my review... 
Included with the Monitor:
1x Dual-Link DVI cable (same as a usual DVI cable but has more pins)
1x VGA cable
1x DisplayPort cable (future replacement for DVI and VGA cables, looks similar to a HDMI cable)
1x USB cable (to connect the monitor to you computer so that the built in Card Reader and USB ports on the monitor work)
1x Power Cable
Plus a beefy Manual, Drivers CD, and a cloth to clean the screen.
Connections and inputs on the Dell 3008WFP:
1x VGA (Analog)
2x DVI-D (Digital) with HDCP
1x HDMI
1x S-Video
1x Component
1x Composite
1x DisplayPort
Plus 4x USB ports (2 on left side, 2 underneath on back) and a 9 in 1 card reader (also on left side).
Now lets skip any other crap and just get down to business..
Colours:
Very vibrant! Colours that were not so visible on my Dell 2405's stand out more on the 3008. For instance the reds are more red, greens more green and so on. Small variations are more apparent, each colour is more distinctive. Colours in photo's are also more accurate to how they look in real life. Reds in particular are very... red. Up until recently LCD tech has had problems reproducing reds, they usually have some kind of orange tint to them (perfectly demonstrated in the pic below with the 2405) but the 3008 displays red how it should look. Other newer LCD monitors like the 2407WFP-HC also display reds better because it has 92% NTSC colour gamut, where as most other LCD's display around 75 - 80%. But the 3008 with it's 117% NTSC colour gamut displays reds the best i've seen so far (and any other colour for that matter).
My 3008 compared to one of my 2405's. (All pics were taken with a Canon SLR camera, so they are a pretty accurate representation of how things actually look when viewing each monitor)
NOTE: Install the 3008's drivers on the CD! before this the red gradient within Everest's monitor calibration test was not perfect.
Whites:
Now much to say apart from white is white on the 3008, no tint of yellow or blue as on a lot of other LCD's.
Example...
Blacks:
Same story with blacks, no or little colour tint, maybe a very slight tint of blue, but very good black. Black isn't as dark as a good CRT, but up there with the best LCD's.
Contrast and Gamma:
Very good contrast, but a little over over the top before calibration. Darker greys disappear in to black more than they should. I found this could not be fixed using the monitors contrast setting, because like with most LCD's it does not alter the contrast exactly... just kind of makes the screen more dull. The way i had to sort this out was within the Nvidia control panel (under 'Adjust desktop colour settings') turning the contrast bar down to around 35 fixed this. It also fixed the Gamma which was off with certain colours before the contrast was turned down.
Back Lighting:
Back lighting is pretty uniform, although the top right of the screen is a tiny bit darker than the rest, but not something i'd notice unless viewing an all-white screen and paying attention to it.
Theres very little back light leakage - which is when viewing an all black screen, and some parts are lighter than others. I can see this on every single LCD i've seen if i look hard enough, and in this regard the 3008 is one of the best (or atleast mine is, because it can often vary quite considerably with each individual screen)
Response Time / Ghosting:
I've already mentioned this so i'll just copy and paste! ...
As for ghosting/smearing whatever you want to call it - the monitor is rated at 8ms, but i'd say it's closer to 12ms. What i was expecting really, the bigger and higher res you go, the harder it technically is to deal with LCD response times. Higher res monitors never have as low response as lower res ones. It's the same with monitors that can display more colours too, for instance the crappy 6-bit monitors (2ms/4ms) sacrifice colour quality for faster response time. So being as this Dell 3008 is both high res and displays 117% colour gamut i think they have done a decent job here, and i'll doubt your'll get much better with 30" screens in the short-ish term.
I can see smearing caused by the response time when playing games, but before you're like "OH NO!!!11one" .. i can see this with every single LCD display, even 2ms rated LCD's. You just have to know what to look for. This is what gets me when i read reviews of monitors on tech websites, and they mention they cant see smearing... i think these people have something wrong with there eyes or dont know what to look for. Either way, they shouldn't be reviewing monitors.
I tried to take a pic of the smearing but i cant get it properly, no matter what camera settings i use. But as said already it's around 12ms and it's hard to notice when playing games unless you're looking for it. With movies it's even harder to see. I think most people wouldn't notice it.
I'd like to point out that there is no standard for manufacturers when measuring response times, it can be done it pretty much any condition, so when buying a LCD monitor or TV, ignore the listed response time, or atleast take it as a very rough guide, and try to view the display yourself. It's the only way to see what it's actually like, as you cannot properly take photo's of smearing caused by response time no matter what camera settings are used.
Dynamic Contrast:
With this turned on this monitor is rated at a contrast ratio of 3000:1. With it off it's rated at 1000:1. This 'feature' simply turns the monitors brightness all the way up to 100% when turned on, it does nothing to the actual contrast. It's a cheap marketing thing to claim 3000:1. Also when DC is turned on you cannot change the brightness anymore. A pointless feature. Even though my Dell 2405's are also rated at 1000:1 the contrast on the 3008 is considerably better, this monitor has great contrast so dont be disappointed by Dynamic Contrast being a joke.
Screen Tearing:
PC:
I've yet to see any tearing in a game so far when V-sync is enabled.
Consoles:
Again no tearing with either 360 or PS3. Some tearing was seen in Mass Effect on 360, but this turned out to be the actual game.
And for Drazek - I noticed no tearing in the massively overrated Halo 3
either in single or multi-player, no matter what speed i turned around.
Resolution Scaling:
Some of the best scaling i've seen on a LCD, partly because it has way more pixels than most monitors which helps a lot.
I'll rate the non-native resolutions out of 10... (with the native res only being able to get a 10, obviously)
Resolution / Score
2048x1536 = 8.7
1920x1440 = 8.7
1920x1200 = 8.7
1920x1080 = 8.6
1680x1050 = 7.4 (Pic of Crysis @ 1680x1050 on the 3008)
1440x900 = 7.0
1280x1024 = 6.7
1280x800 = 6.7
1280x720 = 6.9
...I'm not going to test any lower resolutions, running anything lower than 1280x720 on a monitor like this is a little stupid.
Basically all the higher resolutions from 1920x1080 upwards are nearly as good as the native res. They look very crisp and i'd happily use any of them if my card couldn't handle 2560x1600 for a game.
Consoles:
X360:
360 looks great on the 3008 over component when using 720p or 1080i settings. When using 1080p though things are not as sharp and there is a ghosting effect (i mean an actual ghosting effect, and not 'ghosting' that is inaccurately used to describe smearing caused by LCD response time) so the ghosting is always there, with static or moving images. Being as this dont happen with the PS3 over HDMI @ 1080p, or PC @ 1920x1080 it's obviously just something to do with the component input itself. It's not so much of a big deal with 360 because as far as i know there are no games on this console that are actually rendered at 1080p res. Plus newer X360's come with HDMI.
I find 1080i looks best on the 3008, and like a decent TV would, it definitely seems to display 1080i as 1080p. Some of the better HD-TV's do this. Otherwise with 1080i the edges look more jaggy/pixelated and motion looks rather poor. but if a TV does display 1080i as 1080p then i find it looks better than 720p.
Heres some pics of 360 games running on the 3008, just to give an idea of how it looks and what the scaling is like...
360's DashBoard
Mass Effect
Halo3
PS3:
Over HDMI the PS3 looks excellent at 1080p. Some PS3 are actually rendered at 1080p (1920x1080) and of course these look great, basically exactly the same as 1920x1080 on PC. The games that are rendered at 720p though are equal to 1280x720 on PC, which ins't as great but still good.
HD Movie Viewing:
For either 720p or 1080p HD video, again this monitor is great. The source has to be good quality though, because being as this is a monitor and not a TV, it has no post processing enhancements to clear stuff up like noise or artifacts. Blu-Ray looks excellent, especially if the disc has been encoded with a newer codec and not the ancient MPEG 2 codec that was used on a lot of earlier Blu-Ray discs, which produced noise and a less crisp image.
Infact i'd say the monitor is as good as my 46" 1080p Sharp LCD TV for viewing good quality HD video. If it had some built in image enhancements that could be turned on for video/TV playback then the 3008 would most probably be even better than most 1080p LCD TV's because of it's vibrant and accurate colours.
Screen anti-reflective coating:
Thought i'd mention this as it bothers me a little. The 3008's anti-reflective screen coating (thats found on most LCD's) isn't as anti-reflective as it could be. When something dark is on screen, that takes up a large amount of screen area, or when the whole screen is black/dark colour, i can notice reflections on it. Hardly a problem in a house, but might be more trouble in an office area with lots of lights or windows. It's not that obvious anyway, way better than with a CRT of course which has no anti-reflective screen coating. But it's not as good on the 3008 as with most other LCD monitors. (i find it funny how some LCD monitors do not have this coating on them at all, and it's marketed as a good thing)
Viewing angles:
Very good (yet again) in this area. Although S-IPS panels always have the best, or some of the best viewing angles. There is little colour shift when viewing even from a 100 degree angle. The contrast also remains good, it does not get washed out. Which is a especially good thing as this monitor is so big that even when sitting facing the middle of the screen you end up viewing the far corners of it at a slight angle.
Conclusion:
Very happy with this monitor and it's great to use for consoles, movies, and of course graphics/photography/CAD and those type of things. The colour reproduction and image is the best i've seen on any LCD (and i've seen and tested so many) but you have to configure the colour and contrast to get it looking right. I'm sure a lot of people will just plug this monitor in and not configure it or install the drivers... because it still looks good without doing this, but IT'S NOT ACCURATE. The gamma, contrast and reds are a little off until the drivers are installed and the contrast is turned down in software.
Random note: I've already seen atleast 2 reviews of this monitor where they have not configured the monitor prior to review or just dumped it on one of the presets within it's menu - i urge anyone to just ignore these reviews as these people are clearly massive idiots. You just dont buy a 1K monitor and not configure it (or any monitor really, especially if reviewing it!).
For those who are interested, my own configured settings are:
On the monitors own settings menu i use 'Custom RGB' (within the Presets menu) under this the colours are set to:
Red = 100
Green = 95
Blue = 100
In Display Settings menu:
Sharpness = 50.
Normally with most monitors when using DVI, sharpness should be set to 0, as then you are seeing exactly whats being output. But with the 3008 set on 0 things are way too blurry. 50 seems to be the equivalent of 0 on the 3008 when using the custom RGB setting.
Then in the Nvidia control panel under 'Adjust desktop colour settings' the contrast is set to 35.
If the drivers on the CD are not installed these settings wont be as accurate. With these settings colour, gamma are contrast are as close as i can get them to being perfect.
My Dell 3008WFP and Dell 2405FPW
Click here to view the HotHardware Review.
Included with the Monitor:
1x Dual-Link DVI cable (same as a usual DVI cable but has more pins)
1x VGA cable
1x DisplayPort cable (future replacement for DVI and VGA cables, looks similar to a HDMI cable)
1x USB cable (to connect the monitor to you computer so that the built in Card Reader and USB ports on the monitor work)
1x Power Cable
Plus a beefy Manual, Drivers CD, and a cloth to clean the screen.
Connections and inputs on the Dell 3008WFP:
1x VGA (Analog)
2x DVI-D (Digital) with HDCP
1x HDMI
1x S-Video
1x Component
1x Composite
1x DisplayPort
Plus 4x USB ports (2 on left side, 2 underneath on back) and a 9 in 1 card reader (also on left side).
Now lets skip any other crap and just get down to business..
Colours:
Very vibrant! Colours that were not so visible on my Dell 2405's stand out more on the 3008. For instance the reds are more red, greens more green and so on. Small variations are more apparent, each colour is more distinctive. Colours in photo's are also more accurate to how they look in real life. Reds in particular are very... red. Up until recently LCD tech has had problems reproducing reds, they usually have some kind of orange tint to them (perfectly demonstrated in the pic below with the 2405) but the 3008 displays red how it should look. Other newer LCD monitors like the 2407WFP-HC also display reds better because it has 92% NTSC colour gamut, where as most other LCD's display around 75 - 80%. But the 3008 with it's 117% NTSC colour gamut displays reds the best i've seen so far (and any other colour for that matter).
My 3008 compared to one of my 2405's. (All pics were taken with a Canon SLR camera, so they are a pretty accurate representation of how things actually look when viewing each monitor)
NOTE: Install the 3008's drivers on the CD! before this the red gradient within Everest's monitor calibration test was not perfect.
Whites:
Now much to say apart from white is white on the 3008, no tint of yellow or blue as on a lot of other LCD's.
Example...
Blacks:
Same story with blacks, no or little colour tint, maybe a very slight tint of blue, but very good black. Black isn't as dark as a good CRT, but up there with the best LCD's.
Contrast and Gamma:
Very good contrast, but a little over over the top before calibration. Darker greys disappear in to black more than they should. I found this could not be fixed using the monitors contrast setting, because like with most LCD's it does not alter the contrast exactly... just kind of makes the screen more dull. The way i had to sort this out was within the Nvidia control panel (under 'Adjust desktop colour settings') turning the contrast bar down to around 35 fixed this. It also fixed the Gamma which was off with certain colours before the contrast was turned down.
Back Lighting:
Back lighting is pretty uniform, although the top right of the screen is a tiny bit darker than the rest, but not something i'd notice unless viewing an all-white screen and paying attention to it.
Theres very little back light leakage - which is when viewing an all black screen, and some parts are lighter than others. I can see this on every single LCD i've seen if i look hard enough, and in this regard the 3008 is one of the best (or atleast mine is, because it can often vary quite considerably with each individual screen)
Response Time / Ghosting:
I've already mentioned this so i'll just copy and paste! ...
As for ghosting/smearing whatever you want to call it - the monitor is rated at 8ms, but i'd say it's closer to 12ms. What i was expecting really, the bigger and higher res you go, the harder it technically is to deal with LCD response times. Higher res monitors never have as low response as lower res ones. It's the same with monitors that can display more colours too, for instance the crappy 6-bit monitors (2ms/4ms) sacrifice colour quality for faster response time. So being as this Dell 3008 is both high res and displays 117% colour gamut i think they have done a decent job here, and i'll doubt your'll get much better with 30" screens in the short-ish term.
I can see smearing caused by the response time when playing games, but before you're like "OH NO!!!11one" .. i can see this with every single LCD display, even 2ms rated LCD's. You just have to know what to look for. This is what gets me when i read reviews of monitors on tech websites, and they mention they cant see smearing... i think these people have something wrong with there eyes or dont know what to look for. Either way, they shouldn't be reviewing monitors.
I tried to take a pic of the smearing but i cant get it properly, no matter what camera settings i use. But as said already it's around 12ms and it's hard to notice when playing games unless you're looking for it. With movies it's even harder to see. I think most people wouldn't notice it.
I'd like to point out that there is no standard for manufacturers when measuring response times, it can be done it pretty much any condition, so when buying a LCD monitor or TV, ignore the listed response time, or atleast take it as a very rough guide, and try to view the display yourself. It's the only way to see what it's actually like, as you cannot properly take photo's of smearing caused by response time no matter what camera settings are used.
Dynamic Contrast:
With this turned on this monitor is rated at a contrast ratio of 3000:1. With it off it's rated at 1000:1. This 'feature' simply turns the monitors brightness all the way up to 100% when turned on, it does nothing to the actual contrast. It's a cheap marketing thing to claim 3000:1. Also when DC is turned on you cannot change the brightness anymore. A pointless feature. Even though my Dell 2405's are also rated at 1000:1 the contrast on the 3008 is considerably better, this monitor has great contrast so dont be disappointed by Dynamic Contrast being a joke.
Screen Tearing:
PC:
I've yet to see any tearing in a game so far when V-sync is enabled.
Consoles:
Again no tearing with either 360 or PS3. Some tearing was seen in Mass Effect on 360, but this turned out to be the actual game.
And for Drazek - I noticed no tearing in the massively overrated Halo 3
either in single or multi-player, no matter what speed i turned around.Resolution Scaling:
Some of the best scaling i've seen on a LCD, partly because it has way more pixels than most monitors which helps a lot.
I'll rate the non-native resolutions out of 10... (with the native res only being able to get a 10, obviously)
Resolution / Score
2048x1536 = 8.7
1920x1440 = 8.7
1920x1200 = 8.7
1920x1080 = 8.6
1680x1050 = 7.4 (Pic of Crysis @ 1680x1050 on the 3008)
1440x900 = 7.0
1280x1024 = 6.7
1280x800 = 6.7
1280x720 = 6.9
...I'm not going to test any lower resolutions, running anything lower than 1280x720 on a monitor like this is a little stupid.
Basically all the higher resolutions from 1920x1080 upwards are nearly as good as the native res. They look very crisp and i'd happily use any of them if my card couldn't handle 2560x1600 for a game.
Consoles:
X360:
360 looks great on the 3008 over component when using 720p or 1080i settings. When using 1080p though things are not as sharp and there is a ghosting effect (i mean an actual ghosting effect, and not 'ghosting' that is inaccurately used to describe smearing caused by LCD response time) so the ghosting is always there, with static or moving images. Being as this dont happen with the PS3 over HDMI @ 1080p, or PC @ 1920x1080 it's obviously just something to do with the component input itself. It's not so much of a big deal with 360 because as far as i know there are no games on this console that are actually rendered at 1080p res. Plus newer X360's come with HDMI.
I find 1080i looks best on the 3008, and like a decent TV would, it definitely seems to display 1080i as 1080p. Some of the better HD-TV's do this. Otherwise with 1080i the edges look more jaggy/pixelated and motion looks rather poor. but if a TV does display 1080i as 1080p then i find it looks better than 720p.
Heres some pics of 360 games running on the 3008, just to give an idea of how it looks and what the scaling is like...
360's DashBoard
Mass Effect
Halo3
PS3:
Over HDMI the PS3 looks excellent at 1080p. Some PS3 are actually rendered at 1080p (1920x1080) and of course these look great, basically exactly the same as 1920x1080 on PC. The games that are rendered at 720p though are equal to 1280x720 on PC, which ins't as great but still good.
HD Movie Viewing:
For either 720p or 1080p HD video, again this monitor is great. The source has to be good quality though, because being as this is a monitor and not a TV, it has no post processing enhancements to clear stuff up like noise or artifacts. Blu-Ray looks excellent, especially if the disc has been encoded with a newer codec and not the ancient MPEG 2 codec that was used on a lot of earlier Blu-Ray discs, which produced noise and a less crisp image.
Infact i'd say the monitor is as good as my 46" 1080p Sharp LCD TV for viewing good quality HD video. If it had some built in image enhancements that could be turned on for video/TV playback then the 3008 would most probably be even better than most 1080p LCD TV's because of it's vibrant and accurate colours.
Screen anti-reflective coating:
Thought i'd mention this as it bothers me a little. The 3008's anti-reflective screen coating (thats found on most LCD's) isn't as anti-reflective as it could be. When something dark is on screen, that takes up a large amount of screen area, or when the whole screen is black/dark colour, i can notice reflections on it. Hardly a problem in a house, but might be more trouble in an office area with lots of lights or windows. It's not that obvious anyway, way better than with a CRT of course which has no anti-reflective screen coating. But it's not as good on the 3008 as with most other LCD monitors. (i find it funny how some LCD monitors do not have this coating on them at all, and it's marketed as a good thing)
Viewing angles:
Very good (yet again) in this area. Although S-IPS panels always have the best, or some of the best viewing angles. There is little colour shift when viewing even from a 100 degree angle. The contrast also remains good, it does not get washed out. Which is a especially good thing as this monitor is so big that even when sitting facing the middle of the screen you end up viewing the far corners of it at a slight angle.
Conclusion:
Very happy with this monitor and it's great to use for consoles, movies, and of course graphics/photography/CAD and those type of things. The colour reproduction and image is the best i've seen on any LCD (and i've seen and tested so many) but you have to configure the colour and contrast to get it looking right. I'm sure a lot of people will just plug this monitor in and not configure it or install the drivers... because it still looks good without doing this, but IT'S NOT ACCURATE. The gamma, contrast and reds are a little off until the drivers are installed and the contrast is turned down in software.
Random note: I've already seen atleast 2 reviews of this monitor where they have not configured the monitor prior to review or just dumped it on one of the presets within it's menu - i urge anyone to just ignore these reviews as these people are clearly massive idiots. You just dont buy a 1K monitor and not configure it (or any monitor really, especially if reviewing it!).
For those who are interested, my own configured settings are:
On the monitors own settings menu i use 'Custom RGB' (within the Presets menu) under this the colours are set to:
Red = 100
Green = 95
Blue = 100
In Display Settings menu:
Sharpness = 50.
Normally with most monitors when using DVI, sharpness should be set to 0, as then you are seeing exactly whats being output. But with the 3008 set on 0 things are way too blurry. 50 seems to be the equivalent of 0 on the 3008 when using the custom RGB setting.
Then in the Nvidia control panel under 'Adjust desktop colour settings' the contrast is set to 35.
If the drivers on the CD are not installed these settings wont be as accurate. With these settings colour, gamma are contrast are as close as i can get them to being perfect.
My Dell 3008WFP and Dell 2405FPW
Click here to view the HotHardware Review.
Last edited:
